Global technology company Zoho has launched Zoho Practice, an end-to-end practice management solution for accountants.
The firm also expanded its Zoho Finance Platform with the launch of 230+ extensions in Zoho Marketplace and a dedicated developer portal.
It further announced that its Zoho Finance Platform had achieved 102 percent year-on-year growth in new customers in Kenya. This growth was driven by Zoho Books, the company’s flagship VAT-compliant accounting solution that integrates with Tax Invoice Management Systems (TIMS).
“Zoho has been committed to serving its customers and the business community in Kenya. Last year, we launched the VAT-compliant editions of Zoho Books, Zoho Invoice and Zoho Inventory. Today, with the new additions, we are further strengthening our ecosystem by offering Kenyan businesses the ability to tailor their applications according to their business needs. Additionally, with the launch of Zoho Practice, we aim to help accountants streamline their firm’s day-to-day operations, thereby saving them time so that they can focus more on providing exceptional client experience,” said Veerakumar Natarajan, Country Head, Zoho Kenya.
The firm is headquartered in Chennai, India.
Finance Platform
The Zoho Finance Platform has evolved over the course of 15 years, from a single invoicing product to a full-fledged finance and operations suite. With the addition of a wide variety of integration partners, system integrators, implementation partners, and accounting partners, it evolved into a comprehensive platform with a rapidly growing ecosystem.
The Finance Platform saw a 50 percent increase in new customers in the Middle East and Africa region. It also grew its global accounting partner network by 63 percent last year.
The company also launched an enterprise-grade Developer Portal using which developers can easily build solutions to customise specific functions of their finance applications, automate routine processes, and publish the extensions in Zoho Marketplace.
Additionally, businesses can also use the portal to build their own extensions and use them within their organisations.
Zoho Practice, a Modern Solution for Accountants
Today, accountants are expected to go beyond providing traditional services like day-to-day accounting, bookkeeping, financial reporting, auditing, and tax filing. Clients also expect business insights from their accountants like how to curb organisational spend, identify additional revenue sources, and strategies for accelerating business growth. However, to provide these bespoke services, accountants need a holistic view of their clients’ businesses, in addition to managing their own firm’s operations.
Zoho Practice, a one-stop solution for accountants, comes with client management, document management, task management, timesheet, and billing capabilities.
The application also offers a few industry-first capabilities built from the ground up for distributed firms like advanced collaboration through chat, voice or video call, document- sharing. It also has AI-driven anomaly detection to identify inconsistencies in their client’s transactions, so that they can quickly rectify the issue.
The practice management solution comes pre-integrated witt Zoho Books (accounting app), and Zoho Expense (travel and expense management app), providing a comprehensive central repository while enabling seamless interoperability between an accountant’s practice and their client’s finance and operations. This empowers the accountants to grow their firms by offering more value-added services.
