Are you a services business that needs Projects, or a manufacturer Zoho cannot fully serve?
Hyderabad splits into two setups with almost nothing in common, and the assessment exists to establish which one you are. An IT or consulting business needs project accounting, time tracking and billable expenses, which Zoho Books does well from the Professional tier. A pharmaceutical or nutraceutical manufacturer needs batch and expiry tracking, which it does not do well, and pretending otherwise creates a system nobody trusts within six months.
For services, whether project accounting sits inside Books or in Zoho Projects with the accounting integrated, which turns on how much non-financial project management you need. For manufacturers, whether Zoho is the right platform at all, or whether the financials should move while batch-tracked inventory stays where it works.
Books with Projects for engagement-billed services. Books with limited inventory for pharma financials, with batch tracking kept elsewhere. Multi-currency configured wherever overseas clients are involved, which in this city is most of the services segment.
For a Hyderabad services firm the module that justifies the whole move is project accounting rather than cloud access, and it is available from the Professional tier upward. Billing by project or milestone, tracking time and cost against it, and seeing profitability per engagement has no clean equivalent in a standard Tally setup. That is a genuine reason to move. Cloud access alone rarely is, and a firm told that cloud access is the benefit is being sold on the weakest available argument.
Before anything else on this page, take thirty seconds and check where your books actually are. Log into Zoho Books and read the address bar: zoho.in is the India data centre, zoho.com is the United States, zoho.eu is Europe. The region was fixed when the organisation was created and Zoho does not replicate data across regions, so that is genuinely where your books live, backups included. An Indian business that signed up through a global link, or whose organisation was created by a consultant abroad, can be running entirely in a United States data centre while assuming otherwise. Since 1 April 2026 the country of storage is a disclosed item in the tax audit report, and changing region afterwards is a migration rather than a setting.
| Item | Position as at August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Daily backup requirement | Rule 46(8), Income-tax Rules 2026, from 1 April 2026 |
| Who it binds | Everyone under sections 62 and 63. Companies, LLPs, firms, proprietors, professionals |
| Where the backup must sit | Servers physically located in India, updated at the close of each business day |
| Accessibility | Electronic books must remain accessible in India at all times, not merely retrievable on request |
| Penalty | Rs 25,000, plus Rs 10,000 on the auditor for incorrect certification |
| Tax audit form | Form No. 26, which replaced Forms 3CA, 3CB and 3CD |
| What Form 26 asks | Software name, server IP address, country of storage, India backup address |
| How to check your data centre | Your Zoho URL. zoho.in is India, zoho.com is the United States |
| Company audit trail | Rule 3(1), Companies (Accounts) Rules 2014, financial years from 1 April 2023 |
| Company cloud filing | Rule 3(6). Annual intimation to the Registrar of the provider, its IP addresses and location |
| GST edit log | Rule 56(8) CGST. Every registered person keeping electronic records, since 2017 |
| Plan driver | Number of GSTINs you file from, not turnover |
| Plan | Fee | Built for |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Rs 4,999 one-time | One organisation, one GSTIN |
| Setup Plus | Rs 14,999 one-time | Multi-GSTIN, or coming from another system |
| Setup and Run | Rs 6,999 a month | Set up and then kept, with Setup Plus included |
| Data centre migration assessment | Rs 4,999 | Where the organisation is in the wrong region |
| Chart of accounts redesign | From Rs 7,999 | Where the default was kept and reporting is useless |
Your Zoho Books subscription is paid by you directly to Zoho, not through us and not marked up by us. Plan tier is driven by the number of GSTINs you file from rather than by turnover, and plans carry annual document caps as well as user and GSTIN limits. Confirm current pricing on Zoho's own site before you budget.
Every price above is a professional fee, excluding GST and government charges. 50% on delivery.
All fees and charges listed are indicative only and do not constitute a binding offer. Final amounts may vary depending on the volume of work and the complexity involved.
Project accounting, which is available from the Professional tier and covers billing by project or milestone, time tracking and billable expenses, with profitability visible per engagement. Where you also need substantial non-financial project management, Zoho Projects integrated with Books is the fuller answer. For most consultancies the Books capability alone is sufficient and the additional subscription is not.
Not to the depth a formulation or nutraceutical business needs. Batch and expiry-driven valuation is where Zoho Books is weakest and where Tally is strongest, and configuration does not close the gap. For a pharma-adjacent manufacturer we would usually recommend moving the financial side and leaving batch-tracked inventory where it works, rather than forcing a single platform and losing control of stock.
Multi-currency, available from the Professional tier, set up so exchange differences are captured at invoice date, receipt date and reporting date rather than converted at a single rate. Export of services also needs treating as zero-rated where the conditions are met, which requires a Letter of Undertaking so you are not charging IGST and recovering it months later. Both are setup decisions rather than monthly ones.
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Reviewed by the CA and CS Team, CorporateWalla · Last updated 17 August 2026 · · Sources: Zoho Books India pricing, Income Tax Department, Ministry of Corporate Affairs
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