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.
Recent Topics
How to Bulk-Update Sales Orders in CRM
Hi - I need to bulk update existing sales orders with dates from our ERP of when the sales orders were created. I made a date field on the Sales Order module where I want to insert that data. I can't Mass Update because I am not updating the fields to
Zoho ToDo in Cliq
Our organization utilizes Zoho ToDo in the Zoho Mail Desktop app. Is there a way for these to show up in Cliq Desktop app as well?
【Zoho CRM】サンドボックス機能のアップデート：カスタムビューが利用可能になりました。
ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 今回は「Zoho CRM アップデート情報」の中から、サンドボックス機能のアップデートをご紹介します。 目次 1. カスタムビューとは 2. 今回の機能アップデートについて 1. カスタムビューとは カスタムビューは、ユーザーが設定した条件に基づいてデータをフィルタリング・整理し、 重要な情報へ効率的にアクセスできるようにする機能です。 「過去15日間の見込み客」や「受注間近の商談」、「特定の優先度レベルが設定された案件」など 条件を指定してわずか数クリックで設定できます。
Changing an agents email address
How do you change an agent's email address? I keep getting a red circle even though I am an admin. And on one of my agents he has two email addresses? How is that possible?
Zoho CRM - Potentials Tab
Hi! When I create a Deal (Potentials tab) the header looks like this: After a refresh on the page it looks like this: What should I do so that it is displayed like in the second pic without refresh? Also I have a user that as of recently, cannot see this
Is there a way to automatically add Secondary Contacts (CCs) when creating a new ticket for specific customers?
Some of our customers want multiple contacts to receive all notifications from our support team. Is there a way to automatically add secondary contacts to a ticket when our support team opens a new ticket and associates it with an account? This would
Unable to create embed code for resource of workdrive using API
Hello Team, I am trying to create embed code for a resource using workdrive api in powershell, however facing some issues with injecting data in body. Followed Doc: https://workdrive.zoho.com/apidocs/v1/filefoldersharing/shareeveryone Please help, below
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
not able to convert pdf to jpg and other forms and vice versa.
i want to change my pdf to jpg, word, etc and some times jpg to pdf. i don't know how to do in this.
Enable / show scroll bar when Mega Menu is opened
Hey there I am using the mega menu add-on and experience a "flicker" whenever the mega menu opens. The reason is, that the scrollbar, which has a width of a few pixels, stops showing when the mega menu opens. As the scrollbar disappears the whole page
Reports: Custom Search Function Fields
Hi Zoho, Hope you'll add this into your roadmap. Issue: For the past 2yrs our global team been complaining and was brought to our attention recently that it's a time consuming process looking/scrolling down. Use-case: This form is a service report with
Zoho Inventory - Composite Items - Assembly - Single Line Item Quantity of One
Hi Zoho Inventory Team, Please consider relaxing the system rules which prevent an assembly items from consisting of a single line item and outputting a quantity of 1. A client I'm currently working with sells cosmetics and offers testers of their products
How can I transfer data from Production to Development environment?
Hi, I am using Creator V6 and would like to bring all the data in production to the Development and Testing environments? Is there an easy way of doing that or I have to export and import each table?
Add "Reset MFA" Option for Zoho Creator Client Portal Users
Hello Zoho Creator Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement related to Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for client portal users in Zoho Creator. Currently, Creator allows us to enforce MFA for portal users,
New portal SAML authentication error: User not found
Dears, Has anyone else been experiencing this lately? I am creating a new portal authenticated by SAML (Entra ID). I followed the same process as I did with other portals, but any new portal created after this always encounters this error. I’ve been reporting
Devis et facture multi page
Bonjour, je suis sur Zoho invoice et je rencontre un problème sur mes devis et factures lorsqu'ils dépassent 1 page. je me retrouve souvent avec des lignes coupées ou le sous total page 1 et le total page 2. j'aimerai savoir s'il existe une possibilité
Help with Filtering Records, HTML Pages, and Automatic File Uploads in Zoho Creator
Hi Zoho Creator Community, I’m building a Zoho Creator application and need guidance on a few features I’ve been struggling with. I want to implement them safely and efficiently, and I’d appreciate any examples, tips, or best practices. I want users to
Convert invoice from zoho to xml with all details
How to convert an Invoice to XML format with all details
Feature Suggestion for Zoho Websites – Inspired by Squarespace Systems
Dear Zoho Team, I’m a Zoho user and also a Squarespace Platinum Circle member, and I recently noticed the launch of Zoho Websites in India. I wanted to share some ideas for features that could enhance the platform for professional users and agencies.
Custom View - Sort by Custom Field
I created a custom field for our Engineering team to know which tickets to work first by numbering them. I created a custom view to general data which includes the Engineering Priority. However, I cannot sort the Engineering Priority column ascending
Zoho Indeed Intergation not pulling candidate details
We have recently integrated zoho with indeed. Prior to this our candidates came into the candidates tab via the zoho.resumes email address from indeed and it pulled through the candidates mobile number, and majority of the time a postcode. However since
Custom View of tickets created today
How can I create a custom view that list all my ticked created in the current date? Currently, if I select the "Created Time" criteria, the "Current Time" option does not work as today. Actually, I don't know how it works this "Current Time".
Lifecycle Reports
From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports A lifecycle report captures and visualises the sequential states that a ticket undergoes across its lifespan. For instance, when a customer submits a support ticket for a faulty product,
Zoho Forms - Print Button on Forms
Hi Forms team, I'm replicating a form for a client which is currently based on JotForm. I noticed that at the end of the form there is a button to print the completed form. I thought this would be something worth sharing and a nice to have in Zoho Forms.
Putting Watermark on Zoho Sheet
Can this be done?
Validation function not preventing candidates under 18 or over 30 from submitting the web form
Hello everyone, I’m trying to create a validation rule for the Candidate Webform in Zoho Recruit. I added a custom field called “Date of Birth”, and I want to make sure that candidates cannot submit the form unless their age is between 18 and 30 years.
Report to know the history of certain Tickets on Desk
Hi there guys, As the title implies we're wondering if there's any way to get some kind of Report that allows us to check the History of various Tickets at the same time since as of today if we want to know that we have to check them 1 by 1 which is not
Advanced Usage Billing: Prepaid with Drawdown
Picture yourself at your favourite coffee shop, Bean & Brew. You come by every morning for your usual cappuccino, and occasionally you get an extra cold brew and a muffin or two in the afternoon. Interestingly, Bean & Brew has a new idea of offering a
Zoho Commerce in multiple languages
When will you be able to offer Zoho Commerce in more languages? We sell in multiple markets and want to be able to offer a local version of our webshop. What does the roadmap look like?
Urgent Zoho Creator down!!!???
Now my zoho creator faced this issue. Anyone has idea? Urgent!!!
The Social Wall: September 2025
Hello everyone, As we step into the fall season, some major updates are on the horizon. Meanwhile, here are the exciting updates we rolled out this September. Approvals in iOS Managing approvals just got more seamless on mobile. With this update, the
Portal For Different Apps
I found some older threads on this but didn't see anything very recent. I'm new to Zoho One so forgive me if my terminology is off a bit. I was hoping set up a single point of entry into Zoho One. So, many of the apps could be found in one single place
Introducing Detailed View for Candidates in Vendor Portal
We’ve added a new Details sub-tab inside the Vendor Portal to help vendors easily view complete candidate information after submission. With this update, vendors can now access all candidate details, from personal information to associated job openings,
Zoho One Down
Zoho Team, Checking if when the services up - currently Zoho One is down
How can I track which zoho users are actively using Zoho CRM
I have several licenses of Zoho CRM. We now need to add a new user. I could purchase a new license, but before I do, I would like to see if any of our existing users are not actively using the license assigned to them. How can I determine the activity
Access to Detail View From HTML Snippet
Zoho Creator displays a detail view that slides out from the right onClick of a record in a report. Am I able to access that detail view from an html snippet, e.g. click a record in a list and display the detail view? The zc_LoadIn dialog is a bit clunky,
Billing Management: #10 Solving Common Mistakes in Billing
Over the past few weeks, we have explored different facets of billing, from the simplicity of traditional one-time billing to the evolving landscape of subscriptions, retainers, and usage-based models. We've unpacked how billing isn't just about sending
【開催間近 - 10/17】東京 ユーザー交流会 Vol.3 参加登録 受付中！(参加無料)
ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 10/17(金)に、東京・新橋で「東京 ユーザー交流会 Vol.3」を開催します！ ZOHOLICSよりも小規模なイベントですので、「リアル開催はちょっと緊張する…」という方も、安心してご参加いただけます✨ 当日は、初公開の事例を2つご紹介予定です！ なお、セッション映像のアーカイブ配信は予定していないため、会場にお越しいただいた方だけが、登壇者へ直接質問したり、リアルな声を聞いたりできる貴重な機会となっています。 ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー
Loading CSS Stylesheets into HTML Snippet
Combining html/css into a single snippet can grow quite large for a UI that has a lot of functionality/styling. To keep things tidy, are we able to pull files into an html snippet using a <link> tag? If so, what are some best practices?
Notes Attachments
Two things it would be nice to have the attachment size the same as the attachments sections and it would be nice to be able to attach links like you can in the attachments section. Thank you
Next Page