# 2 Why do we need a billing system when accounting covers billing?

# 2 Why do we need a billing system when accounting covers billing?

In today's evolving financial tech stack, businesses use a mix of tools to manage their day-to-day operations, from invoicing to full-fledged accounting. While accounting platforms typically come with built-in invoicing features, specialized billing systems still have a strong place in the mix. While both can coexist and even complement each other, one question still prevails:

If accounting software already includes invoicing, why do we need a separate billing system?


The answer is simple: sometimes, less is more. Let's take a deeper look.

1. Powered with simplicity

Not every business needs full accounting. Some just need to send an invoice and get paid. That's where a billing system lives.

It strips down the process to only what you need. Creating invoices, payment collection, and maybe a few reminders. As simple as that. No finance background required. No lengthy multi-step process in it. You should be able to create your first invoice in seconds, even if you are new to the system.

2. Built for billing

A full accounting system is powerful, but always not always necessary upfront. If you are not tracking liabilities, reconciling bank statements, or preparing financial reports, then you are likely to pay for features you are not going to use.

A dedicated billing system focuses only on the core concepts like revenue tracking, invoice automation, follow-ups, and dunning. Staying focused on billing allows the system to stay simple, lightweight, and tailored to how you actually bill, be it one-time, recurring, usage-based, or subscription-based.  

3. Flexible across industries

Every industry has its quirks. A retail store might need barcode scanning, A pharmacy may need expiry date tracking, and SaaS needs recurring billing. Each has its operational flow and its own industrial niche.

That's why a billing system shouldn't be rigid. It needs to adapt to these varying billing models without getting bloated or overly complex. Whether you are invoicing by units, time, tiered pricing, or bundled services, the system should bend to fit your business and not the other way around.

4. Invoice with ease

Billing shouldn't slow down your operations each day. A good billing system allows you to send invoices in seconds, from anywhere on any device, be it a laptop, PC, tablet, or any smartphone.

It should also speak to your brand through a custom logo, your template styles, and personalized reminders. In case you are working with international clients, multi-currency should be available when it is required without going through a major switch. The system should handle it all with ease.

5. Less Compliance Pressure

Tax laws are complex and different in different parts of the world. Sales Tax in the US. VAT in the UK or EU. GST in Australia or India. Many businesses didn't want to handle that complexity themselves, and some businesses are yet to get to the tax thresholds.

Billing systems let you keep things simple; just add taxes to the transaction, record your revenue, and export the data when it's time to file. Your accountant or tax advisor can take it from there. You stay focused on running your business without having to master compliance tools and deal with those overheads.

6. Be Cost-Effective

When you're building or running a small business, every penny counts. Every tool you choose should justify its cost. If your day-to-day activity involves billing, why pay for advanced accounting features?

A billing system gives you what you need without making you pay for what you're not using. It should be cost-efficient, focused, and scalable when you need it to. You can always climb to a full accounting system when your operations require it. But, until then, your billing system will do all the wonders.

Begin with Billing

So, this precisely clarifies why we need a billing system. Simple, flexible, ease of use, industry adaptability, and cost efficiency are exactly what a good billing system should offer.

That's exactly what Zoho Billing is built for. It brings together a range of features that help you manage revenue without overpouring with what you don't use. Whether you're creating a simple invoice or setting up a complex recurring billing flow, Zoho Billing adapts to your business and keeps your complexities grounded.

As you grow, it connects seamlessly with Zoho Books, letting you expand into accounting and beyond. With Zoho Billing, you don't just get a tool; you get a complete ecosystem that fits right where your business is today and supports where it's headed tomorrow.

First things first: Get started with Zoho Billing.

    • Sticky Posts

    • Community Learning Series | Digest #5 — September 2020

      Dear customers, We're happy to bring you the September edition of our #CommunityDigest! Keep track of your subscription KPIs right from your smartphone: Last month, we enhanced our Android mobile app to help our customers get daily updates on their business health. We got to know from a lot of customers that this has made their job much more easier because they no longer have to keep a reminder to manually check on the previous day's revenue or activations. If you have not downloaded it yet, here's

    • Community Learning Series | Digest #4 - August 2020

      Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. I'm happy to bring you the fourth edition of our #CommunityDigest with some brand-new updates from us. 1. Daily Business Updates (for Android users) The Zoho Subscriptions Android app has got a cool new update: You can now get a push notification to your smartphone that lets you know how many activations and cancellations have taken place, and what's the net revenue for the previous day. The best part is, you can tell the app when exactly you

    • Community Learning Series | Digest #3 - July 2020

      Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. We're glad to bring you the July edition of our #CommunityDigest. New community members can view our previous newsletters here. This time, we have two major updates and three interesting topics for you: 1. Zoho Subscriptions Developer Community Since the inception of Zoho Subscriptions, our team believed that the recurring billing platform we provide should be able to offer an extensive API library that empowers businesses to automate most

    • Introducing: Community Learning Series | Digest #1 - May 2020

      Dear customers, We hope you are staying safe and healthy. Helping businesses manage their customer subscriptions more efficiently has always been, and always will be, our goal at Zoho Subscriptions. We strongly believe this is possible if we grow together as a community and share what we know with each other. To nurture this shared learning experience, here is our brand-new Community Learning Series! ​ Welcome to the first edition of our digest! Each edition of our community digest includes guides

    • Recent Topics

    • Why Sharing Rules do Not support relative date comparison???

      I am creating a Sharing Rule and simply want to share where "Last Day of Coverage" (Date field) is Greater than TODAY (Starting Tomorrow). However, sharing rules don't have the option to compare a date field to a relative date (like today), only to Static

    • Configurable Zoho Cliq Notifications for Zoho People Alerts

      Hello Zoho People Product Team, Greetings and hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to Zoho People notifications, enabling a native delivery via Zoho Cliq with admin-level control, similar to the notification settings available

    • Ability to Edit Ticket Subject when Splitting a Ticket

      Often someone will make an additional or new request within an existing ticket that requires we split the ticket. The annoying part is that the new ticket maintains the subject of the original ticket after the split so when the new ticket email notification

    • How to loop through Multiple Upload and Display Actual File Name

      I have been reading the help on the File Upload Control and reviewed the Deluge help on files and I can not figure out how to loop through the uploaded files and do anything but get the automatically created file names. The code below will run but each

    • IF Statement in Zoho CRM Formula Field

      Hi, I am attempting to write a formula field that will give me one result if one statement AND another statement are true, then a different value if the first statement AND a different statement are true, else 0. Stated differently: if account = destination

    • [Free Webinar] Environments in Zoho Creator - Creator Tech Connect

      Hello Everyone, We’re delighted to kick off the 2026 edition of the Zoho Creator Tech Connect Series and are excited to continue this learning journey with you. The Creator Tech Connect series is a free monthly webinar featuring deep-dive technical sessions

    • Zoho Voice API SMS

      I made a post request in Zapier to try to send an SMS. Authentication appears to be configured correctly. I followed the documentation and I'm getting a 400 Error "Internal Server Error". Not helpful at all. Anyways, I could not find any information on

    • How do I change (error) display messages

      Hi! I would like to edit display messages like "invalid entries" and "enter a value for Nome" and so on into Italian language messages. How can I do that? Already tried on Validate on form submit. Where I am failing? Thanks in advance.

    • Report grouping

      I have added a grouping in a report but it is not working how i had expected. I wanted to group a summary on a field named Size but when i add the grouping the report is still showing me each record and making a summary at the bottom of the report. What

    • Record Overseas Transactions Along with CC charges

      Hi All, We receive payments via stripe in multiple currencies and stripe takes around 2.5% fees. The amount is settled in INR into our local bank. What should be the currency of the income account used for Stripe payments? Here is a sample flow that we

    • Easier onboarding for new users with stage descriptions

      Greetings, I hope all of you are doing well. We're happy to announce a recent enhancement we've made to Bigin. You can now add descriptions to the stages in your pipeline. Previously, when creating a pipeline, you could only add stages. With this update,

    • Pieds de page personnalisé - Document Zoho Writer

      Bonjour à tous, Je rencontre un souci avec l’ajout d’un pied de page personnalisé dans un document Zoho Writer. Je souhaite insérer les informations de mon entreprise (notamment un logo + adresse) dans le pied de page. Le problème, c’est que lorsque j’ajoute

    • Zoho Trident Windows - Streams Not Visible

      Namaste We’re having an issue with Streams not being visible in Trident (Windows), which is important for us as we share many emails internally. It appears that the feature to show Streams above the Inbox folder, as seen in the default mailbox view, is

    • Subforms and automation

      If a user updates a field how do we create an automation etc. We have a field for returned parts and i want to get an email when that field is ticked. How please as Zoho tells me no automation on subforms. The Reason- Why having waited for ever for FSM

    • Permissions on Views

      Having the option of any agent creating custom views is firing back and got a situation where there are a hundred different views across the team and tickets are not being dealt in the most efficient of ways. Tickets seems to be missed by some agents,

    • Credit card transactions are backwards after importing statements

      I am new to Zoho Books so I'm importing my firm's bank and credit card statements in. My credit card statements have a single column with negative numbers so that is the option I chose. But when I went to categorize the credit card transactions, I can

    • import data from Apollo.ai into zoho crm via zoho flow

      I might be asking this question in the wrong forum. We use Apollo.ai to find potential new leads for our business, there are around 10000 leads that we have initially found. We have an Apollo.ai account but just to do searches, we dont use it as a crm.

    • MS Teams for daily call operations

      Hello all, Our most anticipated and crucial update is finally here! Organizations using Microsoft Teams phone system can now integrate it effectively with Zoho CRM for tasks like dialling numbers and logging calls. We are enhancing our MS Teams functionality

    • Knowledgebase SEO

      We have a custom-domain mapped help center that is not restricted via login. I have some questions: a) will a robots.txt file still allow us to control indexing? b) do we have the ability to edit the sitemap? c) do category URLs get indexed by search

    • Filter contacts based on selected category in Zoho Desk ticket

      Hello community, I’m setting up the Tickets module in Zoho Desk and I need help implementing the following: When a category is selected in a ticket, I want the Contact field to be filtered so that it only displays contacts that are related to that category.

    • Adding Markdown text using Zoho Desk API into the Knowledge Base

      Hi Zoho Community members, We currently maintain the documentation of out company in its website. This documentation is written in markdown text format and we would like to add it in Zoho Knowledge Base. Do you know if there is REST API functionality

    • VIsual maindmaps in Zoho notebook Ai

      Can I create and export VIsual maindmaps in Zoho notebook Ai

    • 1stDibs Integration to Zoho Inventory

      Hello is it possible to integrate my Zoho inventory and 1stDibs?

    • Develop and publish a Zoho Recruit extension on the marketplace

      Hi, I'd like to develop a new extension for Zoho Recruit. I've started to use Zoho Developers creating a Zoho CRM extension. But when I try to create a new extension here https://sigma.zoho.com/workspace/testtesttestest/apps/new I d'ont see the option of Zoho Recruit (only CRM, Desk, Projects...). I do see extensions for Zoho Recruit in the marketplace. How would I go about to create one if the option is not available in sigma ? Cheers, Rémi.

    • Can a default task Priority be set?

      The "Priority" field in the Task layout does not allow a default to be set. Is there another way of doing it? Because the current default is "None" and the Zoho Kanban board design has selected this field as critical information to surface by including

    • Community Question: Renewal vs Invoicing

      This is a question for the community. Does anyone else consider there to be a difference between a subscription renewal event and sending out a recurring invoice for a subscription? For example, let's say customer XYZ purchases a 1-year subscription to

    • Scheduled Reports - Do not send empty report

      Hello, We are intensively using reports in the CRM, especially for sales managers. When data is empty, they still receive an email. Can you add an option to avoid sending the report when data is empty?

    • Improved Contact Sync flow in Google Integration with Zoho CRM

      Hello Everyone, Your contact sync in Google integration just got revamped! We have redesigned the sync process to give users more control over what data flows into Google and ensure that this data flows effortlessly between Zoho CRM and Google. With this

    • Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

      Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these

    • Is Zoho One Desktop more secure than Zoho One Web SaaS?

      Is Zoho One Desktop more secure than using Zoho One in browser? Inherently, it seems desktop would be unless you don't do things like share your pw or leave pc on. I am concerned about data being on the cloud or someone else's server and database.

    • Reminder Settings - Time Tracker

      On the time tracker in Reminder Settings I created a reminder according to the Zoho manual. But a manager asked me to change the message that goes in the email. Is it possible to change the message? I didn't find that in the Zoho manual. Another question: I configured to receive the reminder everyone who logged in less than 40 hours. Does Zoho consider less than 40 hours of the current week or the whole month? Another situation, I put it so that I and another specific user would receive the notification,

    • Why hybrid project management might be the best fit for you?

      Project management techniques are designed to equip teams with proven methods for easy and efficient project execution. While management teams may have apprehensions about adopting the hybrid method of project management, we’ve compiled the top reasons

    • Create Item group from a composite Item

      I have applied my mind for hours but cannot figure this out. Can you have a composite item in an item group?. E.g. We bundle different color and size SKU's together as composite items. Also Using composite items as Bill of Materials. We want to create

    • Main difference of Zoho Recruit Corporte version and Staffing HR vesion

      Hi Zoho, I need help to fully understand what is the main key point differences of Recruit Corporate version versus the Staffing HR version? We are currently using Corporate HR version and we are looking on having an insightful automated reporting, does

    • Out of Stock items showing in Commerce

      I have over 6000 items and most are not in stock, but all items are showing up in Commerce whether they are inventory or not. What option or feature can you use to hide items in Commerce at zero or negative quantities? I currently am using Commerce for

    • CRM gets location smart with the all new Map View: visualize records, locate records within any radius, and more

      Hello all, We've introduced a new way to work with location data in Zoho CRM: the Map View. Instead of scrolling through endless lists, your records now appear as pins on a map. Built on top of the all-new address field and powered by Mappls (MapMyIndia),

    • Support for Custom Fonts in Zoho Recruit Career Site and Candidate Portal

      Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you're doing well. We would like to request the ability to use custom fonts in the Zoho Recruit Career Site and Candidate Portal. Currently only the default fonts (Roboto, Lato, and Montserrat) are available. While these

    • Is it possible to transfer data from one related list to another within the same module ?

      In the Leads module, there is an existing default Product related list that already contains data. Recently, I added a custom multi-lookup field, which created a new related list in the same Leads module. Now, I need to move the existing data from the

    • How to implement new online payment gateway?

      Hello, Can you tell me how to proceed to implement my local payment gateway? DIBS has an open avaiable API that should be easy to implement into ZOHO BOOKS. http://tech.dibspayment.com/dibs_payment_window

    • Custom Footer – Zoho Writer Document

      Hello everyone, I’m having an issue adding a custom footer in a Zoho Writer document. I would like to insert my company information (including a logo + address) in the footer. The problem is that when I add these elements, the main content of my pages

    • Next Page