Zoho Books Project Accounting for Service Businesses

Service businesses that bill per project need to track time, expenses, and budgets at the project level, bill accurately, and report profitability. Zoho Books accounting features project accounting module handles this without a separate project management tool.

When You Need Project Accounting

If your billing includes time-based billing, fixed-fee milestones, retainer agreements, or cost-plus projects, you need project accounting. Without it, your P&L shows total revenue and costs but not which projects are profitable.

Setting Up Projects

Go to Time Tracking > Projects > + New. Associate with a customer. Choose billing method: Fixed Cost, Based on Project Hours (single rate), or Based on Staff Hours (different rates per person). Set cost rate and billing rate per team member.

Logging Time

Team members log entries with date, hours, project, task, and description. Time can be logged via web, mobile app, or synced from Zoho implementation partner India Projects. Entries are categorised as billable or non-billable.

Tracking Project Expenses

Tag expenses to projects when creating them. Travel, software licenses, subcontractor fees flow into the project cost calculation and can be billed to the client with markup.

Invoicing from Project Data

Click Create Zoho Books complete setup guide from the project to compile all unbilled time and expenses into a draft invoice. Billed items are marked as invoiced and excluded from the next billing cycle.

Profitability Reports

The Project Summary report shows revenue, costs, and margin per project. Compare across your portfolio to identify which engagement types are most profitable.