Using Zoho One to manage two (or more) businesses
We are one company that operates two business, a scenario that Zoho
One doesn't really seem to handle very well, and one which I can't
imagine is at all unique to us! (It is basically designed to facilitate
branding and use for one business only per subscription).
A bit of background ....
In
terms of Zoho One apps, our business operations mostly centre on using
Inventory / Books. Back in the beginning of our time using Zoho, when
things were a bit smaller scale, I thought we might be able to run it
all under one subscription, by doing such things as disabling the logo
and organisation name and addresses, creating separate templates for all
documents relating to each business and associating them, using
reporting tags in Books so that we could run separate P&Ls for each
business etc etc etc ....
BUT
it became apparent fairly quickly that this was going to become
complicated and messy (especially as we grew to more users etc,) and it
would be better to separate the two businesses out into each having
their own subscription. A big, tear-your-hair-out kinda job that I
wouldn't wish on anyone, especially having to go through Books with a
fine tooth comb and separate out all the transactions! : /
Anyway, fast forward and now and the situation is ...
I
have two separate super admin accounts, just for myself as the owner
for each business. (Annoying, but that's the way it goes ... and don't even get me started on the whole issue of having to have two separate mobile phone numbers as one individual person to open another account! Beyond ridiculous, but Zoho appear determined to remain steadfast and not able to see any semblance of reason on that front.)
Because
I also keep an eye on the emails of our main user account at each of
our locations, I am basically working across four accounts a lot of the
time. I use Firefox Multi-Container to be able to keep multiple
accounts open at the same time, and that works well, but working this
way can certainly get a bit higglety-pigglety!
For
the most part though, it has worked out ok, keeping the Inventory /
Books separate for each business and then combining the figures when it
comes to BAS tax time etc. (as, of course, one company means ONE entitiy
in the eyes of the Tax Office).
It did
mean we lost the ability to do certain things like transfer stock
between the two businesses, ie by having each one as a 'warehouse' under
the one subscription, but we are able to fairly easily work around this
by using inventory adjustments at each end instead.
HOWEVER,
the main issue that lingers is on the communications side. We use the
Workplace apps, Mail, Cliq etc within the businesses. With Cliq as an
example, it's ok if I am at my computer, because I have all the accounts
open as described above, therefore I can receive / see all messages
intended for me. BUT, on my mobile phone app, because I can only be
logged in to one of the Orgs at once, I'm only able to receive messages
from one half of my employees! (Depending which business's Org I am
logged in to.)
And because we are one
company, there are times when it would be beneficial for users in one of
the businesses to be able to directly message users in the other
business. But the way it is at present they are two separate 'silos'.
Is there anyone else out there
with this situation? If so, how do you deal with it? With Cliq, could
this problem be alleviated by adding the users from one of the Orgs as
'external' users in the other Org?
Sometimes,
I wonder if it would be better to set up a separate 'company-wide'
Workplace subscription and we all use that instead of / over the top of
Workplace associated with the separate Zoho One Org's but I suspect that
could lead to its own set of problems.
Topic Participants
Carmelina
Anantha Krishnaa S H
stacey
chase
Moritz S.
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