Zoho offers online invoicing solution free of charge to SMEs
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Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, has said that its online invoicing solution, Zoho Invoice, will be completely free of cost to further extend the company’s support for small and medium-sized enterprises as well as demonstrate the continuous need for a comprehensive invoicing solution to aid businesses from any industry to shift from manual to digital.
SMEs have moved to modernize their invoicing processes at an accelerated rate due to the pandemic. For small and medium-sized enterprises, billing and payment collection has continued to be a challenge due to administrative costs, limited staff, and insufficient time resources. Additionally, businesses need the ability to access data remotely, which has caused a shift from on-premise solutions to cloud-based solutions.
In line with this, Zoho Invoice has offered advanced capabilities such as time tracking, auto recording of expenses, project billing, and 30+ real time reports to help freelancers and small businesses to easily navigate the billing and payment collection process, without the concerns of cost.
A survey by PwC in Nigeria shows that SMEs contribute 48 percent of national GDP, 96 percent of businesses and 84 percent of employment. Similarly, the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics reports that SMEs in Nigeria have contributed about 48 percent of the national GDP in the last five years.
Report by Analysys Mason shows that SME spending on on-premise solutions for invoice management will be stagnant between 2019 and 2025, while spending on cloud-based invoicing solutions will increase from $0.9 billion to $2.1 billion. The fully cloud-based Zoho Invoice will enable businesses to create and send fully-customized, professional invoices in less than a minute, follow up for payments automatically, and also get paid online to achieve efficiency in their invoice process.
In addition, Zoho Invoice’s free offering will continue to help businesses streamline their billing and payment collection process through streamlined payment collection, simplified billing, tax handling, and more, by integrating with Zoho applications, and with third-party applications so that businesses can use the solution to contextually sync their AR information to relevant systems.
Speaking on the development, Andrew Bourne, regional manager, Africa said, “We launched Zoho Invoice in 2008, with the goal of providing a fully customizable invoicing solution for businesses of all sizes. Since then we’ve grown to millions of users worldwide. Through the migration from paper-based invoicing to digital invoicing we’ve seen the need for simplified billing to fit the customized needs of the SME community.
“Our roots are centered around helping the SME community which has supported Zoho from the beginning, and we understand the challenges that SMEs have had to undergo that were, onset, from the global pandemic. We hope offering Zoho Invoice for free continues to help businesses rebuild and grow amongst challenging times that they face today and for the future,” Bourne said.