Zoho Books
Zoho Books free plan: what the 1,000-invoice limit means for a shop
The free plan's invoice cap and revenue limit as of October 2026, how fast a busy counter can reach them, and the three practical options when it does.
Zoho Books is popular with small businesses and their CAs, and its free plan is a sensible place to start. But the free plan has limits that were not designed with a busy shop counter in mind.
If you plan to put every counter bill into Zoho Books, read this first. The numbers below are from Zoho’s India pricing page as of October 2026. Zoho can change them at any time, so check the page before you decide.
What the free plan includes
According to Zoho’s pricing page, the Free plan gives you:
- 1 user plus 1 accountant
- up to 1,000 invoices a year
- up to 1,000 bills/expenses a year
- availability “as long as your revenue for the financial year does not exceed the threshold of 25 lakhs”
There are two separate limits here. One is the count of invoices. The other is your revenue. Either one can push you off the free plan.
How fast a shop reaches 1,000 invoices
Simple arithmetic shows the problem. 1,000 invoices a year is about 83 a month, or under 3 a day.
A consultant who raises ten invoices a month will never notice the cap. A kirana that makes 100 bills on a normal day would use up 1,000 invoices in ten days if each counter bill became a Zoho invoice. At 50 bills a day, it takes about three weeks.
The revenue limit matters too
The free plan is for businesses whose revenue for the financial year stays within ₹25 lakh. Spread across a year, ₹25 lakh is roughly ₹6,850 of sales a day.
Many busy shops sell more than that. If yours does, the free plan is not available to you regardless of how you count invoices. Check your last year’s turnover before planning around the free plan at all.
The paid plans
As of October 2026, Zoho lists these paid plans for India, per organisation per month, with local taxes extra:
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | ₹749 | ₹899 |
| Professional | ₹1,499 | ₹1,799 |
| Premium | ₹2,999 | ₹3,599 |
| Elite | ₹4,999 | ₹5,999 |
| Ultimate | ₹7,999 | ₹9,599 |
The Standard plan raises the invoice allowance to up to 5,000 invoices a year. At 100 bills a day that still runs out in under two months if every bill is its own invoice. Check the pricing page for the allowances on the higher plans.
The page does not say exactly what happens when you reach the free plan’s cap, or how the year is counted. Ask Zoho support before you get close, not after.
Your three options
1. Upgrade
If your CA wants each sale as a separate invoice in Zoho Books, a paid plan is the straightforward answer. Pick the plan by counting your real yearly bills, not by the headline price.
Two things to budget for. First, local taxes are charged on top of the listed prices. Second, yearly billing works out cheaper per month than monthly billing on every plan in the table above, but you pay for the year up front. If you are not sure the setup will suit your shop, a month or two on monthly billing costs a little more and commits you to less.
2. Record walk-in sales as a daily summary
Your billing software already gives each customer a bill. Your accounting books do not always need a separate invoice for every one of those bills. One common approach is to post one summary entry per day for walk-in cash and UPI sales, and keep the individual bills in the billing system.
This is an accounting decision for your CA, not something to decide alone. It also touches GST. For a regular GST dealer, Section 31(3)(b) of the CGST Act and Rule 46 allow a single consolidated tax invoice at the close of each day only for sales under ₹200 to unregistered customers who do not ask for an invoice. Larger sales still need their own tax invoice at the counter. So the counter bill and the books entry have different jobs. Ask your CA how a daily summary in Zoho fits your GST returns before you switch.
Credit (khata) customers and business buyers with a GSTIN usually need their own entries, so they can be tracked or claim input tax credit. Your CA will tell you which customers to keep separate.
3. Keep accounts elsewhere
Some CAs prefer TallyPrime or their own setup. In that case, the question becomes how to hand them clean data instead: a monthly sales summary by tax rate, purchase bills, expenses and bank statements, in a format their software can import. We cover that in what to send your CA.
Before you decide: a short checklist
- Count your bills for one normal week. Multiply by 52.
- Check last financial year’s revenue against ₹25 lakh.
- Ask your CA: separate invoice per bill, or daily summary for walk-in sales?
- Remember the bills/expenses limit too. Supplier bills and expenses have their own cap of 1,000 a year on the free plan.
- Re-read the Zoho pricing page on the day you decide.
Where Bazaar IQ fits
Bazaar IQ is a shop billing app that can sync sales, purchases and expenses to Zoho Books. Walk-in sales are consolidated into a single daily invoice rather than one invoice per counter bill, which keeps the invoice count far lower than a bill-by-bill sync. It does not guarantee you stay under any plan’s cap: purchases and expenses count against their own limit, your revenue still decides free plan eligibility, and your CA should confirm the daily summary approach suits your books and GST returns. If your CA prefers Tally, there is a TallyPrime export too.