Receiving payments from clients for work well done is an essential part of doing business. These payments you get are what you will use to run your business effectively and pay yourself and your staff salaries. This is why pricing your fashion products right and billing your customers correctly is important. This is where Zoho Invoice comes in.
What is Zoho Invoice?
Zoho Invoice is an online invoicing software that helps you craft professional-looking invoices. The app was developed by Zoho Corporation and was released on the 8th of July, 2011.
The app makes the process of charging clients for their order much easier for you, as a fashion designer. It serves as a middle ground where you can collaborate with your clients online on all things relating to payments.
What can Fashion Entrepreneurs Use Zoho Invoice for?
As a fashion designer, you can use the Zoho Invoice app to create professional-looking invoices and estimates for your fashion brand. After creating them, you can automatically send them off to your customers via email and have them pay for their items online.
With this app, you can customise your invoices and estimates with your brand name and logo. The app also provides a multi-currency feature that allows you to pick what currency your business uses and in what currencies your customers can make payments.
As a fashion designer, if you work on an hourly basis, you can also track the time you spend on orders with the app. This helps you know much to bill clients for their orders. This app also helps you keep track of your expenses so you know where all your money is going.
To make things easier for you, the app provides a self-service portal for your clients to collaborate with you. Through it, they can view all their transactions, accept or decline estimates, and make payments.
Zoho Invoice Requirements and Features
Zoho Invoice has both free and paid plans available for fashion designers. Depending on the unique requirements of your fashion brand, you can choose the pricing plan that works best for you. They include;
- The Free Plan: This plan costs $0. However, it can be used by only 1 user and supports 5 customers.
- The Basic Plan: This plan costs $9 per month and is billed annually. It also supports 1 user only but accepts up to 50 customer details.
- The Standard Plan: This plan costs $19 per month and is also billed annually. Up to 3 users can use the standard plan with a customer database of up to 500 people. This plan has its perks with access to unlimited projects, unlimited invoices and estimates
- The Professional Plan: The professional plan costs $29 per month, billed annually. Up to 10 users can be on this plan with unlimited access to everything.
N.B: All plans support the apps multi-currency feature.
The Zoho Invoicing app works on Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. It is an easy-to-use app that requires you to sign up using your email address on first use. The sign-up process is pretty straightforward and asks basic questions about your business, invoice template preference and preferred payment gateway.
The invoicing feature of Zoho Invoice allows you to create, manage, and track your invoices to clients. With this feature, you can send your invoice directly to the customer via email or print it out for physical delivery. You can also mark invoices as sent, void them, or clone them for future use.
The estimates feature of the app allows you to create estimates you can send to a client for a job. This way, customers know exactly what to expect before you commence their work for them. Estimates can easily be converted to invoices.
Another great feature of this app is the time-tracking feature. With this feature, you can track how much time was spent on a customers order for appropriate billing. This helps you ensure you don’t cheat yourself while billing a customer.
Zoho Invoice Limitations
The Zoho Invoice app depends on the internet for everything. Without an active internet connection, you cannot do anything on the app.
Zoho Invoice User Reviews
Based on reviews from Google Play and App Store, most users find the Zoho Invoice app to be very useful. Users like the fact that the app is user-friendly, easy-to-use, useful for invoice tracking, and time-saving.
Some users, however, did not like the limited functionalities of the free plan and its dependence on the internet. Some also argued that the app is not user-friendly, has poor functionality and provides poor customer service.
Competitors and Alternatives to Zoho Invoice
Zoho Invoice’s top competitors and alternatives include Bill4Time, FreshBooks, Invoicera, and Mavenlink.
Based on its uses and limitation, the Zoho Invoice app gets an 8 out of 10 points.
I recommend this software to every fashion entrepreneur that wants to make creating and sending invoices to clients easier. It takes the stress of having to physically haggle prices with clients off you and gives them a clear picture of their order.
It also saves you the stress of finding out when a client has made a payment and keeping track of your business expenses manually. I think it is a pretty good app.
