Zoho Books vs Zoho Invoice vs Zoho Billing: which do you need?
Use Zoho Invoice if you only need to send quotes and invoices and collect payments. Use Zoho Books if you need full accounting: bank reconciliation, bills, tax returns and financial reports. Use Zoho Billing if you sell subscriptions or recurring plans and need automatic renewals, proration and dunning.
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Zoho Invoice is a free invoicing tool. It handles quotes, invoices, payment reminders, time tracking against a few projects and online payments. It does not keep a general ledger, so you cannot reconcile bank accounts, record vendor bills or produce a balance sheet. It suits freelancers and very small service businesses whose accountant keeps the books somewhere else.
Zoho Books is full accounting software. It includes everything Zoho Invoice does, plus bank feeds and reconciliation, bills and purchase orders, expenses, sales tax or VAT and GST handling for supported countries, journals and standard financial reports. If you need your profit and loss, balance sheet or tax returns from one system, Books is the one to choose.
Zoho Billing, formerly Zoho Subscriptions, is built for recurring revenue. It manages plans, add-ons, coupons, trials, upgrades and downgrades with proration, automatic card charges, failed-payment retries and a customer self-service portal. It reports on subscription metrics such as churn and MRR. Billing is not a full ledger, so subscription businesses usually connect it to Zoho Books for accounting.
Moving between them is straightforward. Zoho's help pages describe a built-in upgrade from Zoho Invoice to Zoho Books, and from Zoho Invoice to Zoho Billing, under Settings and Integrations. Going the other way, from Books back to Invoice, needs a manual export and import. At the time of writing, Zoho Invoice is free, Zoho Books has a small free plan, and Zoho Billing offers a trial only.
Key points
- Zoho Invoice: quotes, invoices and payments only, no general ledger
- Zoho Books: full double-entry accounting, bank reconciliation, bills and tax
- Zoho Billing: subscriptions, renewals, proration, dunning and a customer portal
- Subscription businesses often use Billing and Books together
- Zoho offers a built-in upgrade from Invoice to Books or Billing
Common questions
Can I move from Zoho Invoice to Zoho Books?
Yes. In Zoho Invoice, go to Settings, then Integrations, then Accounting, and choose Upgrade to Zoho Books. Your customers, items and invoices carry across.
Do I need Zoho Books if I use Zoho Billing?
Usually yes, if you want full accounts in Zoho. Billing handles subscriptions and payments, while Books handles the ledger, bank reconciliation and tax returns.
Is Zoho Invoice really free?
At the time of writing, yes. Zoho describes it as forever free with limits of 2 users, 3 projects and 500 invoices a year, with Zoho branding on documents.
Sources and further reading
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Written by Flowpeak, a Zoho implementation partner. Zoho pricing and features change, so confirm current details on the official Zoho site. Free checklists | Ask us a question