My Favorite Bookkeeping Program: Zoho Books

I often get asked about what bookkeeping program I use. Probably because I have decorated my invoices with Chameleons. (Hire me and you can get a fun invoice too!) I use Zoho Books. And, no, I am not on any kind of affiliate program to say this.*

Here are some of the reasons I really like them:

• I use PayPal and Stripe for my invoices. Those are both gateways they offer. They have some others, but I never bothered to add more. Two seemed to be enough of a choice.
• Their customer service is great.
• I can set up recurring invoices. Set it and forget it!
• I can set up reminders ahead of time and they automatically send out. Set it and forget it.
• I can customize my own invoices. And, I’m a noodler, so that makes it fun. I always want to inject a bit of fun in the mundane if I can.
• Zoho has a lot of different products that all work well together (project management, Invoices, Books, bug trackers, etc.) If you go to https://www.zoho.com/ you can see all of them.
• It’s not expensive for the time it saves — especially if you commit annually.
• Your customers can have a portal to see all their expenses, past invoices, make payments, etc. It’s just a matter of clicking a button for them to activate it. I think there is a way to store credit card info back there, but that might require one of the pay services I don’t have. So, if you need that – check it out.
• They have a good trial period for each one of their products.
• Overall, it saves me lots of time every month. I used to easily spend 2-3 hours of billing every month. I ended up saving all my invoices for once a month because it saved time. So I got paid later than I should have. Now I just create the one-offs. Everything else is automated.

*They did interview me for their website once because I kept saying nice things about them. They really should send me some cookies or something.