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
Vertical images displayed as horizontal
Some pictures that originally are in vertical position are displayed in horizontal after the upload. It seems that system rotates them by 90 degrees. How can I fix this issue?
Zoho Desk iOS update: Custom buttons, follow/ unfollow option on tickets
Hello everyone! In the most recent Zoho Desk iOS app update, we have brought in support to access the custom buttons configured on web app(desk.zoho.com). Using custom buttons you can seamlessly execute predefined actions directly from their mobile devices,
Zoho Desk iOS app update: Saved filters and sort options
Hello everyone! Saved filters created on the web(desk.zoho.com) for tickets are now accessible on the Zoho Desk iOS app. You can easily rename, delete, or clear filters on the go. We have also introduced Sort options on the ticket listing screen, allowing
Introducing VeriFactu Support in Zoho Books
Hello users, Spain has introduced the VeriFactu system under Real Decreto 1007/2023 to ensure integrity, traceability, and anti-fraud compliance in e-invoicing. Starting January 1, 2026, all B2B invoices must be reported to Agencia Estatal de Administración
Big Things Just Dropped in the SalesIQ Universe: Top Upgrades You’ll Love in Nova’25
Nova'25 has landed, and it’s packed with meaningful upgrades to help you engage smarter, work faster, and scale with ease. Whether you're into proactive messaging, smarter automation, or better admin control, there's something here for everyone. Here's
Time Entries in Analytics
I am trying to import a zoho sheet into zoho analytics. In my sheets one of the columns has "time Entries" in this "format HH:MM am/pm" example 11:00 PM. After import, i noticed that analytics converted the time to "00 Jan 1900 23:00:00".. how do i maintain
Amazon invoice in Zoho Books
I have just made my first few sales on Amazon India. Amazon Seller account generates invoices for the sales made on Amazon. These invoices are sent to customers also. Now when I was only making offline sales, I used to create Invoices in Zoho Book. Now
Zoho Creator Upcoming Updates - November 2025
Hello everyone, Welcome to your monthly roundup of new features and enhancements! We hope you've already taken a look at Release Projection 2—it details the features coming your way for the rest of the year. And this month, we're excited to start rolling
All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs
The address field will be available exclusively for IN DC users. We'll keep you updated on the DC-specific rollout soon. It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition. Latest update
Detect and ignore bots in visitors
The SalesIQ visitor numbers are basically useless to us because there is no bot detection. We get the same bots coming in from the same countries looking at the same pages every day. It can't be that difficult to tell the difference between an actual
Zoho Webinar + HubSpot : Simplifiez la gestion de vos données de webinaires
Les webinaires sont aujourd’hui essentiels pour interagir avec vos prospects et vos clients. Cependant, la gestion des données entre plusieurs plateformes peut vite devenir complexe. Grâce à la nouvelle intégration entre Zoho Webinar et HubSpot, vos outils
Function #53: Transaction Level Profitability for Invoices
Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series! We have previously provided custom functions for calculating the profitability of a quote and a sales order. There may be instances where the invoice may differ from its corresponding quote or sales order.
I am trying to give access to one of our educators access to 3 forms in Zoho and she is not able to view the data - Access issue
Hi Team, When I try to provide read access to one of our educators on Zoho for Pre-training , post training and Impact survey forms submit form access which also allows them to read , it does not show them data
How to book GST paid in zoho books
hi, i am a new user to Zoho books and not able to book GST paid in books, kindly suggest how i can book it in books. thanks, siddharth
Enable Screen Recording in Zoho WorkDrive Mobile Apps (Android & iOS)
Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, How are you? We are enthusiastic Zoho One users and rely heavily on Zoho WorkDrive for internal collaboration and content sharing. The screen-recording feature in the WorkDrive web app (similar to Loom) is extremely useful- however,
PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (CORPORATE) INDIA - NOT AVAILABLE IN BANKING
Dear sir, Kindly fix it. PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (INDIA) is available but PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (CORPORATE) is not available. Kindly enable this banking since we need to categorize the entries. Regards, Sanjay Jena email id/ user id : travewithmerchant@
Employment Contract / HRMS Documents - Zoho People
How do I create customized HR documents for disbursal from Zoho People ? Example, say offer letters ? appointment letters ? Memos ? We want to be able to preset these in one or ther other form and issue them to employees who are in Zoho People.
Is it possible to create a word cloud chart in ZoHo Analystics?
Hi there, I have a volume of transaction text that I would like to analyse using word cloud (or other approcah to detect and present word frequency in a dataset). For example, I have 50,000 records describing menu items in restaurants. I want to be able
Playback and Management Enhancements for Zoho Quartz Recordings
Hello Zoho Team, We hope you're all doing well. We would like to submit a feature request related to Zoho Quartz, the tool used to record and share browser sessions with Zoho Support. 🎯 Current Functionality As of now, Zoho Quartz allows users to record
Zia Profile Summary now supports six languages and responds faster
After numerous customer requests, we’ve expanded Zia Profile Summary to do more than just summarize resumes quickly. It can now summarize them in six different languages and deliver results even faster. What’s New 1. Extended language support Zia can
Kaizen #216 - Actions APIs : Email Notifications
Welcome to another week of Kaizen! For the last three weeks, we have been discussing Zylker's workflows. We successfully updated a dormant workflow, built a new one from the ground up and more. But our work is not finished—these automated processes are
Introducing Enhanced Storage Management
We’re excited to roll out two new enhancements in Zoho Recruit, Subscription Information and Storage Management — designed to give admins complete visibility into subscription details, feature limits, and storage consumption — all from one place inside
Facturation électronique 2026 - obligation dès le 1er septembre 2026
Bonjour, Je me permets de réagir à divers posts publiés ici et là concernant le projet de E-Invoicing, dans le cadre de la facturation électronique prévue très prochainement. Dans le cadre du passage à la facturation électronique pour les entreprises,
Your bot just got smarter: AI-Powered routing that reads between the lines
What if your bot could tell the difference? Between a visitor who just needs a quick answer, someone actively comparing options, and a frustrated customer one click away from leaving? Most bots can't. They deliver the same response to everyone, missing
Weekly Tips : Master Keyboard Shortcuts in Zoho Mail
If you spend a lot of time managing emails, switching between your mouse and keyboard can slow you down. Whether you are replying to clients, organizing your inbox, or searching for messages, every second counts. So, how can you streamline your email
Introducing custom lookup fields in the Tickets, Contacts, and Accounts modules
Hello all, We are excited to announce a new enhancement that will empower you to further customize the Tickets, Contacts, and Accounts modules. Now, you will be able to create custom lookup fields in your Tickets, Contacts, and Accounts layouts for more
Contacts per department
Hello, Is it possible to limit Contacts to a Department? Thanks
How to restrict user/portal user change canvas view
Hi , I would like to restrict user / portal user change their canvas view because I hide some sensitive field for them. I dont want my user switch the canvas view that do not belong to them But seems Zoho do not provide this setting?
Draft & Schedule Emails Directly in Bigin
Greetings, I hope all of you are doing well. We're happy to announce a few recent enhancements we've made to email in Bigin. We'll go over each one in detail, but here's a quick overview: Previously, you couldn't draft or schedule emails in Bigin, but
Collections Management: #3 Tackling Payment Failures
Sam refreshed the dashboard. "Payment failed". Same customer. Same subscription. This is happening for the third time. He sends a usual email: "Your renewal payment failed again. Could you please check and retry?" A couple of days passed, and there was
How do I increase the email attachment size in Zoho CRM ?
It looks like I'm limited to 10MB when sending an attachment using the email widget on a record in Zoho CRM. Is there a way to increase the size? Or can I use some other tool? From what I'm reading online, I'm maxed out at 10MB. Any insight would be greatly
Custom Field in Zoho Projects pulling into Analytics
We have a client that we have built our their new business process using Zoho Projects, and we have build a lot of custom fields with their their Projects where they are capturing specific data points that we want to be able to track and pull data, as
Kiosk can't merge picklist or multiselect
There is no ability to load a multiselect or picklikst field into a kiosk with the values that have been previously selected. So, I essentially have 3 unacceptable options: 1.)Load the value into a text string and include instructions like this: "Picklist
WhatsApp Channels in Zoho Campaigns
Now that Meta has opened WhatsApp Channels globally, will you add it to Zoho Campaigns? It's another top channel for marketing communications as email and SMS. Thanks.
Zoho sign and creator error message {"code":9043,"error_param":"Checked by","message":"Extra key found","status":"failure"}
Good day, I receive the error message: {"code":9043,"error_param":"Checked by","message":"Extra key found","status":"failure"} when running below code from creator to sign, void TestForSign(int ID) { //Fetch Template Details (Optional, for dynamic mapping)
Download a writer template as .docx instead of .pdf.
I have been trying to implement a feature to download a writer template as a .docx and got it working partly but it isn't good. Earlier I checked our code and I saw openurl("https://crm.zoho.com/crm/org121314/specific/Template.do?action=print&step=pdfPreview&id="
Allow the usage of Multi-Select fields as the primary field on "Layout Rules"
We want to force our users to enter some explanation strings when a multi-select field has been utilized. I can't understand the reason for the usage restriction of Multi-Select fields as a primary field. This is a simple "Display hidden mandatory field
Ask the Experts 25: Experience the full spectrum of Zoho Desk’s autumn and spring releases for 2025
Hello Everyone, We’re on the 25th episode of our ATE series! It's a true milestone in our live community interactions! It’s been an amazing journey since we started in October 2018. Zoho Desk has come a long way, evolving with the support of a wonderful
WriterTh
After every space Writer goes to capital letters mode in my Android tablet. The cap mode stays till the second letter is typed in the word then it comes to normal mode.
Extract Archived Projects using Zoho Projects API
In my organization we archive the projects when they are already completed, charged, invoiced, so that only those that are still pending process remain active. I need to access all projects (active and archived) from an external system, but the API v3
Next Page