Zoho Introduces Zoho Practice for Accountants, Announces Continued Growth and Expanded Ecosystem of Finance Platform

Finance platform now includes enterprise-grade developer portal, and 230+ marketplace extensions

Austin, TX - November 15, 2023 - Zoho, a global technology company, today announced that the Zoho Finance Platform has achieved 45% increase in new customers globally. The company also made significant expansion to its Finance Platform with 230+ extensions in Zoho Marketplace, and a dedicated developer portal. Additionally, it also launched Zoho Practice, an end-to-end practice management solution for accounting professionals. These additions strengthen the Finance Platform's ecosystem, helping businesses tailor their applications and collaborate with their accountants to enhance their operations.

"Over the last 15 years, our Finance Platform has grown from a single app to a unified suite, then a comprehensive platform,” says Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho. “Our continued investments in building a powerful ecosystem have enabled businesses of all sizes to access the best enterprise-grade tech available. The expanded Zoho Finance Platform ecosystem offers full customization, ensuring the software continues to meet their business needs with unparalleled efficiency, even as they evolve. Moreover, accountants, being one of the vital part of our ecosystem, have been going beyond their traditional role by supporting their clients in their path to success. Zoho Practice will serve as an all-in-one solution, helping them manage their firm and their clients, spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time delivering value-added services."

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 insights on an organizational level, like how to curb spend, identifying additional revenue sources, and accelerating business growth. However, to provide these bespoke services with excellence, accounting professionals would require a holistic view of their clients' businesses, in addition to efficiently running their own firm's operations.

Zoho Practice, a one-stop solution meticulously crafted for the modern accounting firm, launches with extensive client management, document management, task management, timesheet and billing capabilities. The application also offers industry-first functionalities built from the ground up for distributed firms, including AI-driven anomaly detection for client records; built-in collaboration through chat, voice, or video calls; and a unified platform to act as a single source of truth for all client services. This practice management solution comes pre-integrated with Zoho Books (accounting app) and Zoho Expense (travel and expense management app), providing a comprehensive central repository while enabling seamless interoperability between an accounting practice and their clients’ finances.

"Today, one of the more challenging aspects of running a successful accounting firm is client management, and how varied each client request can get in terms of volume and complexity. Moreover, there are different pieces that come into play like collaboration, insights from their client’s finance applications, and document management," says Kevin Permenter, Financial Applications Research Director at IDC "Zoho Practice offers users the opportunity to consolidate all these aspects into a single platform, leveraging the depth and breadth of Zoho’s financial operations management software portfolio."

"Zoho Practice is nothing short of a game-changer, not only for Zoho but also for the accounting community. This tool brings an accessible, user-friendly approach to managing your clients, their requests, and your daily tasks," notes Venessa West, Business Consultant, Bookkeeping and Auditing. "What sets Zoho Practice apart is its intuitive design, making it incredibly easy for accounting professionals to navigate and utilize its powerful features. Whether you're a seasoned accountant or just starting out in the field, Zoho Practice streamlines your workflow, helping you stay organized and efficient."

Continued Growth of Zoho Finance Platform

Regionally, Zoho recently launched the Germany edition of Zoho Finance Platform, introduced a free student edition of Zoho Books in India to empower future financial professionals, and added corporate tax capabilities to help UAE businesses stay compliant. The company also introduced Zoho Billing, a multifaceted solution built for growing businesses to experiment with pricing and quickly go to market. The finance platform ecosystem also experienced a 63% increase in the global accounting partner network last year.

Continuing on this momentum, the company also launched an enterprise-grade Developer Portal. This allows third-party developers to build solutions easily that customize specific functions of their finance applications, automate routine processes, and publish the extensions in Zoho Marketplace. Additionally, businesses can use the portal to build their own extensions for use within their organizations.

Today, there are 230+ extensions in Zoho Marketplace extensions for the Finance Platform that go beyond the functionalities offered natively, helping solve advanced requirements. Some of the most common uses of extensions include:

• Connections to local payment gateways to offer more convenient payment methods to customers
• Verifying a contact's email address, and their bank account details to ensure data accuracy
• Syncing financial data automatically with other business intelligence and forecasting apps
• Adding pin location within a map while recording customer or vendor addresses

Pricing and Availability

Zoho Practice is available for use immediately, and is free for accounting firms with up to 3 users. Additional users can be added by purchasing the add-on which works up to $2.5 monthly, per user.

Customers of Zoho Finance Platform can install the extensions offered in the Zoho Marketplace from within the applications. The pricing will depend on the monetization model that the developer follows for that extension.

Zoho Privacy Pledge

Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company owns and operates its data centers, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security. More than 100 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit: https://www.zoho.com/privacy-commitment.html

About Zoho

With 55+ apps in nearly every major business category, Zoho Corporation is one of the world's most prolific technology companies. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with international headquarters in Chennai, India, Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 15,000 employees. For more information, please visit: www.zoho.com

Media Contacts:

Ariel Rhodes
ariel.r@zohocorp.com