Zoho unveils AI-powered spend & billing tools

Zoho has introduced a new spend management suite, Zoho Spend, and an enterprise edition of its Zoho Billing product, in a move aimed at large organisations that want closer control of billing and company-wide expenditure.

The India-headquartered software group is positioning the two offerings as part of its broader Finance and Operations Platform for larger businesses that manage complex procurement, payroll and revenue models while expanding across multiple markets.

At the same time, Zoho has expanded the use of its proprietary artificial intelligence tools across the finance suite. The company said the tools draw on its own large language model, Zia, and focus on automation, anomaly detection and forecasting while keeping customer financial data inside Zoho's environment.

"Enterprises are looking for more control over spend and revenue, but they don't want that control to come at the cost of agility," said Sachin Agrawal, Managing Director of Zoho UK. "Zoho Spend reflects customers' demand for centralised spend management across core finance processes, while Zoho Billing Enterprise Edition gives organisations the flexibility to support more sophisticated monetisation and pricing strategies as their business scales."

Unified spend view

Zoho describes Zoho Spend as an all-in-one system that combines procurement, accounts payable automation, corporate travel booking, employee expense management and payroll. The software provides a single dashboard that brings these areas together and offers finance leaders a consolidated view of budgets and outgoings.

The company said many large organisations still rely on disconnected tools for these activities. It said this fragmentation can limit visibility, hinder managers' ability to track approvals and variance against budgets, and create gaps in oversight and compliance.

Zoho Spend groups major spend categories, including payroll, on one platform. The product is designed to give finance teams a clearer line of sight over company-wide spending and tighter controls over approvals and policies.

In procurement, Zoho Spend supports the source-to-pay cycle, with digital vendor onboarding and tools for managing requests for quotation, purchase requisitions, purchase orders and bills in one place. It also surfaces vendor-level and category-level data that the company said can inform supplier negotiations.

Travel management in Zoho Spend centres on a self-booking tool. It offers access to a global inventory of flights through more than 30 direct New Distribution Capability connections and corporate fares that customers have agreed with airlines or agents. Staff can search, compare and book flights themselves while remaining within company travel policies.

The expense management component automates the expense reporting workflow, from capturing receipts through to reimbursement. It enforces compliance with corporate policies, per diem structures, tax rules and mileage regulations.

Payroll functions sit inside the same environment. Zoho said the system handles automated payroll processing with support for federal, state and local tax compliance in all 50 US states. It also manages employee benefits such as healthcare, retirement savings, paid time off and employer-funded accounts including 401(k), 403(b), health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts.

Companies with multi-state operations or remote staff can run a single payroll for employees in different states and apply the relevant tax rules automatically.

Zoho Spend also includes accounts payable automation. It uses optical character recognition for bill capture, supports two-way and three-way matching, and offers approval workflows for individual or batch payments along with automated reconciliation.

Enterprise billing focus

Zoho Billing Enterprise Edition targets larger organisations that run complex or mixed revenue models. It supports standard, project-based, subscription and usage-based billing, and is designed to adapt quickly when companies alter pricing or add new services.

The software currently ships with 15 country-specific editions that align with local tax rules. It supports e-invoicing in nine countries, including Mexico, India and Germany, which Zoho said gives customers a route to comply with tightening digital invoicing mandates in different jurisdictions.

Automated collection workflows sit within the product. Zoho said these workflows aim to reduce days sales outstanding and improve the timeliness of payments.

Customer lifecycle tools in Zoho Billing Enterprise Edition cover stages such as free trial, conversion to paying customer, plan changes and retention. The platform records customer interactions across those stages in one system.

The billing product also includes built-in revenue recognition features aligned with ASC 606 and IFRS 15 accounting standards. Finance teams can automate revenue recognition and shorten the month-end close while monitoring revenue performance in real time.

Role-based dashboards and reporting enable teams to view billing data and performance metrics according to their responsibilities.

AI across finance suite

Zoho has extended AI functions, driven by its Zia large language model, across applications within the Finance and Operations Platform. The company builds and operates this model in-house and said it keeps customer data inside Zoho-managed infrastructure.

Ask Zia sits within the billing environment as a finance assistant. Users enter prompts that range from straightforward questions to more complex commands. The assistant then returns insights on billing efficiency, customer behaviour and overall financial performance.

Zia Insights analyses key reports. It highlights anomalies, tracks trends and produces forecasts based on historical data. Finance leaders can use the AI-based revenue forecasting tool to identify potential risks and opportunities and adjust their plans.

Across the wider suite, Ask Zia provides a similar conversational interface aimed at helping customers understand their business metrics. Co-Create Agent exposes the steps that Zia takes when working on tasks, and allows users to intervene or take over at any point. The agent can generate invoices, quotes, credit notes, sales orders and custom reports from specified data sets.

Bank reconciliation features in the AI layer make automated suggestions on how to categorise transactions across income, expenses, sales and other accounts. The intention is to reduce manual data entry and the risk of errors.

AI-based revenue forecasting examines past financial data and suggests likely trends, which can inform longer-term financial planning. Anomaly detection flags irregularities in transactions in real time so that users can review and correct them quickly.

Zoho has also introduced additional AI-driven tools, including Generated Blueprints, AI Custom Fields, Invoicing Agent, AI Summary and Write with Zia.

"When it comes to AI and data privacy, there is no greater concern than the safety of a customer's financial information. The AI tools introduced today across Zoho's extensive Finance and Operations Platform serve as the perfect user assistant: providing deep insights and forecasting into company finances, flagging inconsistencies, and automating repetitive tasks-all within Zoho's own Zia LLM to ensure that a customer's data is never at risk."