Nishit Doshi

The company

With a mission to provide quality products and exemplary services for the mining, power, steel, and cement industries, Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. was started in 1991. Today, with over 30 years of expertise in the Business Supplies & Equipment sector, it is one of the leading channel partners for multi-national companies like GroundProbe and Draeger and an authorized distributor for ExxonMobil, Rulmeca and Flexco. Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. aims to provide solutions to reduce breakdowns and improve productivity through innovative products and services, all without compromising on safety.

The challenge

Initially, Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. used the T.FAT Trade ERP solution to maintain its financial data. After using the software, the team encountered several problems. Foremost, the solution lacked interconnectivity between modules, and that forced the finance department to spend additional hours entering the same data in multiple places. Not only did this waste time, but it also led to a higher error rate.

"Financial reports are important for management to make informed business decisions. Because it was difficult to generate reports in T.FAT, we resorted to Excel. We had to export all our data to Excel and then generate reports, which increased our existing problem of manual work. On the whole, it took us 2-3 days to generate an accurate financial report," said Nishit Doshi, Vice President at Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd.

Timely payments were another huge pain point for Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. Every Friday, the finance department checked their CRM, made a note of all the customers, and sent them emails manually. At times, their employees even skipped sending reminders because this time-consuming process hindered other important accounting tasks. Since they did not receive payments on time, this process disrupted the company's cash flow.

To top it all off, T.FAT is a server-based software system, so Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. could only access its data through the server-connected computers in its offices. That meant that during the COVID-19 crisis, it became difficult for the finance team to establish a work-from-home policy. They tried to migrate to the Cloud-based T.FAT software, but the modules were not complete and the data that was enetered was presented incorrectly in various reports.

It was clear that a solution was needed, and Doshi wanted to invest in accounting software that would solve the issue of manual work while also increasing the efficiency and flexibility of the company's finance department.

The solution

Doshi and his team started by evaluating multiple ERP solutions from large providers like SAP. After finding that they didn't fit the company's needs like he was expecting, the director and one of their partner firms in Mumbai mentioned how they use Zoho One to run all their business operations. They insisted that Doshi explore Zoho's suite.

After purchasing the product, Doshi and his team decided to utilize the Zoho Books resources and support services to the fullest extent in case of crisis. However, once they started implementing Books, Doshi and his team found it extremely easy to use and understand.

"Even if we needed any assistance, the readily available help documents and feature-specific videos curated into accessible Youtube playlists resolved most of our doubts," Doshi commented. "The FAQ document has a database of exactly the right questions with easy-to-understand solutions. In cases where we had to reach out to the support team, they provided instant solutions and functional workarounds."

Initially, Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. did not use any software to run its payroll. The HR team used Excel sheets to store employee information and sent salary and tax related information manually via email. As Zoho Payroll is a part of the Ultimate plan of Zoho Books, they were also able to explore the payroll management software. The HR team immediately adapted to the product's interface and functioning.

Benefits and ROI

Migrating to Zoho Books solved the majority of their problems. Since Zoho Books is a cloud accounting system, their finance team could now work from the comfort of their home and maintain easy access to the company's financial data. Manual tasks and related errors have been practically eliminated, and they no longer rely on Excel to generate financial reports.

"After switching to Zoho Books, we can view all our reports in the desired format with just a click of a button. This has greatly reduced management's dependency on the finance team. This time saved is now used to analyze the reports and decide the next course of action," said Doshi.

"In Zoho Books, with just one click, quotes or sales orders can be converted to an invoice, a purchase order can be converted to a bill, expenses can be billed to the customers and reimbursed to the employees, e-way bills can be automatically associated to the respective invoices, and recurring transactions can be instantly created! These may be small details, but on a larger scale, it creates a hugely positive impact on the business's productivity and improves our experience with the software," he added, referring to how the finance department loves the interconnectivity of the various modules in Zoho Books

With Zoho Books, Doshi and his team stopped worrying about GST and tax compliances. They are confident that Zoho Books' team of developers will implement any tax-related regulations immediately in the product. Since Zoho Books is a GST Suvidha Provider, the finance team at Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. rarely accesses the government GST portal now because they can file their GST returns directly from the application.

"The banking module of Zoho Books is just amazing. We can fetch live bank feeds and match or categorize them instantly with our transactions. This makes the process of bank reconciliation so much easier," said Doshi. Additionally, Zoho Books' dashboard has been a boon for the management as well as the finance department. The intuitive user interface, graphs, and charts have helped them better comprehend their company's payables, receivables, cash flow, income and expenses, and bank details.

Another feature that has transformed the way their finance team works is the Audit Trail. During the audit season, their CA would visit their office at Nagpur, take a physical printout of all the records, and proceed with the audit. With the latest notification issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs that forces companies to start using accounting software with an audit trail, their CA's work has reduced tremendously. The CA can view the audit trail report from the convenience of his home office via Zoho Books' mobile application and eliminate all the manual tasks related to auditing.

Lastly, Zoho Payroll has allowed the HR team to go completely paperless. "With Zoho Payroll, all our employees have a portal that lets them download and view their payslips, TDS deductions, proof of investments, and IT declaration," Doshi commented. There's no longer any need to be tied to paper payslips, excel sheets, or on-premise databases with salary, tax, or deduction information.

To summarize the benefits, Doshi said this: "Previously, we had to toggle between different applications to access our financial data. With the Zoho Books Ultimate plan, we can manage our payroll, inventory, reporting, and accounting in just a single platform."

Looking forward

With the Ultimate plan of Zoho Books, Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. has access to other finance applications like Zoho Inventory and Zoho Analytics. These apps have already helped them streamline and enhance their business accounting, but they plan on exploring them even deeper in the future.

Beyond that, Doshi made it clear that implementing other Zoho applications is also in the cards. "I plan on implementing other applications for Sujyoti India (P.) Ltd. Our team has already started exploring Zoho Expense, Zoho People, and Zoho Flow."