Invoicing clients in a professional and efficient manner is critical for managing cash flow and getting paid on time. Zoho Invoice is an easy-to-use online invoicing platform built for small businesses to create, customize, and send invoices all from one place. Here is a beginner’s tutorial on using the key features in Zoho Invoice.
Getting Started
Sign up for a free Zoho Invoice account at invoice.zoho.com or install the mobile app. You will be prompted to enter basic business and billing details including company name, address, logo and default payment terms. Zoho offers a library of professional invoice templates to choose from or you can create a fully customized template.
Creating Your First Invoice
Click on Create Invoice and select a client name from your contacts list or add a new client. Invoice details like project name, due date, line items and tax can be added next. You can enter itemized products or services either manually or by selecting from your catalog. Zoho Invoice Tutorial For Beginners and quantities get auto populated based on past invoices for recurring clients.
Apply Taxes and Discounts
A major advantage with online invoicing platforms versus manual invoicing is automatic tax calculations. Based on location of your business and your client, Zoho computes appropriate state and local taxes on the invoice. Volume discounts or account-wide discounts are also calculated based on predefined rules and rates.
Accept Online Payments
Once your invoice is created, you can email it directly to your client with a payment link for fast and simple payments. Zoho seamlessly integrates with payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal and more to enable online payments via credit card, debit card or bank transfer. You save time on accounting and bookkeeping with automatic sync of payments received from clients.
Get Paid Faster
Zoho Invoice has features focused specifically on improving invoice payment turnaround time so you can get paid faster. Payment reminders can be automated based on due date or custom criteria. You can also offer incentives like early payment discounts to motivate quicker payments from customers.
Insights and Reporting
With a growing client roster, it can be challenging to keep tabs on invoice status across all your customers. The dashboard in Zoho Invoice gives an overview of account receivables with insight into invoices paid, unpaid/overdue. More detailed reporting provides payment patterns and trends over time to identify problem accounts.
From the initial invoice creation all the way through to getting paid, Zoho Invoice streamlines and simplifies the invoicing process for small business owners. The cloud-based software also ensures access to bill clients from anywhere via desktop or mobile. Use this beginner’s guide to get started with Zoho Invoice's user-friendly interface and collection of small business invoicing features.