Zoho introduces Zoho Practice for accountants in the Middle East

Dubai: Zoho, a leading global technology company, today announced that the Zoho Finance Platform has achieved a significant 42% increase in new customers in the UAE, and 50% in the MEA region. The company also made significant expansions to its Finance Platform with 230+ extensions in Zoho Marketplace, and a dedicated developer portal. Additionally, it launched Zoho Practice, an end-to-end practice management solution for accounting professionals. These additions strengthen the Finance Platform’s ecosystem, helping businesses across the MENA tailor their applications and collaborate with their accountants to enhance their operations.

Hyther Nizam, President of Middle East and Africa (MEA) at Zoho said, “Over the past 15 years, our Finance Platform has grown from a single app to a unified suite, and now a comprehensive platform that is the go-to for businesses of all sizes in MENA. Our continued investments in building a powerful ecosystem have enabled businesses to access the best enterprise tech available. The expanded Zoho Finance Platform ecosystem offers full customization, ensuring that the software continues to meet their business needs with unparalleled efficiency, even as they evolve.”

“The accounting landscape in MENA is changing rapidly, driven by technological advancements and new regulatory requirements. Businesses in the region are under increasing pressure to keep up with these changes. Zoho Practice will help accountants ensure compliance and deliver a more effective financial management, as well as added-value services to their clients”, he added.

Today, accountants across the region are expected to go beyond providing traditional services like day-to-day accounting, bookkeeping, financial reporting, auditing, and tax filing. Clients also expect insights on an organizational level, like how to curb spend, identifying additional revenue sources, and accelerating business growth. However, to provide these bespoke services with excellence, accounting professionals would require a holistic view of their clients’ businesses, in addition to efficiently running their own firm’s operations.

Zoho Practice, a one-stop solution meticulously crafted for the modern accounting firm, launches with extensive client management, document management, client project tracking, task management, timesheet and billing capabilities. The application also offers industry-first functionalities built from the ground up for distributed firms, including AI-driven anomaly detection for client records; built-in collaboration through chat, voice, or video calls; and a unified platform to act as a single source of truth for all client services. This practice management solution comes pre-integrated with Zoho Books (accounting app) and Zoho Expense (travel and expense management app), providing a comprehensive central repository while enabling seamless interoperability between an accounting practice and their clients’ finances.

“As accountants, we always have to stay on top of various client requests, and the constantly evolving tax regulations, while efficiently managing our practice. Zoho Practice is a comprehensive solution that simplifies a firm’s day-to-day operations like client management, document management, and tracking services rendered. This increases productivity, helping us focus on delivering exceptional services to our clients, enabling them to achieve their business goals,” said CA Ugamoorthy T, Managing Director, Yuga Accounting & Tax Consultancy, UAE.

Zoho recently launched Corporate Tax capabilities in the UAE as part of the VAT-compliant Zoho Books to ensure businesses can remain compliant with the latest regulations. Continuing on this momentum, the company also launched an enterprise-grade Developer Portal. This allows third-party developers to build solutions easily that customize specific functions of their finance applications, automate routine processes, and publish the extensions in Zoho Marketplace. Additionally, businesses can use the portal to build their own extensions for use within their organizations.

Today, there are 230+ extensions in Zoho Marketplace extensions for the Finance Platform that go beyond the functionalities offered natively, helping solve advanced requirements.