Buy by job, not by category
Most software lists for Indian small businesses are organised the way vendors sell, not the way owners buy. Nobody wakes up needing “a CRM.” You wake up needing to know which of last month’s forty enquiries never got a call back, whether GSTR-1 will reconcile, and why ₹4 lakh of invoices are still unpaid. So we have arranged this guide around five jobs: getting paid, keeping the books, chasing leads, paying staff, and talking to customers.
Two things run through all of it. First, the subscription price is usually not the real cost — for most trading and retail businesses the payment processor’s cut is several times the software bill, and we do that arithmetic below. Second, every rupee figure here came from the vendor’s own pricing page when we checked, but pricing moves and GST and payroll rules move faster. Confirm on the vendor’s live page before committing, and take anything with a tax consequence to your chartered accountant, not a blog.
Getting paid: gateways, QR codes and collections
This is the one category where a wrong choice costs real money every month, so start here.
Razorpay publishes a flat 2% plus GST across cards, UPI, wallets and net banking, with no setup fee and no annual maintenance charge. Cashfree Payments advertises rates from 1.95%, charges 2.50% on international Visa and Mastercard and a 2% platform fee on RuPay, has no setup fee, but does list a ₹4,999 annual maintenance contract. PhonePe’s gateway shows 1.99% struck through against a promotional “Free” offer with conditions attached, and zero setup and maintenance fees.
Those rates are close enough that they should not decide the matter alone. Settlement speed, refund handling and how fast a human answers when a batch fails matter more once you are live. Card rates are often negotiable once you have volume history, so ask again at six months — and a pricing page is only a starting point; your merchant agreement governs you.
If you run a counter rather than a website, a static UPI QR plus a card machine covers you, and the QR is where you want the volume to land. Here is why.
What UPI, cards and net banking really do to your margin
The merchant discount rate — MDR — is the slice the payment chain keeps from every rupee a customer hands you. It is not a bill you pay at month end; it comes out before the money reaches your account, which is exactly why owners underestimate it.
Since 2020, UPI person-to-merchant and RuPay debit transactions have carried zero MDR for merchants by law — the single largest cost advantage available to an Indian small business, and the reason QR codes are everywhere. Credit cards and net banking have no such protection: you pay whatever your gateway or acquirer agreed with you, commonly around 2% plus GST online.
This is live policy, not settled ground. In August 2026 Parliament passed the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, amending the provision that made zero MDR mandatory. Reporting at the time pointed to a rate near 0.4% applying only above ₹2,000 at large merchants, with the Finance Minister stating consumers will continue to use UPI free. Nothing had taken effect and no rate had been notified when we checked. As a small merchant, keep pushing volume to UPI and watch for an actual notification rather than a headline.
Now the arithmetic. Take a shop turning over ₹10 lakh a month at a 12% gross margin — ₹1,20,000 of gross profit. If ₹9 lakh runs over credit cards at 2% plus 18% GST on the fee, that is ₹18,000 plus ₹3,240, so ₹21,240 a month: roughly 18% of the entire gross margin gone before rent, salaries or electricity. Move ₹7 lakh onto UPI at zero MDR and leave ₹2 lakh on cards, and the fee falls to ₹4,000 plus ₹720, or ₹4,720 — under 4% of gross margin. That is about ₹16,500 a month, close to ₹2 lakh a year, for a decision costing nothing but a printed QR code at the till. At a 12% margin, a 2% MDR is a sixth of your profit. Treat it as a pricing input, not an admin detail.
Keeping the books: GST-ready accounting and invoicing
Zoho Books is the default cloud option and has an unusually generous entry point for India: a free plan that stays free as long as your revenue for the financial year does not cross ₹25 lakh, covering one user plus an accountant and up to 1,000 invoices a year. Above that, Standard is ₹899 a month, or ₹749 billed annually, for three users and 5,000 invoices a year; Professional is ₹1,799 monthly or ₹1,499 annually for five users and 10,000 invoices. Prices exclude local taxes, and GST reporting and e-invoicing are on the plan list.
TallyPrime remains the incumbent wherever your CA and suppliers already live in it, and is priced quite differently. Silver, the single-user edition, is ₹750 a month on rental, ₹8,100 for twelve months, or ₹22,500 as a lifetime licence. Gold, multi-user, is ₹2,250 a month, ₹24,300 for twelve months, or ₹67,500 lifetime. All exclude 18% GST. Silver to Gold is the real decision point, because a second billing counter needing simultaneous access forces it.
Vyapar targets the smaller end with mobile and desktop plans and a free tier; its pricing page renders dynamically, so read the figures there rather than from a third-party listing. Khatabook and OkCredit sit a rung lower — useful digital replacements for the udhaar bahi, but ledgers, not accounting systems. They will not produce a GST return, and treating them as your books is how businesses end up reconstructing a year of transactions in March.
Our rule of thumb: if your CA works in Tally, the cost of moving them off it usually exceeds the licence saving. Without that gravity, cloud books serve you better.
Chasing leads without paying for empty seats
Per-seat pricing punishes small teams that want visibility across everyone. Zoho CRM is free for up to three users, with Standard listed at ₹800 per user per month, Professional ₹1,400 and Enterprise ₹2,400 — check the monthly-versus-annual toggle, because the two differ. HubSpot’s free CRM tools are listed at $0 for two users and 1,000 contacts, with Starter from $7 per seat per month on annual billing; it is priced in dollars, so your cost drifts with the exchange rate.
Kylas inverts this — a flat monthly fee with unlimited users, plus a free lifetime tier capped by record count. The pricing table does not display the paid figure, so ask directly. For a ten-person team where six touch customers, flat-fee pricing beats per-seat comfortably; for a three-person team, the free tiers will do for another year.
Whichever you pick, do not buy a CRM to fix a process you have not written down. A shared sheet with an owner and a next-action date beats an unmaintained CRM every time.
Paying staff without tripping over EPF, ESI and TDS
Zoho Payroll has the most useful free tier here: no charge up to ten employees, including automatic payslips, EPF, ESI, state-wise professional tax and LWF handling, and an automatic TDS worksheet. Standard is ₹1,250 per organisation per month for 25 employees, or ₹1,000 billed annually, with extra employees at ₹50 or ₹40. Professional is ₹3,750 monthly or ₹3,000 annually for 50 employees. All exclude GST.
RazorpayX Payroll starts at ₹2,499 a month for up to 20 employees on Prime, with Elite at ₹5,499 covering up to 100 and ₹150 per additional employee, plus 18% GST. No free plan, but compliance payments and filings are bundled. greytHR suits larger headcounts: Essential ₹2,495 a month including 50 employees at ₹45 per extra, Growth ₹4,495 at ₹85. Under about fifteen staff you are paying for capacity you will not use. Keka does not publish figures and works on quotes.
Automating a statutory calculation does not transfer responsibility for it. Registration thresholds, exemptions and due dates for EPF, ESI and TDS change, and the liability stays with you. This is where a chartered accountant earns their fee.
Talking to customers: the two very different WhatsApps
These are constantly confused and they are not the same product. The WhatsApp Business App is the free download — catalogue, quick replies, labels, away messages — operated by a person on a phone. It is the right answer for the overwhelming majority of small businesses and costs nothing.
The WhatsApp Business Platform, often called the API, is the automated version, billed per message delivered and priced by category. Marketing, utility and authentication messages are charged, with volume tiers reducing utility and authentication rates as you scale. Service messages — replies inside the 24-hour window a customer opens by messaging you first — are free, and conversations starting from a click-to-WhatsApp ad are free for 72 hours. So reactive support costs nothing while outbound promotion runs a per-message meter. Do not move to the Platform until volume forces it.
Side by side: cost and where each one stops
| Tool | Job | Listed INR cost | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho Books Standard | Books, GST invoicing | ₹899/month; ₹749/month billed annually (free under ₹25 lakh revenue) | Three users; invoice cap is annual, not monthly |
| TallyPrime Silver | Desktop accounting | ₹750/month, ₹8,100/year, or ₹22,500 lifetime (excl. GST) | Single user at a time; a second counter forces Gold |
| TallyPrime Gold | Multi-user accounting | ₹2,250/month, ₹24,300/year, or ₹67,500 lifetime (excl. GST) | Triple the Silver price for the same feature set |
| Zoho CRM Standard | Leads and pipeline | ₹800/user/month as listed; free for 3 users | Per-seat cost scales with headcount, not usage |
| Kylas | Leads and pipeline | Flat fee, unlimited users; free tier capped by records | Paid price not shown on the pricing table |
| Zoho Payroll Free | Payroll, EPF/ESI/TDS | ₹0 up to 10 employees | Hard stop at 10 employees |
| Zoho Payroll Standard | Payroll and compliance | ₹1,250/month, or ₹1,000/month annually, 25 employees | Extra employees billed at ₹40–₹50 each |
| RazorpayX Payroll Prime | Payroll and compliance | ₹2,499/month up to 20 employees, plus 18% GST | No free tier at any size |
| greytHR Essential | Payroll and HR | ₹2,495/month including 50 employees | Priced for 50; poor value below about 15 staff |
| Razorpay | Online collections | 2% + GST across modes; no setup or AMC | Flat rate means no discount for UPI-heavy mixes |
| Cashfree | Online collections | From 1.95%; 2.50% international; ₹4,999 annual AMC | The AMC is a fixed cost regardless of volume |
| WhatsApp Business Platform | Automated messaging | Per delivered message by category (the basic app is free) | Outbound marketing metered; needs a provider to set up |
Two stacks, fully costed
A five-person services firm
A design studio of five, turnover above ₹25 lakh so the free books tier is out, three of them client-facing. Zoho Books Professional on annual billing covers all five users at ₹1,499 a month. Zoho CRM Standard for three seats is 3 × ₹800 = ₹2,400. Payroll is free at five employees; WhatsApp Business App is free. That is ₹3,899 a month before tax, ₹4,601 with 18% GST, or roughly ₹55,200 a year — and if you are GST-registered, that GST is input credit, not cost.
Now the part that surprises people. If ₹4 lakh a month of client payments runs through a gateway at 2%, that is ₹8,000 plus ₹1,440 GST — ₹9,440 a month, more than double the entire software bill. For a services firm the fix is simple: invoice with your bank details and a UPI ID, keep the gateway as a convenience option, and most of that cost disappears.
A single-location retail shop
Three staff, two billing counters, ₹10 lakh a month. Two counters means TallyPrime Gold rather than Silver: ₹24,300 a year, or ₹2,025 a month, ₹2,390 with GST. Payroll is free at three employees, no CRM needed, WhatsApp Business App free. Software: about ₹2,390 a month.
With the payment mix above — ₹7 lakh UPI, ₹2 lakh cards, ₹1 lakh cash — processing costs about ₹4,720. Total: roughly ₹7,110 a month, two-thirds of it payment processing on a single ₹2 lakh slice of card volume. If you manage one number in a retail business, it is not the software line.
Before you sign: getting your data back out
The moment to think about leaving is before you arrive: the vendor’s negotiating position at renewal is exactly as strong as your data is stuck.
Run this check during the trial. Export your customer and supplier masters, full invoice history with line items, chart of accounts and journal entries, then open the files and look for what did not come out. Attachments — signed POs, delivery challans, uploaded bank statements — very often stay behind, as do audit trails, custom fields, and CRM notes and call logs: frequently the most valuable and least portable data you hold. Check too whether API access, which is how a real migration gets done, sits behind a higher plan than the one you are buying.
Two India-specific wrinkles. Perpetual licences and subscriptions fail differently: a TallyPrime lifetime licence keeps running when the support subscription lapses, but updates stop, and statutory formats change — confirm current terms with Tally before relying on it. And GST requires records to be retained for a defined period, so “we cancelled and lost access” is a bad position in an assessment. Keep an annual offline export somewhere you control, whatever the vendor.
Questions Indian SME owners keep asking
Do I need paid accounting software if my turnover is small?
Not necessarily. Under ₹25 lakh of annual revenue the Zoho Books free plan is a real accounting system, not a trial. What you should not do is run on a ledger app like Khatabook and call it books — those track who owes you money, they do not produce a return.
Is UPI genuinely free for merchants right now?
For UPI person-to-merchant and RuPay debit, yes. Parliament amended the underlying law in August 2026 and a charge on high-value transactions at large merchants has been reported as under consideration, but nothing had been notified when we checked. Wait for an actual notification before changing your pricing.
Is Tally still worth it against cloud software?
That depends on your CA and your trade. Where your accountant, auditor and suppliers all work in Tally, moving them costs more than the licence. Where they do not, cloud books give you access from anywhere and cheaper multi-user access.
Do these tools handle GST filing on their own?
They prepare returns and generate e-invoices; the filing and its accuracy remain yours. Reconciliation against supplier data is where most SMEs get caught, and that deserves a professional review before filing rather than after a notice.
Should I move to the WhatsApp Business API?
Only when manual replies stop coping, or when you need automated order and delivery notifications. The free app handles a surprising volume, and per-message billing on marketing messages is easy to underestimate.
How do I stop the software bill creeping up?
Diary a review a month before every renewal, count active users against paid seats, and export your data annually whether or not you plan to move.
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