#1 Zoho Billing vs. Zoho Books: Which one should I choose?

#1 Zoho Billing vs. Zoho Books: Which one should I choose?

Managing your business finances isn't just about sending invoices. It's about keeping everything organized, accurate, and moving towards your organization's goals. At Zoho, we understand the complexity, which is why we offer two powerful yet distinct solutions: Zoho Billing and Zoho Books.

While these applications share overlapping features, they are designed to serve a defined purpose. If you have been wondering "Which one should I choose?" or even "Do I need both?", this guide will give you the answers.

 What is Zoho Billing? 

Zoho Billing is an end-to-end dedicated billing automation platform designed to manage all your customer billing needs in one place.

It supports diverse billing models, including one-time billing, subscription-based billing, and milestone or project billing, which makes it more versatile. With Zoho Billing, you can create professional invoices, automate payment reminders, and collect payments.

Beyond just invoicing, Zoho Billing offers advanced automation features like dunning management, consolidated billing, and workflows. Its wide range of reporting focuses on revenue insights like recognized versus deferred revenue, MRR, ARR, Invoice Aging, and more.

Zoho Billing is purpose-built for companies that want to simplify, streamline, and scale their billing operations with reduced manual efforts. 

  

What is Zoho Books? 

Zoho Books is a comprehensive online accounting solution that includes all the billing features of Zoho Billing while expanding into full financial and accounting management.

It enables businesses to manage their entire accounting cycle. Starting from creating invoices to tracking expenses, managing vendor bills, reconciling bank accounts, and handling inventory.

Zoho Books ensures tax compliance and offers professional-grade financial reporting, such as Profit & Loss statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Forecast. This makes Zoho Books the ideal choice for businesses that need complete visibility and control over their finances.

It brings billing, expenses, banking, and inventory together in one system, eliminating silos and errors caused by them.

Why choose Zoho Billing if Zoho Books has invoicing features?

It's true that Zoho Books includes invoicing features. However, Zoho Billing is specifically designed to offer more advanced, dedicated features for billing automation that go beyond standard invoicing.

Businesses that need to manage complex billing modes like subscription, project-based billing, or hybrid models will benefit from Zoho Billing's flexibility. Its automation feature reduces manual work, improves payment success rates, and ensures you get paid faster.

Zoho Billing also provides specialized revenue-focused insights that help finance teams analyze and forecast revenue trends with greater precision. In other words, if billing is a major operational focus for your business, Zoho Billing is designed to make it easier, more reliable, and scalable.


Which one should I choose?

Choice 1: If your primary objective is to automate billing, remind customers of their outstanding balances, and collect payments regardless of any billing model, Zoho Billing is the right choice.

Choice 2: If you need full accounting functionality, including expense tracking, vendor management, inventory management, banking, and tax compliance, Zoho Books is the comprehensive solution for that.

Choice 3: If your business needs both automated billing and full-stack accounting, managing them in two different applications can easily become confusing and might lead to several inconsistencies. That's where Zoho's ecosystem keeps you covered.

Designed to work together, these applications automatically sync the common modules such as customers, invoices, payments, and revenue recognition. With this integration, your financial records will stay accurate and up to date without any manual intervention.

By using both applications together, you get the best of both worlds: advanced billing capabilities plus complete accounting management. It's a scalable setup that can evolve with your business needs over time.

Whether you choose Zoho Billing, Zoho Books, or both, you will be equipped with tools that reduce manual work, improve accuracy, and help you grow with confidence.

If you are not sure which one is right for you, our team is always happy to help you figure it out. 

    • 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

    • Feedback: Streamlining Note Management in Zoho Notebook

      Dear Team/Support, I would like to share some feedback regarding the note management system that could help improve usability and accessibility for users like myself. Notebook 1 (screenshot attached): Currently, the system does not allow selecting and

    • showing Limit exceeded

      Good afternoon...trust you're good. I've been having issues working with but it's not responding. it's showing Limit exceeded, sorry it seems like too many people are working on the sheet right now please try again later. meanwhile no one is working on

    • Converting Sales Order to Invoice via API; Problem with decimal places tax

      We are having problems converting a Sales Order to an Invoice via API Call. The cause of the issue is, that the Tax value in a Sales Order is sometimes calculated with up to 16 decimal places (e.g. 0.8730000000000001). The max decimal places allowed in

    • Sorting columns in Zoho Projects

      Hi, In project management best practice, sorting columns (ascending, descending) is an important tool. Sorting dates to see the order of tasks starting, sorting on priority or even on planned hours is a must for an efficient project control. Currently,

    • CRM : Function to add user name to text field

      I have a lookup field in a module that is linked to the CRM users so we can assign a Project Lead to the customer. Sadly Zoho Marketing Automation doesn't sync Lookup fields so I need to extract information from the lookup to text fields: Lookup field

    • Upload API

      I'm trying to use the Upload API to upload some images and attach them to comments (https://desk.zoho.com/DeskAPIDocument#Uploads#Uploads_Uploadfile) - however I can only ever get a 401 or bad request back. I'm using an OAuth token with the Desk.tickets.ALL

    • Losing description after merging tickets

      Hello, We merge tickets when they are about the same topic from the same client. It happens sometimes. We recently noticed that after the merger only the description from the master ticket is left in a thread. And the slave-ticket description is erased.

    • Option to Empty Entire Mailbox or Folder in Zoho Mail

      Hello Zoho Mail Team, How are you? We would like to request an enhancement to Zoho Mail that would allow administrators and users to quickly clear out entire folders or mailboxes, including shared mailboxes. Current Limitation: At present, Zoho Mail only

    • update linked contacts when update happens in account

      Hi, I have a custom field called Licence in the Accounts module. When someone buys a licence, I’d like to update a custom field in the related Contacts. How can I achieve this? I noticed that workflows triggered on Accounts only allow me to update fields

    • Problem Management Module

      I am looking for a Problem Management module within Zoho Desk. I saw in some training videos that this is available, and some even provided an annual price for it. I want an official confirmation on whether this is indeed available. This is not a particularly

    • Deluge sendmail in Zoho Desk schedule can't send email from a verified email address

      I am trying to add a scheduled action with ZDesk using a Deluge function that sends a weekly email to specific ticket client contacts I've already verified the email address for use in ZDesk, but sendmail won't allow it in its "from:" clause. I've attached

    • Unable to explore desk.zoho.com

      Greetings, I have an account with zoho which already has a survey subscription. I would like to explore desk.zoho.com, but when I visit it while logged in (https://desk.zoho.com/agent?action=CreatePortal) I just get a blank page. I have tried different

    • Offline support for mobile app

      Accessing your files and folders from your mobile devices is now quicker and simpler, thanks to the power of offline support. Whether on an Android or iOS device, you can use the Offline function to save files and folders, so you can review them even

    • Zoho Desk KB article embedded on another site.

      We embed KB articles from Zoho Desk on another site (our application). When opening the article in a new tab, there is no issue, but if we choose lightbox, we are getting an error "To protect your security, help.ourdomain.com will not allow Firefox to

    • Transitioning to API Credits in Zoho Desk

      At Zoho Desk, we’re always looking for ways to help keep your business operations running smoothly. This includes empowering teams that rely on APIs for essential integrations, functions and extensions. We’ve reimagined how API usage is measured to give

    • List of packaged components and if they are upgradable

      Hello, In reference to the article Components and Packaging in Zoho Vertical Studio, can you provide an overview of what these are. Can you also please provide a list of of components that are considered Packaged and also whether they are Upgradable?

    • Does Attari Messaging app have Bot option and APIB

      Hi, Does Attari also have Bot and API as we use in WhatsApp??

    • how to use validation rules in subform

      Is it possible to use validation rules for subforms? I tried the following code: entityMap = crmAPIRequest.toMap().get("record"); sum = 0; direct_billing = entityMap.get("direct_billing_details"); response = Map(); for each i in direct_billing { if(i.get("type")

    • How to add application logo

      I'm creating an application which i do not want it to show my organization logo so i have changed the setting but i cannot find where to upload/select the logo i wish to use for my application. I have seen something online about using Deluge and writing

    • Introducing Keyboard Shortcuts for Zoho CRM

      Dear Customers, We're happy to introduce keyboard shortcuts for Zoho CRM features! Until now, you might have been navigating to modules manually using the mouse, and at times, it could be tedious, especially when you had to search for specific modules

    • Empowered Custom Views: Cross-Module Criteria Now Supported in Zoho CRM

      Hello everyone, We’re excited to introduce cross-module criteria support in custom views! Custom views provide personalized perspectives on your data and that you can save for future use. You can share these views with all users or specific individuals

    • Send Automated WhatsApp Messages and Leverage the Improved WhatsApp Templates

      Greetings, I hope all of you are doing well. We're excited to announce a major upgrade to Bigin's WhatsApp integration that brings more flexibility, interactivity, and automation to your customer messaging. WhatsApp message automation You can now use

    • Verifying Zoho Mail Functionality After Switching DNS from Cloudflare to Hosting Provider

      I initially configured my domain's (https://roblaxmod.com/) email with Zoho Mail while using Cloudflare to manage my DNS records (MX, SPF, etc.). All services were working correctly. Recently, I have removed my site from Cloudflare and switched my domain's

    • Zoho Analytics Regex Support

      When can we expect full regex support in Zoho Analytics SQL such as REGEXP_REPLACE? Sometimes I need to clean the data and using regex functions is the easiest way to achieve this.

    • Change of Blog Author

      Hi, I am creating the blog post on behalf of my colleague. When I publish the post, it is showing my name as author of the post which is not intended and needs to be changed to my colleague's name. How can I change the name of the author in the blogs?? Thanks, Ramanan

    • Show Attachments in the customer portal

      Hi, is it possible to show the Attachments list in the portal for the particular module? Bests.

    • Does Zoho Docs have a Line Number function ?

      Hi, when collaborating with coding tasks, I need an online real time share document that shows line numbers. Does Zoho's docs offer this feature ? If yes, how can I show them ? Regards, Frank

    • Please make it easier to Pause syncing

      right now it takes 3 clicks to get there. sounds silly, but can you make it just 2 clicks to get it done instead? thats how dropbox does it, 2 clicks to pause instead of 3.

    • Feature Request - Insert URL Links in Folders

      I would love to see the ability to create simple URL links with titles in WorkDrive. or perhaps a WorkDrive extension to allow it. Example use case: A team is working on a project and there is project folder in WordDrive. The team uses LucidChart to create

    • Organization Emails in Email History

      How can I make received Org Emails to show up here?

    • how to differentiate if whatsapp comes from certain landing page?

      I create a Zobot in SalesIQ to create a Whatsapp bot to capture the lead. I have 2 landing pages, one is SEO optimized and the other want is optimized for leads comes from Google Ads. I want to know from which landing page this lead came through WhatsApp

    • How to sync from Zoho Projects into an existing Sprint in Zoho Sprints?

      Hi I have managed to integrate Zoho Projects with Zoho Sprints and I can see that the integration works as a project was created in Zoho Sprints. But, what I would like to do is to sync into an existing Zoho Sprints project. Is there a way to make that

    • How to record company set up fees?

      Hi all, We are starting out our company in Australia and would appreciate any help with setting up Books accounts. We paid an accountant to do company registration, TFN, company constitution, etc. I heard these all can be recorded as Incorporation Costs, which is an intangible asset account, and amortised over 5 years. Is this the correct way to do it under the current Australian tax regulations? How and when exactly should I record the initial entry and each year's amortasation in Books? Generally

    • How to create a drop down menu in Zoho Sheets

      I am trying to find out, how do I create a drop down option in Zoho sheet. I tried Data--> Data Validation --> Criteria --> Text  --> Contains. But that is not working, is there any other way to do it.  Thanks in Advance.

    • Show Payment terms in Estimates

      Hi,  we are trying to set up that estimates automatically relates payment terms for the payment terms we introduced on Edit contact (Field Payment terms).  How can it be done? Our aim is to avoid problems on payment terms introduced and do not need to introduce it manually on each client (for the moment we are introducing this information on Terms and Conditions.  Kind Regards, 

    • Rich-text fields in Zoho CRM

      Hello everyone, We're thrilled to announce an important enhancement that will significantly enhance the readability and formatting capabilities of your information: rich text options for multi-line fields. With this update, you can now enjoy a more versatile

    • How can I calculate the physical stock available for sale?

      Hey Zoho Team,  I've tried to calculate the physical stock on hand in various ways - but always receive a mismatch between what's displayed in Zoho Inventory & analytics.  Can you please let me know how the physical stock available for sale is calculated?

    • When dispatched to crew, assigning lead missing

      Hello, For the past two or three weeks, whenever an officer assigns Service Appointment to a team, the lead person is missing from the assigned service list. Therefore, we have to reschedule the SA and then the lead person becomes visible in the assigned

    • Create Lead Button in Zoho CRM Dashboard

      Right now to create Leads in the CRM our team is going into the Lead module, selecting the "Create Lead" button, then building out the lead. Is there anyway to add the "Create Lead" button or some sort of short cut to the Zoho CRM Dashboard to cut out

    • open word file in zoho writer desktop version

      "How can I open a Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) file in Zoho Writer if I only have the file saved on my computer and Zoho Writer doesn't appear as an option when I try 'Open with'? Is there a way to directly open the .doc file in Zoho Writer?"

    • Next Page