Autoscan is the part of Zoho Books most firms try first for supplier invoices, because it is already there. It works, up to a point. The point is usually the scan allowance, and it arrives at the worst moment: the fifteenth of the month, mid-VAT-return, on the client whose plan is the cheapest.
Numbers below are from Zoho's public pricing and help pages on 26 September 2026; Zoho changes plan contents from time to time, so check the current page before you quote a client.
How many scans does each plan include?
Zoho's US pricing page lists receipt Autoscan allowances by plan: 50 scans a month on the Free plan and on trials, 200 a month on Standard and Professional, and 1,000 a month on Premium, Elite and Ultimate. Regional pricing pages follow the same tiers in local currency.
Two things about that allowance matter to a practice. It is per organisation, so every client company has its own counter. And it is a monthly allowance, so a client who receives 300 invoices in the month they fit out a shop and 40 the rest of the year cannot bank the quiet months.
What does an extra 50 cost, and when does it expire?
The Document Autoscans add-on is 50 scans a month for USD 10, or EUR 10 in the eurozone, and USD 8 a month on annual billing. It is the one add-on Zoho allows on the Free plan. Purchased scans, per Zoho's help centre, are available for three months from the issue date; unused scans are removed after that.
The arithmetic is not the problem at ten euros. The problem is who buys it. Add-ons are billed to the client's organisation, so the firm either asks forty clients to add a card and a subscription each, or re-bills, or simply keys the overflow by hand. Most firms we talk to do the last one.
Does Autoscan read line items?
Yes, according to Zoho's Documents help page: Autoscan captures the date, amount, merchant name and line item details, and pre-fills a bill, expense or bank transaction from them. It reads fifteen languages including English, Dutch, German, French, Italian and Spanish, and each organisation gets a unique email address so documents can be forwarded straight in.
What it does not do is code the lines. Account, tax rate, project and cost centre are chosen in the bill form after the scan, one line at a time, with no memory of how the same vendor was coded last month. For a two-line invoice that is fine. For the 26-line telecom invoice it is where the twenty minutes go.
Can a firm share scans across client organisations?
No. Allowances and add-ons belong to the organisation, not to the accountant's login, and Zoho does not offer a practice-level pool. A firm with forty clients has forty scan budgets, forty document inboxes and forty places to look for what is pending. That is the structural limit, and it is the one no add-on fixes.
What are the alternatives?
There are three ways out, in increasing order of change.
Upgrade the client's plan. Standard gives 200 scans, Premium 1,000. Sensible when the client needs the plan anyway; expensive when a micro-business is on Free for a reason.
Add a capture tool that posts into Zoho Books. Dext does, on a per-client subscription with a minimum of ten clients. The comparison has the current prices.
Move capture to a firm-level workspace. This is what Invoreg is: one queue for every client organisation, the AI reading every line and proposing the coding from that client's history, one click to register the bill in the right Zoho Books, and pricing per invoice at €0.35 with no per-organisation budget to manage. Documents are processed in the EU. Zoho Books Autoscan vs Invoreg sets the two side by side, feature by feature.
What to do this week
Count your clients' scan allowances against their monthly invoice volume; the ones that will run out are obvious. For the clients where Autoscan fits, leave it. For the rest, time ten invoices through whatever you try next, including the coding, and compare that number with the two minutes a scanned-then-coded invoice takes today. Book a demo if you want to run the test on Invoreg with your own documents.