Zoho Targets SMEs in India With GST-ready Finance Plus Cloud Suite

Zoho launched its GST-compliant finance suite, Zoho Finance Plus. As Indian businesses prepare themselves for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, Zoho's finance suite aims to help them make a smooth transition. Zoho Finance Plus offers an end-to-end integrated cloud platform for businesses to manage their finances and operations, including filing of GST returns.

“The proliferation of smartphones, broadband connectivity and upcoming GST regimen is a great opportunity for businesses to move their accounting and other operations online,” said Sivaramakrishnan Iswaran, Director of Product Management, Zoho. “With Zoho Finance Plus, businesses get a beautiful interface to manage their transactions day to day and file their GST returns, all from a single platform. Zoho Finance Plus simplifies returns filing for businesses and increases compliance.”

Zoho Finance Plus: Key features

GST is not just a tax reform but a business reform. The success of GST implementation will depend heavily on the technology infrastructure that businesses deploy. Millions of SMEs will have to adopt GST-enabled applications for invoicing, tax filing and other business transactions.  With returns being required to be filed online thrice a month, back office operations can no longer be treated as low priority tasks.

Business will need a comprehensive interconnected suite of financial apps that talk to each other and share data seamlessly. Zoho Finance Plus connects different departments of a business and gives business owners access to real-time information for faster decision making. It also organises all transactions, which can be filed with the GST portal at the click of a button.

Zoho Finance Plus suite includes:

●      Zoho Books, India's most powerful and intuitive accounting and invoicing software for forward-thinking businesses; or Zoho Invoice, the completely customizable, yet simple invoicing software for freelancers or businesses to get paid on time.

●      Zoho Expense, an expense reporting solution tailor-made for businesses to automate their employee expense reimbursements.

●      Zoho Subscriptions, a robust solution for subscription-based businesses to automate their recurring billing.

●      Zoho Inventory, the perfect order management and fulfillment solution for retailers in India.

Key benefits from using Zoho Finance Plus

●      One nation, one tax, one vendor: As GST unifies states and union territories with a single indirect tax, businesses can run their entire operations with a single vendor— Zoho. Finance apps are built from the ground up with the same database. This means that businesses using Zoho Finance Plus do not have to worry about duplicating data across apps or manually adding transactions. Transactions created in one app are made available contextually in the other apps.

●      File GST returns with ease: With Zoho Finance Plus, businesses do not have to worry about capturing taxes separately or exporting data to be imported into another software for filing purposes. Business will be able to generate GST-compliant invoices, and taxes will be captured on every transaction. Zoho Books will generate the monthly returns automatically, and they can be filed with a click of a button. Zoho Books’ user-friendly and intuitive reconciliation feature, will help business owners to match and reconcile transactions with ease.

●      Greater visibility into orders and payments: When back office apps are connected, customers and staff alike have a clearer view of orders placed and payments due. With access to accurate and timely information about product availability, order status and payment details, customer support will be faster and more effective.

●      Faster reimbursements and accurate accounting: Zoho Expense streamlines and automates expense reporting for employees. With custom policies in place, identifying expenses that don't comply with the company's expense policy is a lot faster. Expense approvals can be automated and approved expenses will be recorded in Zoho Books instantly, speeding up the reimbursement process.

Pricing and Availability

Zoho Finance Plus is available for Rs 2,999 per organisation per month, which includes 10 users and access to Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice, Zoho Expense, Zoho Subscriptions and Zoho Inventory. Businesses that previously subscribed to multiple Zoho Finance apps can now purchase a single license for Zoho Finance Plus instead. Once the suite is set up, and user roles have been configured, admins can add new users across all applications from a single console, vastly simplifying the process of granting new employees access to multiple apps.