Our Take
5.0
NerdWallet rating
The bottom line:
Zoho Books users appreciate that Zoho is a one-stop-shop for all of their business software needs. We have some qualms with its interface. But its users agree that Zoho is pretty intuitive overall. Plus, its in-depth set of features is hard to beat for the price. Online reviews suggest Zoho’s customer support has room to improve, though.
Zoho Books
Starting at
$0 Additional pricing tiers (per month): $20, $50, $70, $150, $275.
Promotion
14-day free trial of the Premium plan.
Learn more
on Zoho Books' website
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Free plan for businesses making less than $50,000 annually.
- Suite of in-house solutions for marketing, CRM, payroll, etc.
- Workflow automations in Professional plan and up.
Cons
- Fewer third-party integrations than competitors.
- Poor customer service, according to user reviews.
Full Review
Zoho launched its small-business accounting software solution, Zoho Books, in 2011, but its parent company was founded years before that in 1996.
Zoho Books has a wide selection of plans that can support businesses in a range of growth stages. In fact, we chose it as the best free accounting software because of that plan’s rich set of features. Meanwhile, its more expensive tiers support automated workflows and advanced inventory tracking for growing businesses.
One of Zoho’s defining characteristics is its in-house suite of other business management software. This includes solutions for payroll, social media marketing and customer relationship management, among other products. Zoho Books is a solid option for businesses that prefer to use a single platform for all of their business software needs (and not just accounting).
Businesses that would rather integrate their accounting software with third-party solutions may want to look elsewhere. The same goes for businesses that are concerned about customer service. Although Zoho Books’ paid plans include a variety of support options, customer reviews suggest the quality isn’t top notch.
Zoho Books is best for:
✔️ All-in-one business software.
✔️ Building automated workflows.
✔️ Keeping costs down.
Not a fit? Consider these competitors
NerdWallet rating 5.0/5.0 | NerdWallet rating 5.0/5.0 | NerdWallet rating 3.9/5.0 |
Starting at $35/month Additional pricing tiers (per month): $65, $99, $235. | Starting at $20/month Additional pricing tiers (per month): $47, $80. | Starting at $35/month Per user. Additional pricing tiers per user (per month): $70. |
Promotion 50% off for first three months or free 30-day trial. | Promotion 90% off for 6 months. | Promotion 7-day free trial |
at QuickBooks | at Xero | at Striven |
QuickBooks Online: Better for brand familiarity. Zoho Books is used globally, but it doesn’t have the brand recognition that QuickBooks Online does in the U.S. If your accountant is unfamiliar with Zoho Books and you plan to work closely with them, QuickBooks Online might be a safer bet. Read our full QuickBooks Online review.
Xero: Better for third-party integrations. Zoho has lots of business software solutions under its own brand name, but it doesn’t integrate with many third-party options. If you want to mix and match business software brands, Xero integrates with more than 1,000 third-party apps. Read our full Xero review.
Striven: Better for industry specificity. Unlike Zoho Books, Striven has different solutions for businesses in specific industries, like construction, retail, field services and professional services. Learn more about Striven in our best accounting software roundup.
Zoho Books plan pricing and features
Zoho Books offers 14-day free trials of its Premium plan.
Free | Standard | Professional |
|---|---|---|
$0 for businesses with less than $50,000 in annual revenue. | $20 per month ($15 when billed annually). | $50 per month ($40 when billed annually). |
| Everything in the Free plan, plus:
| Everything in the Standard plan, plus:
|
Premium | Elite | Ultimate |
$70 per month (or $60 when billed annually). | $150 per month (or $120 when billed annually). | $275 per month (or $240 when billed annually). |
Everything in the Professional plan, plus:
| Everything in the Premium plan, plus:
| Everything in the Elite plan, plus:
|
What users say about Zoho Books
NerdWallet checked online forums like Reddit and reviews from sites like TrustPilot, G2, the App Store and Google Play to gauge how users feel about Zoho Books. We used an AI tool to help analyze this feedback. Here are the major trends we spotted.
👍 Suite of in-house apps
Online reviewers appreciate that Zoho offers numerous apps within the same platform. For example, lots of reviews mention Zoho Social and Zoho CRM. Commenters say these programs help them streamline their workflows and operate more efficiently. Plus, you can sync Zoho CRM directly with Zoho Books to centralize all of your customer data.
The Zoho platform also has in-house solutions for payroll, projects, marketing, human resources, analytics, e-commerce and security.
👍 Overall ease of use
Positive reviews of Zoho Books typically praise its ease of use, and that goes for both its web and mobile app versions. Online reviewers say the all-in-one platform helps simplify — and in some cases, even automate — their accounting tasks. Users that run global businesses also appreciate the fact that you can easily accept payment in foreign currencies.
👎 Customer support
On paper, we give Zoho Books’ customer service a 5-star rating, thanks to all of its support options. However, online reviews suggest that support could be better.
Such criticism is common when it comes to accounting software in our experience. Your best bet is to consider the types of complaints a company gets during your decision-making process.
For instance, poor online reviews of Zoho Books often cite long wait times and unhelpful email support. Such gripes are frequent for most products, unfortunately.
However, some users say customer support representatives direct them to join webinars or consult “how-to” articles they’ve already read. Others say emails go unanswered. The latter is potentially more worrisome.
👎 Blocked accounts
Some users say their accounts were blocked “for security reasons” when they had Zoho Books opened in multiple windows. Zoho representatives responded to these complaints in the company’s community forum. They said that the hold is temporary, and users should be able to access their accounts in 30-45 minutes.
Zoho added that these freezes are triggered by the number of API calls an account sends per minute. But that's basically impossible to measure on your own. We have not seen similar complaints for other software products. After months of issues, I can understand user frustration that Zoho hasn't come up with a solution.
Our experience testing Zoho Books
👋 I'm Hillary Crawford, a lead writer and content strategist for NerdWallet. I've been covering small-business accounting software since 2021 and am QuickBooks certified. I did the testing for Zoho Books.
To do that, I test drove Zoho Books’ demo account and evaluated its key components in April 2025. Here’s what stood out.
My take: Clean and informative.
Zoho Books’ dashboard incorporates lots of charts and graphs without being overwhelming. A quick glance gives you a visual of how your cash flow has fluctuated over time, along with how your income compares to your expenses each month.
I also like that you can hide the sidebar rail on the left.
Zoho Books' main dashboard.
There’s a search box (not pictured) that makes it easy to find information on certain customers or transactions, too.
My take: Comprehensive, but could offer more customization.
Right off the bat, I like that you can click a name from the “customer name” dropdown to autofill information, like billing and shipping address. There’s also a variety of fields beyond the basic “terms” and “due date” options. For example, you can add the name of the salesperson, shipping charges and any other remarks or notes.
Creating an invoice.
My one complaint is that you can’t rearrange invoice columns or create new ones from this page. Instead, you need to navigate to “settings” to add a new item field. Some competitors, like QuickBooks Online, let you customize which fields you’d like displayed without having to leave the “create invoice” page.
Invoice columns.
My take: Standard, but filtering options could be better.
Like competitors, Zoho Books lets you “star” your most visited reports, so that they appear at the top of the list and are easily accessible. To evaluate customization options and readability, I ran the profit and loss report. You can change the date range and report basis (cash vs. accrual), and add comparison periods.
Profit and loss report.
However, Zoho Books doesn’t have as many preset filter options as some competitors. For example, you can’t easily filter the report by preexisting options, such as customer or employee, like you can with QuickBooks Online. Instead, you’d have to create custom reporting tags for those categories.
My take: Not my favorite user interface, but decent.
First off, I wasn’t immediately sure how to actually navigate to the reconciliation page. After you click the “banking” tab and select an account, you need to click on the small cog up top to access the “reconcile account” option. This process didn’t seem very intuitive, but once you figure it out, it’s not a huge deal.
The demo account didn’t include mock transactions for me to reconcile or categorize, but I watched a tutorial to get a feel for the process. To categorize a transaction or view its possible matches, you meed to click on it. I’m not a big fan of this approach.
Categorizing and matching transactions.
I prefer when the transactions overview screen has a column for categories — like Wave does. That lets you quickly scroll through and make sure everything looks correct.
My take: Built-in time tracking is a plus.
The project overview dash is pretty standard and displays project name, billing method and rate. You can view much more information — including project hours, tasks, invoices and expenses — when you click on a specific project.
Most of all, I like that you have easy access to the time tracker, as well as employee timesheets.
Project breakdown.
My take: A nice variety of options.
The Zoho Books dashboard clearly displays the customer support phone number atop the screen and has a “contact support” module on the bottom. Once you click on that module, you can send a support ticket (and use a dropdown to specify how urgent your request is), request a demo or request a callback.
Submitting a support ticket.
At face value, these seem like great options for getting in touch with Zoho’s support team. However, customer reviews suggest the quality of that support could be better.
How we evaluated Zoho Books
NerdWallet independently reviews accounting software products, like Zoho Books, across 10 categories and more than 30 subcategories. We collected the data from Zoho Books’ public-facing website and from company representatives.
Our accounting software ratings range from one to five stars overall. But we also score individual features to help business owners understand a product's strengths and weaknesses. Here’s how Zoho Books stacks up:
Zoho Books is excellent in the following categories:
- Double-entry accounting: Yes.
- Chart of accounts customization: Yes.
- Cash- and accrual-basis reporting: Yes, you can change your report preferences.
- Pricing listed on website: Yes.
- Free trial period: There is a 14-day free trial of the Premium plan.
- Audit trails: Yes.
- Bookkeeper certification: Yes, accountants can participate in the Zoho Books Training & Certification program.
- Accountant access: All Zoho Books plans, including the free one, allow you to collaborate with an accountant.
- Phone support: All paid plans come with phone support, available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST five days per week. 24/5 support costs extra and starts at $49 per month. There is no phone support in the free plan.
- Online support: All paid plans come with chat and email support, available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST five days per week. 24/5 support costs extra and starts at $49 per month. The free plan is limited to just email support.
- Help library: Yes.
Zoho Books is excellent in the following categories:
- Bank reconciliation: Zoho Books suggests matching bank statement lines and existing transactions for you. Transactions that have been matched or manually categorized will show up as reconciled. You can also create transaction rules to streamline the process. To reconcile any remaining transactions, you’ll need to pull up your bank statement, cross reference each transaction and click the checkmark next to it.
- Bank feeds: Zoho Books’ paid plans support automatic bank feeds. Its free plan requires you to manually import your transactions.
- Dashboard customization: You can create custom dashboards in the Elite and Ultimate plans.
- Reporting: Zoho Books has a little more than 50 reports available, which is less than competitors, like QuickBooks Online and Xero. It includes the basics, like a profit and loss statement, balance sheet and aged receivables report. All plans let you filter by date, but only paid plans let you create reporting tags.
- Invoicing: All Zoho Books users can convert estimates to invoices, customize invoices with brand logos, set up payment reminders and accept payments online.
- Inventory: You can track stock and add reorder points to items in the Professional plan and up.
- Accounts payable: Yes, but only in the Professional plan and up.
- Mobile app: All Zoho Books users have access to a mobile app that lets you send invoices, generate reports and snap photos of receipts on the go.
- Project tracking: The Professional plan and up includes project-specific tracking, profitability and budgeting tools.
- Transaction categorization: Zoho Books lets you categorize transactions by account and reporting tag.
- Industry-specific reports: Not available.
Zoho Books is decent, but not the best, in the following categories:
- Monthly pricing: $0-$275 per month.
- User limits: All Zoho Books plans let you invite an accountant to collaborate. Beyond that, plans include anywhere from 1 to 15 users, and additional users cost $3 each.
- Capacity to support larger small businesses: Yes. Zoho Books can likely support businesses with up to 50 employees.
Zoho Books is subpar in the following category:
- Payroll: Zoho Books integrates with its in-house payroll offering, as well as SurePayroll.
- POS: POS system integrations are limited to Square.
- Bookkeeping services: No.
- Additional integrations: These include apps like Slack, Zapier, Stripe, PayPal and other in-house Zoho offerings. Aside from that, Zoho Books has fewer third-party integrations than competitors, like QuickBooks Online and Xero.
We also took user sentiment into account to gauge what small-business owners think about Zoho Books. This involved looking through individual reviews and feedback on sites like Trustpilot, G2, Reddit, the App Store and Google Play. Then, we used AI tools to help spot larger trends within those comments. We don't incorporate these user reviews in our star ratings, because we can't verify every user's individual experience.
However, we do test the product ourselves to evaluate commonly mentioned pain points and develop our own objective assessment. For more information on how we score accounting software products, see our full methodology.
Learn more
on Zoho Books' website
Bonus offer
QuickBooks
QuickBooks Online
NerdWallet Rating
5.0
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for first three months or free 30-day trial.
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