I’ve become a huge fan of Zoho products — from their CMS, to their Campaigns, and now their Invoices. I use it to manage invoices for a number of my ventures. Their system is powerful, incredibly easy to use, and offers an app for your Android tablet that makes it easy to manage those invoices while you’re on the go.

The app, Zoho Invoice and Time Tracker, allows you to quickly work with the following Zoho Invoice features:

  • Templates
  • Expenses categories
  • Accept online payment
  • Track time accurately
  • Print and download invoices
  • Track payment status
  • Truly international invoicing

The mobile app is as solid as the web-based app and will allow you to comfortably handle your business while your business is on the road.

Naturally, you should already have your Zoho account created and your Zoho Invoices set up (with your company profile, customers, items, taxes, and other information). You can set these up from the mobile app, but it’ll be far more time consuming on the tablet than from within the desktop web browser.

Installation

Installation is easy (and free). Just follow these steps:

  1. Open the Google Play Store
  2. Search for “zoho”
  3. Tap All Results (there may be a number in place of the “All” – in my case it was “52 Results”)
  4. Locate the Zoho Invoice and Time Tracker entry and tap it
  5. Tap Install
  6. Tap Accept
  7. Allow the installation to complete

Once it’s installed, you’ll find the Zoho Invoice app either on your home screen or in the app drawer (or both, depending upon your tablet).

Usage

The second you get a look at the Zoho Invoice app, you’ll see just how user friendly it is. When you first fire it up, you’ll have to log onto your Zoho account. Upon successful authentication, you’ll find yourself on the Zoho Invoices main page (Figure A).
Figure A

Zoho Invoice running on the Samsung Galaxy Note tablet.

If you tap on the Settings icon, you can configure the following:

  • Organizational profile
  • Currencies
  • Taxes
  • Invoice preferences
  • Estimate preferences

You can also rate the app and share information about the app (with the usual Android sharing tools).

I will say that the Zoho app continually crashed on me when trying to open the Organizational profile settings (though all other preferences opened fine). Because of this, you’ll definitely want to set up your  organization profile through the browser-based desktop client (which you should do anyway).

Creating an invoice with Zoho Invoice is quite simple. Here’s how:

  1. Open up the Zoho Invoice app
  2. Log in to your account
  3. Tap the Invoices button
  4. Tap the plus sign [+] in the upper right corner
  5. Fill out the information (Figure B)
  6. Click the save button (upper right corner)

Figure B

You can select clients and items from drop-down lists or create new ones from within the app.

If you don’t have access to the web-based Zoho Invoice, and you need to add either new clients or new items, fear not, because it is possible. To create a new client, do the following:

  1. Open up the Zoho Invoice app
  2. Log in to your account
  3. Tap the Invoices button
  4. Either create a new invoice or open an existing invoice
  5. Tap the Customer drop-down (button)
  6. Tap the plus sign [+] in the upper right corner
  7. Fill out all the necessary information (Figure C)
  8. Click Save (upper right-hand corner)

Figure C

You can also create customized fields here.

To create new items, you do the same thing as you did for customers. Follow these steps:

  1. Open up an invoice
  2. Tap the Add New Line button
  3. Tap the Item drop-down (button)
  4. Tap the plus sign [+] in the upper right corner
  5. Fill out the information for the new item
  6. Tap Save (upper right corner)

Once you have an invoice completed, you can then email the invoice to the customer by tapping the Email icon in the Invoice Details screen (Figure D).
Figure D

The details screen of a Zoho invoice.

You can also download a PDF of the invoice by tapping the menu button (top right corner) and selecting Download PDF.

If you’re looking for a solid way to manage your Zoho Invoices from the field, look no further than the Zoho Invoices and Time Tracking app. With the power of Zoho and the mobility of a tablet, you can make sure client invoicing is always on time and at your fingertips.