What's New in Zoho Books - August 2024

What's New in Zoho Books - August 2024

Hello users,

We've rolled out new features and enhancements to elevate your accounting experience in Zoho Books. Dive in to discover what's new in Zoho Books this August.

Update Reports Permissions


We’ve enhanced report permissions in Zoho Books to make your organization more secure. For new organizations, you will need to give access to both reports and the related modules while creating roles. For existing organizations, you will get a notification and should edit the roles missing these permissions. We’ve also added a "Skip Module Access" option so you can share reports with specific users without enabling module permissions for them.


Create Custom Dashboards


You can now customize your dashboards using predefined components, marketplace widgets, and reports. You will be able to reorder, edit, delete, and resize the charts and components in the dashboard. You can also mark your custom dashboards as favorites and manage dashboard permissions for your users. Please note that this feature is only available for the Elite and Ultimate plans of Zoho Books.


Migrate to Kenya Edition  [Kenya Edition]


We have introduced a new migration tool that allows you to migrate your Zoho Books organization from Global to Kenya edition effortlessly. This tool will appear at the top of the left sidebar if certain prerequisites are met and highlights the features available in the Kenya edition. You will also be able to disable all unsupported preferences with a single click.

If your organization has no existing taxes, the migration will occur immediately. If there are existing taxes, you will be able to replace them with edition-specific taxes or delete them.


Add Dispatch From Address [India Edition]


A dispatch address in Zoho Books is the location from which your goods are shipped. For e-Invoice enabled organizations, you can include this address in templates and PDFs of invoices and credit notes. It supports various templates like Spreadsheet, Spreadsheet Plus, Spreadsheet Lite, and custom templates.

To enable this feature, go to Settings > Customization > PDF Templates > Templates > Invoices/Credit Notes. Edit a template that supports dispatch addresses and check the Show Dispatch From Address box in the Transaction Details section.


e-Invoice QR Reader App [India Edition]


We have introduced the e-Invoice QR Reader app for iOS and iPadOS users of Zoho Books. This app scans, decrypts, and validates your e-Invoice QR codes in compliance with India's tax regulations.

Every e-invoice generated in the GST portal has a unique QR code containing crucial details such as the GSTIN and seller information. When you scan a valid QR code using the app, it displays essential invoice details like the organization name, GSTIN invoice date, total, and tax total. If an invalid QR code is scanned, the app immediately notifies the user. Download the E-invoice QR Reader app today to streamline your e-invoicing process.


Wio Bank Integration [United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman Editions]


Wio is a digital finance platform licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE that offers personal and business banking services. If you have an account with Wio Bank, you can connect it with your Zoho books organization. Once you connect your bank account, you will be able to automatically fetch your bank feeds to Zoho Books without a third-party service provider.

To connect your Wio Bank account with Zoho Books, go to Banking > Add Bank or Credit Card > Wio Bank PJSC and then click Yes, Configure bank account in the popup that appears.


VAT Carry Forward [Kenya Edition]


Zoho Books now supports VAT carry forward in the VAT3 return, which allows you to carry forward excess VAT from one tax period to the next. If the current VAT value is claimable, you can select the carry forward option, and the amount will be reflected in Box 17. This allows businesses to use the extra VAT from past periods to reduce their future VAT payments and report taxes accurately.

Late Payment Penalties for VAT [Kenya Edition]


In Kenya, late VAT payments incur a 10% penalty, and the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) adds another 20% penalty on unpaid amounts. To handle this in the VAT3 return, we've introduced a new flow. First, the total tax due is recorded in the VAT Payable Account, whereas the penalties and interest will be tracked in an expense account. Finally, these amounts will be settled using a specific bank account to ensure financial balance.

TDS Receivables Summary Report  [India Edition]


We have introduced the TDS receivables summary report that summarizes the total TDS deductions made on invoices, bills of supply, customer debit notes, and credit notes in your organization. Additionally, the report can be grouped based on customers or TDS sections , and the columns in the report can be customized. You can use this report to verify the TDS amount deducted and reported in your Form 26AS.
 
To view your Tax Receivables Summary report, go to Reports > Taxes and select TDS Receivables Summary.


Enhanced Barcode Templates

We have made some enhancements to the barcodes in Zoho Books. Now, you can add fields like MRP (Maximum Retail Price), Organization Name, and Company Logo to your barcode templates. Additionally, you can now add units (e.g., kg, litres, pieces) to barcodes, displaying the item's measurement information along with your organization name.

To enable these features in your barcode templates, go to Settings > Items > Field Customization.


Other Feature Enhancements

  • Use custom fields to search for manual journals in the advanced search bar.

  • You can now calculate custom formula fields for all existing records, not just new or edited ones. Once the existing records are updated, you'll receive a notification.

  • Export your manual journals in bulk faster by processing files in the background and sending them to your primary email.

  • You can now include the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of an item while creating or editing it. [India Edition] 

  • You can now apply Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) in your quotes, sales orders, credit notes, recurring invoices, purchase orders, and vendor credits. [India Edition]

That's it from us for this month's product updates! We hope the latest enhancements are helpful for your business. You can also visit the What's New timeline for byte-sized information about our previous feature updates and enhancements.

We'll catch you in next month's product updates. Until then, if you require any assistance or need clarifications, feel free to write to us at support@zohobooks.com, we'd be happy to help!


Best regards,
The Zoho Books Team





    • Recent Topics

    • Disposable Email Addresses

      Dear zMail Team, Can you also bring out a few disposable email addresses for each accounts? That way occasional registrations and imminent spam from them can be largely solved right? ---- Deepak Vasudevan http://thamizhththendral.blogspot.com/

    • Zoho sheet - Zoho expense

      I want to schedule to create an expense using Zoho Sheet and flow. That is the EMI that I pay on a particular date to the bank and should be itemised, like principal and interest on the loan. Can someone help me in this regard??

    • Ability to configure a schedule/shift for each user and/or crew in Zoho FSM

      Hello, In our team of Field Agents, we have different shifts. Some field agent always work from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM while others work the evening shift like 4:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Sometime shift are on weekdays only or on weekend. It would be great to be

    • Free webinar: Streamlining customer service paperwork with the Zoho Sign extension for Zoho Desk

      Hello Everyone! Have you been wondering about bridging the gap between digitised customer service and business paperwork? Join our free webinar to learn how you can do this by connecting Zoho Sign, our digital signature app, with Zoho Desk, our online

    • Zoho Books | Product updates | July 2025

      Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From plan-based trials to the option to mark PDF templates as inactive, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Introducing Plan Based Trials in Zoho

    • Mail Search should allow grouping by conversation like Gmail.

      Having switched from gmail I have found the search function hard to use. Mostly because mail is not grouped by conversation in search. If I search for a word when looking for a conversation had with someone then sometimes 10 emails will come up from the

    • Improve Zoho Learn updated article notifications

      I noticed today while updating an article, that the notification users get says "[User Name] has published article [Article Name]..." My feedback to the product team is that it would be really helpful for an end user, if the system notification differentiated

    • Safari Support

      Safari, the world's second largest browser, zoho desk does not officially or fully support. That needs to change.

    • Can I get images from an "Image Upload" field in a webhook?

      I want to send images from 2 "image upload" fields via a webhook. Is this possible?

    • Ticket closure notification - all contacts cc'd on email thread

      Hello, If a client sends an email to our service desk and cc's in other people that work at the same company - so that they are in the loop of the service request. When the we close the ticket, only the ticket owner (person who emailed us - which created

    • Inactive account cleanup policy for Zoho Sign

      Zoho Sign reserves the right to delete accounts that are license free and inactive for more than 120 days. The account deletion will be initiated only after the user receives prior email notice about possible data deletion and how to backup the data.

    • Missde API documentation for Sales Receipt

      Hi! I noticed that the Sales Receipt endpoint is not currently listed in your API documentation (https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/introduction/). Could you please provide any available temporary documentation for this endpoint, along with a detailed

    • Multi-currency in Zoho CRM Forecast and Reports

      As a company we have branches in 4 different countries with as many different currencies. Our Sales Teams would like to work with their local currency as much as possible. The Forecast module using only 1 currency is practically usable only by the sales

    • How to select from pricebook when creating a salesorder or quote

      I am creating a sales order and when selecting the Products I do not see any where to select from pricebooks. How do i associate this to my orders?

    • Proposal for Creating a Unique "Address" Entity in Zoho FSM

      The "Address" entity is one of the most critical components for a service-oriented company. While homeowners may change and servicing companies may vary, the address itself remains constant. This constancy is essential for subsequent services, as it provides

    • Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

      Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these

    • I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023

      I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023.

    • System default SLA descriptions can't be modified

      The system default SLAs have identical descriptions for all SLA levels, but their settings differ. However, I am facing an issue where I cannot modify these descriptions and save the changes. The content of the description box can be edited but the changes

    • Customising Help Center

      Hi I don't think it is possible to add custom pages to help center? We'd like to use this as a customer portal with support tickets, FAQ/Guides, Billing and contracts. Is there any plans to add a feature like this or an alternative way to do it other

    • Replies sometimes creating separate ticket

      Sometimes when a customer responds to an email coming from Zoho Desk, instead of adding a reply to the original ticket, a separate ticket is created. This happens even though the response subject line contained the ticket number, and the person responding

    • Ticket Approvals - External Users

      The ticket approval option - we need to be able to select external users (Contacts) for approvals. Sometimes we are working with an end user and their boss needs to approve a purchase. For example, working with a cashier on a broken cash register and

    • Force Users to Ask Answer Bot a question... First

      End users will always skip talking to a bot. It would be nice if Zoho adopted the standard and forced users to first ask a question to answer bot (or zia in some fashion) and then pass to the agent if it wasn't answered. Options to force the user to speak

    • View Answer Bot conversations?

      We are trialing Zia and are experimenting with Answer Bot on our knowledge base. So far so good! Management asks me if it is possible to view Answer Bot conversations, the purpose being to look over its shoulder and confirm that it is working as des

    • Mass Email an Account

      It would be nice to mass email an account stating there is an outage at their business or something specific to an account is needed to be mass communicated. Even if it makes a ticket for every Email Out to every contact in the Account. Think: the customer

    • Multiple Topics assigned to a single Campaign

      Hello, is it possible to assign multiple Topics to a single Campaign? We frequently write a content to our subscribers that spans multiple Topics and we would like to send it to all Contacts that are subscribed to at least one of the Topics. But it looks

    • Bigin Android app update: User management

      Hello everyone! In the most recent Bigin Android app update, we have brought in support for the 'Users and Controls' section. You can now manage the users in your organization within the mobile app. There are three tabs in the 'Users and Controls' section:

    • Zoho Projects Fonts and Accessibility missing

      I cannot find any more the tab where I can change the font in Zoho Project. I also checked the knowledgebase and there they have accessibility tab which I am completely missing. Is there some setup I am missing or is it a problem with our account?

    • Introducing Version-3 APIs - Explore New APIs & Enhancements

      Happy to announce the release of Version 3 (V3) APIs with an easy to use interface, new APIs, and more examples to help you understand and access the APIs better. V3 APIs can be accessed through our new link, where you can explore our complete documentation,

    • Zoho Books Custom Widgets Deprecation Error

      I created a simple sample widget with zet and published it using sigma Both in the Sandbox and Production the Widgets are showing this error

    • Problems with PDF files in notebook

      I'm evaluating Zoho Notebook as an alternative to Evernote and imported my Evernote account to Zoho Notebook. First issue is that notes in Evernote that comprise a PDF are turned into a 'group' with a single note page (that has the text from the Evernote

    • API (v3) Tasks sorting issue

      We are using the v3 API for Projects. When we gat all tasks, per page of 100 tasks, we get the task info alright. But when we try to sort based on DESC(last_modified_time) we don't get the correct sort order. It is roughly sorted by the last_modified_time,

    • Assemblies make my stock go negative

      I am sure this is just the way that we are using this feature, but we use assemblies, a lot. The issue for us is the way that the relive inventory and the fact that it makes our composite item stock go negative. I have added flows to auto assemble and

    • User Activity Reports

      I'd like to get data related to user activity.  For example, Login and logout times, emails sent/received, new records created , etc. Is that currently available. I just can't seem to find anything . Thanks, Dave

    • Help: Populate “Contact Owner” details into Customer custom fields (for email templates) in Zoho Books

      We want to send invoices on behalf of our sales agents, and include the agent’s name, email, and phone in the email body using placeholders. Plan is to copy the Customer Owner details into three Customer custom fields, so they can be used as placeholders

    • Undocumented Books API error message - 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error

      This code sometimes throws this error 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error What does it mean? result = zoho.books.updateRecord("salesorders",organization.get("organization_id"),salesorder_id,sales_

    • Partial payments for retainer invoices

      When a customer does not pay the entire retainer invoice there is no way to apply a partial payment. PLEASE add this function.

    • Making Tags Mandatory

      When creating an expense, is it possible to make the Tags field mandatory?  I see the option in settings to make other fields mandatory, like Merchant, Description, Customer, etc, but nothing about Tags. Thanks! Kevin

    • Mass Update not trigger workflows

      Hi, I have performed a mass update of all records in a custom module using a custom view. I have a dummy checkbox on my module that I turn on or off - hoping to trigger all the new workflows that have been created for that module. However, no workflows

    • Multi-Select lookup field has reached its maximum??

      Hi there, I want to create a multi-select lookup field in a module but I can't select the model I want the relationship to be with from the list. From the help page on this I see that you can only create a max of 2 relationships per module? Is that true?

    • Generating CRM reports based on date moved in staged history

      Hi everyone, I'm trying to generate CRM reports of jobs (I think these are called usually deals) based on when they were moved to a particular stage, ie all jobs that were moved to Proposal/Quote in the previous financial year. I can see from other similar

    • Next Page