Zoho Invoice review

If you’re a sole trader or run a small or home business then the process of issuing and tracking invoices can be a chore. You could always use a high-end accounts package to generate invoices, but such packages might provide more features than you actually need. You could always generate invoices informally in Word or Excel, but doing so can make it difficult to track non-paying clients and can slow the flow of money into your business. Happily, there is a middle way in the form of Zoho Invoice.

Zoho Invoice is a web-based invoicing service that’s free if you have just one user and up to five clients. However, it costs $15 (£9.30) per month for up to three user accounts and 500 customers and $30 (£18.60) per month for unlimited users and customers. The free account also sends out emails with Zoho branding, while the paid-for versions won’t have any reference to Zoho service.

Zoho’s features include mobile invoicing and time sheets via its Android and iOS apps, which makes it easy to send bills or estimates to clients on the move. The service also has built-in support for online payment gateways including PayPal, Authorize.net and 2CO. All versions of the service allow you to issue invoices in multiple currencies, track payments and automate recurring invoices.

After you’ve signed up online you’re asked to complete an Organisation Profile containing basic information about your firm such as your trading name, address and contact information. This information appears on your invoices by default. There are also three additional fields you can use to add extra information such as your VAT number or Companies House registration number.

Once you’ve done that you can use the Add Contact shortcut to add people that you want to invoice. Although the shortcuts description says you can “simply import business contacts” you actually have to do this via an option on the Customers tab. You can do this by exporting existing contacts from programs such as Excel or Access in a CSV file and then mapping the file’s fields to Zoho’s. This is worth doing if you have dozens of customers and have that information in an exportable format, but will probably be too much of an effort for just a handful of clients.

When you generate an invoice you either have to select a customer or create a new one. You can also create custom invoice numbers, refer to a purchase order, change the default invoice date from today to another day and adjust terms. Whether your trade is in goods or services, every item for which you charge your client must be entered. Once entered, this information is saved. You can also save a description, which is handy if you always invoice the customer for the same thing. In our test scenario we invoiced for freelance magazine articles, so we left the description blank and entered info about work undertaken individually. You can add additional fields that include tax and individual discounts; tax rates such as VAT can be created with Zoho’s settings screen and the tax will be added to the invoice’s total.

You can also include a link on the invoice that lets your client pay you through an online service, and you can paste notes to your customer, such as your terms and conditions or payment information, into your invoice.

Once you’ve created the invoice you can generate a PDF and either print it or send it via email. A variety of different templates are available and you can customise them to create your own. Elsewhere, under Settings, you can add your own logo to both the Zoho Invoice web interface and your printed documents.

Sent invoices can be tracked in the main Invoices tab and Zoho can send receipts once you’ve received payment. This happens automatically if the client pays electronically, but you can manually record payment on invoices that are paid in cash, by cheque or by bank transfer. You create estimates for future work in exactly the same way that you create an invoice, and you can convert estimates into invoices if a client chooses to employ you.

Other features include the ability to create automatically recurring invoices and view detailed reports on sales, debts and expenses. There are even simple time tracking tools that let you log and bill for time devoted to projects. Perhaps the most useful extra feature is the Zoho Invoice mobile app for Android and iOS devices. The app includes the most important features of the web interface and lets you create contacts, invoices and estimates among other things. The app makes it a breeze to bill clients when you’re on the move, which is ideal for mobile contractors.

The great appeal of Zoho Invoice is its ease of use. It took us a total of around 10 minutes to enter all the information we needed and tweak our customised fields to create an invoice template we’d happily send to clients. Many small businesses will find the standard £9.30 per month subscription, which allows 500 customers, adequate for their requirements and the ability to quickly generate estimates and invoices on the move will prove invaluable for some.