What’s The Difference Between Zoho Invoice VS Zoho Books?

Zoho offers a suite of over 40 products, including Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books. Both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books offer incredible invoicing and international business features for small businesses, strong mobile apps, excellent customer service, and positive customer reviews.

Zoho Invoice offers 16 invoice templates, multilingual invoicing, and tons of invoicing automations. Top that with a beautiful client portal, project management, expense tracking, and ten different payment gateway options, and it’s easy to see why Zoho Invoice is our top 5-star invoicing software.

The Zoho Books offers the same great invoicing features as Zoho Invoice but adds accounting features, such as journal entries, bank reconciliation, and accounts payable. The software also offers inventory, tracking categories, and a few more third-party integrations.

But which bookkeeping software app is better, and which is more suited for your small business? Let’s find out.

At Merchant Maverick, our goal is to help you to find the best software for your small business needs. So to make your decision easier, we’ve carefully researched and tested both products. We’ll put Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books head-to-head by comparing features, pricing, customer experience, reputation, and more, so you don’t have to. Read on to see which software is right for your business.

Don’t have time to read the whole post? Looking for a different accounting option? Check out our top-rated accounting solutions to see our favorite recommendations.

Accounting

Winner: Zoho Books

Zoho Books is the clear winner here because Zoho Invoice isn’t accounting software — it’s simply straightforward invoicing software.

Zoho Invoice does provide a few basic bookkeeping tools, such as expense tracking and mileage deductions, which might be enough for some smaller businesses. However, if you want true accounting, Zoho Books is the way to go.

Zoho Books provides the complete accounting package, so much so that it gives QuickBooks Online a run for its money. Zoho Books features bank reconciliation, journal entries, ample reports, fixed asset management, and a customizable chart of accounts.

Features

Winner: Zoho Books

The chart makes it easy to see which app takes the cake in this category.

Both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books have some of the best invoicing features and automations on the market. The features that the programs share are nigh identical; the main difference is that Zoho Books takes the UI and feature set of Zoho Invoice and ups the ante with more features.

While Zoho Invoice is incredibly full-featured for invoicing software, Zoho Books add accounts payable, inventory, tracking categories, and tax support in addition to the accounting features mentioned earlier.

Pricing

Winner: Zoho Books

Zoho Invoice now has a single pricing plan. The software is completely free. Not to be outdone, Zoho Books has also added a free plan that is best suited for businesses with annual revenues of less than $50,000. This plan has a handful of features and allows you to send up to 1,000 invoices per year. Zoho Books also has five paid plans ranging from $20-$275/month. The more expensive plans have more advanced features and support additional users (up to 15), although you can add additional users for a monthly fee.

If invoicing is the primary need of your business, Zoho Invoice’s free plan is a good choice and an excellent value. On the flip side, though, businesses that need true accounting software will prefer the plans offered by Zoho Books. While its pricing has increased recently, it remains competitive among its competitors, such as Xero and QuickBooks Online.

Start Zoho Books Free Trial

Hardware & Software Requirements

Winner: Tie

As cloud-based software programs, both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books are compatible with nearly any device so long as you have an internet connection. Both also offer an incredible number of mobile apps for Apple products, Androids, Microsoft phones, Smartwatches, and even Kindles.

Users & Permissions

Winner: Tie

Zoho Invoice allows up to 10 users, while Zoho Books’ largest plan allows up to 15 users. Additional users can be added to each software. Both programs also offer decent user permissions and the ability to approve transactions for added control, putting them on the same footing as far as user permissions go.

Ease Of Use

Winner: Zoho Invoice

Both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books are generally easy to use. Each software can be difficult to navigate at times, but luckily there are ample support options to help you find what you’re looking for. The UI and user experience are almost identical with each program, but we gave Zoho Invoice the win here because there are fewer features to learn and navigate. To learn more about pricing, features, as well as pros and cons, check out our full Zoho Invoice review.

Start Zoho Invoice For Free

Mobile Apps

Winner: Tie

Both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books offer strong, full-featured mobile apps that receive much customer praise.

Customer Service & Support

Winner: Tie

Both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books have excellent customer support (are you catching the theme yet?). Since Zoho is in charge of both products, it’s not surprising that its customer support options are similar. In my experience, phone wait times are short, email responses are generally quick, and representatives are usually friendly and helpful for both products. The best part is that Zoho Invoice’s and Zoho Books’ knowledgebases can be accessed directly from within the respective programs to make your life a bit easier.

Negative Reviews & Complaints

Winner: Tie

Both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books receive predominately positive customer reviews. The products have such a similar number of negative reviews that we had to give them a tie.

The complaints regarding Zoho Invoice mostly revolve around a lack of integrations, a few poor customer support experiences, and occasional navigational difficulties. Complaints about Zoho Books center around a similar lack of integrations and the desire for more features (mostly more reporting and user permissions).

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

Winner: Tie

Again, Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books tie in the number of positive customer reviews they receive. Both have high ratings across the board from G2Crowd, GetApp, iTunes, and the Google Play Store.

Zoho Invoice customers love how easy the software is to use, how professional the invoices look, and the ability to run their business on the go. Zoho Books users also love how easy the software is to use and appreciate its affordability, especially considering the robust feature set.

Integrations

Winner: Zoho Books

Zoho Invoice has 25 integrations as opposed to Zoho Books’ 33, which gives Zoho Books the edge.

Security

Winner: Tie

Zoho uses the same security measures to protect both Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books, including SSL encryption, two-factor authentication, and regular virus detection and prevention to protect customer data. The company also performs regular data backups onto multiple servers in undisclosed locations, which are guarded by a number of physical security measures. Visit Zoho’s website to learn more.

And The Winner Is…

While both products are similar and tied in several categories, Zoho Books is undeniably a step up from Zoho Invoice. I almost always recommend using full accounting software over solely invoicing software. When it comes to running your small business, you need a way to balance the books and keep strong accounting records for tax season.

This is why Zoho Books was the clear winner from the start. Not only do you get more bang for your buck with Zoho Books in terms of features, but you also can rest assured that your books are balanced correctly. Key features, such as bank reconciliation, accounts payable, inventory, and tax support, make Zoho Books a more practical small business solution. Plus, you get the same great mobile apps and customer service but with more integrations.

Start Zoho Books Free Trial

However, this doesn’t mean that Zoho Books is necessarily the right choice for everyone. If you are looking for invoicing software and don’t want the extra accounting features, Zoho Invoice is one of the best — if not the best — invoicing software out there. It offers great invoice templates and customizations, expense tracking, a client portal, and project management — all for no cost.

Start Zoho Invoice For Free

Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books each boast strong mobile apps, excellent customer support, almost identical pricing structures, and tons of positive customer reviews, so you really can’t go wrong with either choice. The decision ultimately comes down to what features your business needs.

If you want to explore all of your options, check out our other accounting software reviews and invoicing software reviews.