Zoho Books Review 2026: Affordable Accounting Software

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Zoho Books is our top recommendation for the best accounting software for small businesses thanks to its overall usability and free plan. It’s a particularly good option for micro-businesses looking to cut down on costs.

A reliable free plan is especially important for sole traders and landlords looking to get ready for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD for ITSA). The first wave will start on April 6, for those with a qualifying income over the £50,000 threshold.

We’ll take you through all the strengths and weaknesses of Zoho Books, including any hidden fees, and if it’s suitable for MTD. Let’s find out if it’s the right choice for your bookkeeping needs.

Key takeaways

Zoho Books is the best choice for sole traders and micro-businesses due to its high usability and a free plan that supports MTD for Income Tax.
The platform offers six pricing tiers, ranging from a free plan for limited needs up to a £199-per-month premium plan for large-scale reporting.
Users can access a wide ecosystem of integrated tools like Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail, though these require individual additional costs.
New AI-powered features help automate bank reconciliation by auto-filling categories, accounts, and vendor data.
Potential hidden costs include £2 per month for each additional user, £9 for extra locations, and £7 per user for expense claims.

Zoho Books at a glance

What is Zoho Books? It’s a full cloud accounting software platform with a range of plans to suit a variety of business owners. As our number one recommendation for the best self-employed accounting software, it’s a great option for sole traders.

We recommend Zoho Books to sole traders who need low-cost or even free accounting software but there’s six plans in total to choose from. The first four plans provided by Zoho Books will cover the needs of most newer small businesses:

	Cost (+VAT) per month	Recommended for	Key features	Number of users
Free	£0	Non-VAT registered sole traders	- Mileage tracking - Bank reconciliation - MTD for Income Tax ready	One user and one accountant
Standard	£12 paid monthly/£10 paid annually	VAT-registered small teams	- Connect bank feeds - Custom reporting - File corporation tax (CT600)	Three users
Professional	£24 paid monthly/£20 paid annually	Multi-currency businesses	- Multi-currency transactions - Inventory tracking - CIS returns to HMRC	Five users
Premium	£30 paid monthly/£25 paid annually	Established limited companies	- Cashflow forecasting - Enhanced automations, including validation rules - Customise your account	10 users

Zoho Books also offers two further plans for established businesses with more complex and sophisticated needs:

	Cost (+VAT) per month	Recommended for	Key features	Number of users
Elite	£99 paid monthly/£85 paid annually	Established businesses that need to manage warehouses full of inventory	- Warehouse management - Connect online sales channels - Advanced inventory management	10 users
Ultimate	£199 paid monthly/£165 paid annually	Large organisations that need complex reporting	- KPI tracking - Create collaborative reports with colleagues - 50+ ready made reports	15 users

Read on for more details on these plans, and which one is right for you:

Zoho Books key features for small businesses

Zoho Books’s main selling points are the free tier, affordable plans, and excellent usability. Though there are a fair amount of other tools and features that will make Zoho Books worthy of your consideration:

The customisability of Zoho Books

Zoho Books is great for flexible customisation: it allows you to create custom workflows and automations, meaning you can run your day-to-day activities more efficiently. You’ll also be able to add custom buttons, like sending bulk email reminders.

With Zoho Books, you can also add your branding to invoices, quotes, and sales orders for a more professional experience. You can even add your brand logo or a QR code.

Additionally, maintaining a strong brand identity throughout is simple thanks to the ability to change the colour theme on your customer and vendor portals. Furthermore, Zoho Books also allows you to customise email templates, triggered by actions like payments, refunds, and other tailored workflows.

The wider Zoho ecosystem

This is one of key benefits for businesses looking to use Zoho Books: the accounting software is just one part of a wider software ecosystem. Zoho has a full suite of tools (just note that these will have their own individual costs attached), including:

Zoho CRM: AI-powered CRM software for managing your customers
Zoho Mail: secure, ad-free business email
Zoho Desk: helpdesk software for keeping your customers satisfied
Zoho Voice: a unified cloud contact software
Zoho Bookings: scheduling for appointment-based businesses
Zoho Expense: for easy expense reporting
Zoho Sign: paperless, digital signature solution

In theory, business owners could run their entire operation all under the ‘Zoho’ roof. A major pain point for SMEs is having disparate software that doesn’t communicate effectively but Zoho solves this, ensuring that everything connects seamlessly.

AI features

As recently as February 2026, Zoho Books announced a new update that uses an AI agent to make bank reconciliation more efficient, eliminating time wasted on tedious admin. Using AI-powered Field Prediction, Zoho Books can now auto-fill data like:

Categories
Accounts
Vendors

The wider Zoho ecosystem comes embedded with Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant. Zia has a natural language functionality, so you can ask it questions in plain English. In Zoho Books specifically, it can assist business owners by detecting duplicate accounting entries, or flagging suspicious transactions.

The customer portal

Using Zoho’s customer portal, you can take payment from clients and customers using a variety of methods. The portal also allows you to connect with your customers from a dedicated tab, providing them with:

News about your events
Updates on offers
Notifications about your brand and products

Additional features

Zoho Books excels in its simplicity, providing users with quality-of-life features like:

A dedicated reminder button for chasing up clients
Automatic mileage calculation
Multi-currency support on the Professional plan (£20 plus VAT per month), which is good value for money at this price level
An accurate time tracking function that can be converted into billable hours
Out of all the accounting software we tested, Zoho Books was the highest rated for documenting transactions

Is Zoho Books MTD compatible?

If you’re looking for MTD compliant software, then the good news is that Zoho Books is now fully ready for both Making Tax Digital for Income Tax and VAT.

Zoho Books supports both sole trader and landlord income sources, and supports the standard update period (6 April to 5 April).

You can find more information about what’s required by HMRC in our Startups MTD compliance checklist.

What’s it like using Zoho Books?

Zoho Books has a clear, modern design that makes it great for inexperienced users. The simple, appealing interface makes it especially suitable for sole traders and microbusinesses, as it won’t be too overwhelming.

The Zoho Books dashboard has clearly been built with the needs of small business owners in mind, with important financial insights like cash flow and payments provided at a glance.

Screenshot of Zoho Books inventory management

Everything is logically laid out in Zoho Books, so you won’t find yourself hunting around. Source: Startups.co.uk

The invoicing system in particular stood out to us thanks to its user-friendly design. We did think the search functionality could have used some improvements though, as we needed to use exact naming conventions to be effective.

Is Zoho Books easy to use?

Out of all the accounting software I’ve tested, Zoho Books is the easiest, making for a highly intuitive bookkeeping experience.

The appealing user interface means Zoho Books only has a very short learning curve, especially when compared against more complex competitors like Xero or QuickBooks.

Zoho Books interface keeps things clean and clear, so you won’t feel lost when logging in. Source: Startups.co.uk

The well-signposted sidebar and handy dropdown menus made it feel like I could find anything I needed quickly and easily, especially core everyday tasks like quotes and invoices.

Overall, it’s logically built, nice to use, and shouldn’t require an over-reliance on help and support.

Who is Zoho Books best for?

The ease-of-use and free plan make Zoho Books best for sole traders and microbusinesses who need to prioritise accessibility and affordability.

Zoho Books could be used by accountants, but we feel its primary use would be for small, independent businesses like a wine merchant working across various clients.

Its simplicity and affordability does come with some limitations (like usage caps) so it would be less suitable for larger, and growing, organisations with more complex needs. We’d suggest looking at our review of Xero or Sage instead.

The design of Zoho Books suggests it’s geared towards small businesses and sole traders who need accessible accounting tools, without being accounting-specific.

Zoho Books: pros and cons

You can find the key pros and cons of Zoho Books below, and we’ll go into further detail about some important points for potential buyers:

Zoho Books pros

Incredibly easy to use
Completely free plan
Zoho has a wide eco-system of products, including CRM
Software is highly customisable, so you can tailor it to your needs

Zoho Books cons

Doesn't provide 24/7 help and support
Receipt capture is fairly basic: without paid add-on it requires manual entry
Outside of the Zoho ecosystem, third party integrations are limited
No payroll functionality

As we’ve mentioned, the free plan, wider ecosystem, and usability are the top pros of Zoho Books, but like any software, there are some important limitations you need to know before signing your business up:

Usage limits

You’ll need to take care when looking at the monthly subscriptions, as Zoho Books has some strict usage limits on certain actions. The free plan is definitely a great feature, but is only a viable solution if your activity is low.

You can find the key usage limits to be aware of in the below table:

Plan	Users	Locations	Invoice per year	Expenses and bills	Receipt autoscan per month
Free	One user, plus an accountant	None included	1,000	1,000 expenses	50
Standard	Three	None included	5,000	5,000 expenses	200
Professional	Five	None included	10,000	10,000 expenses and bills combined	200
Premium	Ten	Three	25,000	25,000 expenses and bills combined	1000
Elite	Ten	Eight	100,000	100,000 expenses and bills combined	1000
Ultimate	15	Eight	100.000	100,000 expenses and bills combined	1000

There are also some key features that only come bundled at higher price levels. For example, you can only add ‘bills’ into your system to manage your suppliers on the Professional plan (£24 plus VAT per month). This isn’t necessarily exclusive to Zoho, but if you’re VAT registered, it’s something you need to consider.

Upgrading difficulties

Our research suggested that there might be some difficulties if you’re a sole trader that wants to incorporate into a limited company at a later date, but want to keep the same Zoho Books license. Zoho Books’s support team appeared to suggest you’d need to create a new license, which isn’t ideal.

No 24/7 support

Unlike competitors such as Xero, Zoho Books doesn’t have 24/7 support. However, we will give it credit for having a dedicated phone support line, an increasing rarity for modern businesses:

Live chat is available: Monday to Friday, 09:00 – 18:00
Phone support is available Monday to Friday, 09:00 – 18:00
Email support is also available

How much does Zoho Books cost? (2026)

You can start off for free, but Zoho Books’s UK pricing for the paid tiers covers a wide range from £12 to £199. You’ll also get a discount if you opt to pay annually. There are six plans in total:

	Plan	Cost	Best suited for:	Features

Free	Standard	Professional	Premium	Elite	Ultimate
Free	Paid monthly: £12/month (+ VAT) Paid yearly: £10/month (+ VAT)	Paid monthly: £24/month (+ VAT) Paid yearly: £20/month (+ VAT)	Paid monthly: £30/month (+VAT) Paid yearly: £25/month (+ VAT)	Paid monthly: £99/month (+VAT) Paid yearly: £85/month (+ VAT)	Paid monthly: £199/month (+VAT) Paid yearly: £165/month (+ VAT)
Sole traders, freelancers, and microbusinesses who aren’t VAT registered	VAT-registered sole traders and small teams	Growing partnerships and LLPs with international clients	Established limited companies that need advanced automation for smooth workflows	Best for established businesses managing warehouses with large inventories	Best for large enterprises who need advanced analytics
Manage up to 1,000 invoices per year MTD VAT filing Expenses & mileage tracking	Manage up to 5,000 invoices Automatically import transactions Add recurring expenses	Bill management Multi-currency handling Retainer invoices	Track activity across multiple branches Custom domain Custom reports	Warehouse management Advanced inventory control Batch tracking	Create collaborative reports 50+ Pre-built data visualisation KPI tracking

We also found that if you get in touch with an expert, Zoho Books can help you transition out of your current contract if you’re in one.

Does Zoho Books have a free plan?

Yes, Zoho Books is one of the few accounting software platforms that offers a truly free plan, which is suitable for solopreneurs and micro-businesses.

Not only does it have a free plan, we recommend it as our number one free accounting software platform for small businesses.

The free plan can help you prepare for Self Assessment (SA103F & SA103S) and is also MTD for Income Tax ready.

Just keep in mind the limitations, like the 1000 invoice per year cap, so it won’t be suitable for all businesses. You also won’t be able to connect a bank feed. However, if you only have simple needs and low transaction limits, it’s a great option.

Are there any hidden costs?

Outside of the usage limits, the main thing to keep an eye out for with Zoho Books are the “add-on” costs:

Adding new users costs £2 per user, per month: if you need to add more staff this can add up quickly
Adding an additional location costs £9 per user, per month: keep this in mind if you have more than one base of operation
Expense claims come with an additional cost: £7 per user, per month

Zoho Books also offers an additional feature, BillPay, which costs an extra £25 per month. This includes tools like advanced purchase approval, enhanced vendor onboarding, and vendor approval.

Is there a free trial?

Yes, you can get a full-featured trial of Zoho Books for 14 days, with no credit card required. This is a great way to test out what Zoho Books is fully capable of and to see if it’s right for your business.

How we test and review Zoho Books

We worked alongside our in-house research team, testing seven of the top accounting software platforms (which included Zoho Books), amounting to a total of 57 hours of actual testing.

We carried out 37 user tests, and 555 tasks as part of this testing process, to rigorously review and analyse UK accounting software.

These tasks were separated into six categories, and each was given a relevant weighting . These six categories were devised by our research department as the most relevant testing criteria for a small business audience needing accounting software:

The core accounting tools that make up the backbone of the software
The features the software includes that assist you with financial planning
Tools that can make your day to day operations more efficient, like the number of third-party integrations
The avenues of help and support provided by the platform
How expensive the software is, including any hidden fees
How easy to use the software is

Zoho Books was tested on the above criteria, which included collecting research as well as extensive hands-on user testing.

Our Senior Reviews Writer on testing Zoho Books

I was able to get hands-on with Zoho Books as part of our extensive accounting software testing process, and found it to be incredibly easy to use. Out of all the accounting software platforms I tested, Zoho Books was my favourite in terms of usability and design.

Eddie Harris Senior Reviews Writer

Summary: is Zoho Books the right choice for my business?

Zoho Books is a great choice if your business is already working within the wider Zoho ecosystem, as you’ll find it to be a seamless transition. It’s a also a great choice if you’re a sole trader or microbusiness that wants a simple-to-use software for as cheap as possible: Zoho Books offers a completely free plan.

With Making Tax Digital starting in April 6 for those with a qualifying income over £50,000, and then being rolled out to lower earners in the coming years, it’s time for sole traders to get set up with software capable of keeping digital records and sending quarterly submissions.

Zoho Books is an excellent choice for easy, low-cost, MTD-ready software. If you want to understand more of what MTD requires, you can read about it in our full Startups MTD guide.

Zoho Books review: affordable, easy-to-use, but is it the best choice in 2026?

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Zoho Books at a glance