Zoho Books
GST-compliant cloud accounting for Indian businesses
Founded 2011 HQ Chennai India
Best for
- Indian SMBs and growing startups wanting full accounting
- CA-supported businesses filing GST returns
- Teams needing inventory + accounting in one
- Companies already on Zoho One stack
Not ideal for
- Solopreneurs needing only invoicing (Refrens is simpler)
- Global SaaS billing in USD (QuickBooks fits some markets)
- Teams allergic to Zoho's UI density
Key features
- •GST-ready invoicing and e-invoicing
- •GSTR-1, GSTR-3B return filing
- •TDS, TCS, and reverse charge handling
- •Bank reconciliation and feeds
- •Inventory and warehouse management
- •Project billing and timesheets
- •Multi-currency and multi-branch
- •Vendor and purchase orders
- •Customer portal and recurring invoicing
Zoho Books — Pros
- +Most complete GST and Indian compliance feature set
- +Free tier under ₹25L revenue is genuinely useful
- +Integrates with Zoho CRM, Inventory, Books seamlessly
- +Active product velocity
- +Indian support team
Zoho Books — Cons
- −UI density takes time to learn
- −Some integrations need higher tiers
- −Customer portal experience is dated
- −Reporting customization limited vs. desktop accounting
- −Higher tiers needed for advanced workflows
Integrations
Zoho CRMZoho InventoryRazorpayStripeTally (via plugin)ShopifyWooCommerceICICI/HDFC bank feeds
Indian context
- GST: End-to-end GST: invoicing, e-invoicing, returns
- INR billing: Yes
- UPI support: Yes
- IST support: 24x5 IST