FieldTech vs Zoho Finance
Like apples and oranges, in a sense.
Especially if you already use Zoho software, you may wonder how many of FieldTech’s features are already present in standard Zoho apps. After all, we designed FieldTech primarily to enhance the functionality of Zoho’s apps, but in some specific cases it can indeed replace those apps. However, as we’ll see, pitting a custom ERP framework against an accounting system with some inventory management capability isn’t really fair. The systems don’t even “fight” for the same thing. We can examine this further by delving into the purpose of each respective software suite.
The purpose of FieldTech
FieldTech extends and enhances the capabilities of standard Zoho Finance apps, and also include its own apps specific to certain industries. These industries include field services, construction, manufacturing, distribution, technology, and SaaS.
Users of the FieldTech suite can recognize how its functionality overlaps that of Zoho Finance in how the software handles sales orders, invoicing, purchase orders, and shipments, as well as inventory management and forecasting.
However, FieldTech was designed to fill certain gaps in the functionality of the Zoho suite, too. For example, as of this writing Zoho Corporation does not offer an app that would allow field service, construction, or technology companies a way to schedule appointment or jobs quickly. FieldTech bridges this gap with the SmartScheduler, which allows for not just physical appointment setting, but work order, job, crew, and equipment use scheduling too.
One can make the same case for the existence of other FieldTech apps, too, namely:
- FieldTech CPQ
- Helps assemble complex quotes and collect digital signatures from in the field
- Field Service Management
- Manages field service or construction work orders and calculates labor and material costs
- Production Order Management
- Tracks productivity of work stations and calculates associated costs
- Job Costing
- Aggregates information from your work centers and puts them into reports and forecasts
- Commission Calculation
- Calculates and tracks salespeople’s commission for easier payments
FieldTech has other apps that expand upon standard Zoho Finance functionality. In addition to providing more features than their standard Zoho counterparts, they give your staff a way to house as much information as necessary inside FieldTech, rather than standard Zoho apps. This allows FieldTech to access the information and make calculations with it more easily. It also gives your staff a more unified user experience. These other FieldTech apps include:
- Inventory Management
- Invoice and Expense Tracking
- Time Tracking
- MRP
- RMA
The purpose of Zoho Finance
Unlike FieldTech, which caters to very specific industries, Zoho Finance is designed to cater to many different industries. Companies use Zoho Finance for its general accounting capability, inventory management, and order management.
Because any business needs an accounting platform of some sort, and many different businesses need some type of inventory or order management, Zoho Finance succeeds with its offering of Zoho Books and Zoho Inventory. In addition, Zoho Finance also offers a lighter app called Zoho Invoice, a subscription management app called Zoho Subscriptions, and an expense-tracking app called Zoho Expense.
These apps communicate with each other just as FieldTech apps do. Primarily, Zoho Books serves as the financial hub of the Zoho Finance suite, though some information is specific to Zoho Inventory.
We of course cannot speak for Zoho Corporation, but they seem to have designed these apps with very general, wide-reaching functionality so as to alienate as few potential customers as possible. Likely many more companies will need aspects of the Zoho Finance platform by itself than will need FieldTech. (Furthermore, some companies we feel would stand to benefit from using FieldTech simply limp along using Zoho Finance, sometimes for years.)
When is it best to use FieldTech? What about Zoho Finance?
Simply put, FieldTech best suits companies who need more than what standard Zoho Finance apps can offer. They may appreciate Zoho Finance’s standard accounting capability, but need advanced quoting, scheduling, or job costing–which incidentally FieldTech excels in.
Conversely, other companies can use Zoho Finance with no need at all for something as robust as FieldTech. Distributors who need basic inventory management may find the combination of Zoho Books and Zoho Inventory works perfectly for them. Furthermore, many professional services companies and even some light eCommerce businesses do not need Zoho Inventory at all, and can rely solely on Zoho Books.
Zoho Finance, again, serves a wide swath of businesses, while FieldTech serves a smaller subsection with particular software needs.
Integrating FieldTech and Zoho Finance
In truth, the two platforms were made to work side-by-side, connected to each other. The Zoho Finance platforms includes one particular app, Zoho Books, that it would be foolish for FieldTech to try to replicate. This is especially so considering Zoho Creator’s ability to integrate with Zoho Books. It makes more sense, then, to simply connect FieldTech to Zoho Books if necessary. In this way, FieldTech can manage the ERP portion of a business, and Zoho Books can serve as a repository for transactional records as well as a banking tool.
Using FieldTech with non-Zoho accounting systems
FieldTech provides another advantage over Zoho Finance in that if your company already uses a third-party accounting system (such as QuickBooks), you need not switch to Zoho Finance automatically. FieldTech can integrate with a number of these third-party apps via an integration engine. See the full list of integrations, powered by ZBrains, here.
However, if given a choice between using third-party apps or Zoho apps in tandem with FieldTech, we recommend using Zoho apps where possible. This is because third-party integrations, while common, are almost always more prone to failure than standard, native software integrations. Connecting FieldTech to other Zoho apps such as Zoho Finance will make for a more stable system generally.
Summary: Which platform is best for your business?
Because Zoho Finance and FieldTech were really made to work together, the decision should not be FieldTech or Zoho Finance. Rather, it should be just Zoho Finance, or FieldTech plus Finance?
The only time not to consider Zoho Finance in conjunction with FieldTech is when you are forced to use a third-party accounting system instead of the Finance platform.
Get the full feature comparison list here
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