Composite Items & Purchase Orders

Composite Items & Purchase Orders

The Composite Item is great way to bundle different products and services into a single line and sell it as a single line item in Estimates, Sales Orders and Invoices.

However, on the other side - i,e,. Purchasing - this item creates quite a bit of a mess and is completely useless (unless I really don't understand how to use it 😉).

ISSUE #1
The composite item, could potentially, include items from different vendors. This would require creating a purchase order for each vendor with the relevant items. However, this is not possible because when placing the composite item in a purchase order - It shows the name and SKU number of the composite number which is meaningless to the vendor. 
There is a workaround to copy the description of the items - when editing the composite item -  into the composite item's description. This will list the items and their SKU numbers which you can then cut and paste into the purchase description. However, as I mentioned before, if the composite item includes items from different vendors then this method gets messy and confusing to the vendors as they will see unrelated SKU numbers next to their SKU numbers.

Let's continue to the next issue.....

ISSUE #2
Let's ignore for a second the 1st issue....
Assuming we have a composite item, containing 2 items from the same vendor. 
We place the item in a purchase order and send it to the vendor. The purchase order contains a single line item, showing the composite part number and SKU number that we created.
Now, we received 1 out of the 2 items in the composite item. When trying to process "Received Items" there is no way to update the PO because the item we received doesn't match the PO which contains only 1 composite item. 
Furthermore, imagine you sent multiple purchase orders with multiple composite items. When you start to receive the actual items - there is no way to know to which PO they belong or to in which composite item they belong.
and, since the system would not allow exceeding the ordered quantities - there is no way to receive these items.

Obviously, this issue needs to be rectified as the composite item cannot be used for Sales and Purchasing.

SUGGESTION
One way to resolve both issues is by allowing to break the composite item back into individual items when creating a purchase order. With this way, the user can delete the irrelevant items and create multiple purchase orders for multiple vendors.
When receiving items from the vendors, the user can then update the PO so it can be closed when all items have been received.

CONCLUSION
While the composite item is great for selling, it is almost useless for purchasing. 
Not sure how Zoho missed this one but it should be fixed sooner rather than later. 

Any thoughts?

    • Recent Topics

    • Customizing Global Search Settings for All Users

      Hi Our team use the brilliant global search functionality within CRM many many times daily. But, we struggle with the out-of-the box columns that CRM gives you. We are always telling users to customize this look to more suit our business, to show the

    • Qwen to be the default open source Generative AI model in Zoho Desk

      Hello everyone, At Zoho Desk, we will make the latest Qwen (30B parameters) the default LLM for our Generative AI features, including Answer Bot, Reply Assistant, and others. As a subsequent step, we will discontinue support for Llama (8B parameters).

    • Condition based aggregate fields in subforms

      Hello everyone, We're excited to inform you about the latest enhancements made to our aggregate field capabilities in subforms; create aggregate fields based on conditions! An aggregate field is a column on which a mathematical function has been applied.

    • Upgrade Zoho Desk Agent-Side Answer Bot to GenAI

      Hello Zoho Desk Team, We hope you're doing well. Following the recent announcements and rollout of the GenAI-based Answer Bot in Zoho SalesIQ (Nova '25), we’d like to formally request a similar upgrade for the Answer Bot used by agents inside Zoho Desk.

    • Marketers' Space: The importance of warming up your sender domain

      Hello Marketers, Welcome back to yet another post! Today, we'll talk about why warming up your sender domain matters. Imagine you've recently started a business and want to share the news with your customers. You've designed a great email campaign using

    • An Exclusive Session for Zoho Desk Users: AI in Zoho Desk

      A Zoho Community Learning Initiative Hello everyone! This is an announcement for Zoho Desk users and anyone exploring Zoho Desk. With every nook and corner buzzing, "AI's here, AI's there," it's the right time for us to take a closer look at how the AI

    • Search Just Got Smarter in Notebook

      Hello there! Introducing Our New & Improved Search Experience! We heard your feedback! Many of you shared that our previous search had some challenges like • Inconsistent results across different clients • Limited accuracy in finding the right content

    • Client Portal ZOHO ONE

      Dear Zoho one is fantastic option for companies but it seems to me that it is still an aggregation of aps let me explain I have zoho books with client portal so client access their invoice then I have zoho project with client portal so they can access their project but not their invoice without another URL another LOGIN Are you planning in creating a beautiful UI portal for client so we can control access to client in one location to multiple aps at least unify project and invoice aps that would

    • Zoho CRM for Everyone's NextGen UI Gets an Upgrade

      Hello Everyone We've made improvements to Zoho CRM for Everyone's Nextgen UI. These changes are the result of valuable feedback from you where we’ve focused on improving usability, providing wider screen space, and making navigation smoother so everything

    • Zoho Desk app update - AI Integration for IM Chats

      Hello everyone! We have now introduced AI integration for IM Chats within the Zoho Desk mobile app. To access the feature, please enable the 'Generative AI' settings on the desktop site(desk.zoho.com). Please refer to the help link attached below: Zoho

    • Open A.I assistant Connect with Zoho Desk instant Message Conversations

      I would like to know how do I connect my instant messenger in Zoho desk with my Open A.I Gpt Assistant. this is very easy to setup using the Salesiq Zobot but when it comes to Zoho Desk i cannot figure how to make the connection. Ideal workflow Customers

    • Cannot upgrade subscription plan due to payment error message

      Hi Zoho team, This is to request support on an issue I am facing during an upgrade I am trying to make to our company's yearly Zoho subscription. I am trying to add 3 more license to my plan and during the payment phase I get the below error as in the

    • Incoming emails not appearing in Inbox

      Hello, I have an issue with incoming emails sent from my website (domain: h2ostop.si). Emails are visible in the Sent folder, which means they are successfully sent through Zoho SMTP, but they never appear in my Inbox. Nothing arrives in Inbox, Spam,

    • Synchronise item image between Zoho Commerce and Zoho Books/Inventory/CRM

      Here is a blindingly simple idea to tie several Zoho products together. Zoho - please include a method to synchronise the item image (or images) from one Zoho application to another. For example, if you upload an item image in Zoho Inventory, a user should

    • Enhancing Zia's service with better contextual responses and article generation

      Hello everyone, We are enhancing Zia's Generative AI service to make your support experience smarter. Here's how: Increased accuracy with Qwen One of the key challenges in AI is delivering responses that are both contextually accurate and empathetic while

    • Zoho Desk app update: AI powered features

      Hello everyone! We’ve introduced various AI-powered services on the Zoho Desk app. Let's take a look at what's new. Generate Content: Generate Content uses AI to formulate responses based on the your query and provides a ready-to-use reply which can be

    • Passing the CRM

      Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

    • Bulk update Archived Ticket

      Dear All We would like to update the "Category" values to the new filed. We found the archived Ticket seems to be don't support the bulk action. Do we have any way to update it. Finally, we would to generate a report for our ticket system. Regards I

    • SalesInbox

      Sorry for saying this but SalesInbox is a really mess. BIG FAIL. Bad UX and VERY bad IMAP sync. I don't know how can someone use this to be more productive. It's just the oposite. I'm trying to use SalesInbox for a while but sales people do not have just sales activities so we still have to came back to the mail app anyway. Folders of SalesInbox are not in sync with folders of mail server (wich syncs Ok to mobile) and vice-versa wich leads to double work as now you have to cleanup 3 inboxes (Mail

    • Channel Configuration and Default Channels

      There are some of the default fields that cannot be removed or changed. Examples are the social media ones, such as Facebook. It would be nice to be able to remove these fields as it would be confusing if someone selected this but it's not configure

    • Dependent drop-downs... how?

      Good day. I have 2 different situations where I need a dependent drop-down field. First is for a subform, where I want to show related fields for a specific customer on the main form. In my case it is a parent whose children make use of our school transport

    • Automating Employee Birthday Notifications in Zoho Cliq

      Have you ever missed a birthday and felt like the office Grinch? Fear not, the Cliq Developer Platform has got your back! With Zoho Cliq's Schedulers, you can be the office party-cipant who never forgets a single cake, balloon, or awkward rendition of

    • Delay function execute

      I've got a workflow which uses a webhook to send information to Flow, which in return updates a record in Creator. Problem is, by the time this has executed, the rest of my script has run and can't find the (yet to be) updated info in the record. Is there

    • Kiosk Button Actions

      I need to add an action to a Kiosk Button to loop me back to start the kiosk again and I am not sure what that looks like (function, etc.).

    • Support www.camcard.com

      Hi, Is it possible CRM Zoho have integrations with https://camcard.com/? Thanks Br, Andy

    • Option to Customize Career Site URL Without “/jobs/Careers”

      Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the Career Site URL structure in Zoho Recruit. In the old version of the career site, our URL was simply: 👉 https://jobs.domain.com However, after moving to

    • Can't make a document editable to anyone

      Hey everyone, I am using Zoho Workdrive and trying to share a document so that it is editable by anyone with the link. I am trying to convince people to shift from Google to Zoho, but they don't have accounts yet. When I try to change the share settings

    • Edit Default Print

      What I want to do is create / edit the "Default Print" template without changing the layout I'm using. Currently I can create "Email Templates" but I don't use them for emailing and getting to that selection takes multiple clicks. If an email template could be set to be the Default Print template that would be helpful. I'd also like to print these in bulk but don't see that option (there is a mail merge macro but that goes straight to emailing, not to print or PDF).

    • Widget shows error

      Hi， May I ask why below characters will be auto added into the widget link and how to solve this error? As my widget shows 404 error now. ?serviceOrigin=https%3A%2F%2Fcrm.zoho.com&frameorigin=https%3A%2F%2Fcrm.zoho.com

    • How to print envelope labels from Zoho CRM

      Can anybody give me any clue how to print envelope/package labels directly from Contacts view? Regards, Alexandru Moderation Update: The Canvas Print View, which also facilitates the formatting of mailing labels, is now available! Learn more here: Zoho

    • Data Import: New interface, improved field mapping, and more

      Hello everyone! We’ve redesigned the data import process to ensure accurate field alignment and verify that every column in the uploaded file maps correctly with Desk fields before import. Here's how: Streamlined Import Steps Importing data is now more

    • Address labels

      Hi, we've been searching for a long time for a simple way for our employees to print address labels using a Dymo Label Writer 450. We came up with two alternatives that work, bur aren't really optimal.  First one is WebMerge. Webmerge is a great application that does 100% what we need but it is way too expensive for our needs. We only need to print a couple of labels per month. The second one is the integrated print tool in Zoho CRM, (Print preview) You would think this is the obvious way to do this

    • Print Labels

      How can I configure my address to print my labels like this: Name Mailing Address Mailing City, Mailing State Mailing Zip Country Instead of: Name Mailing Address Mailing City Mailing State Mailing Zip Country Thanks!!!!

    • Mailing labels - Improperly formatted

      All I'm trying to do is print one, properly formatted, mailing label. I'm in the Contacts module. In the default "list view" for mailing labels I selected a single client, hit the "more actions" drop down and selected print mailing label. Unfortunately,

    • Printing mailing labels

      The ability to print mailing labels would seem to be an important, basic, function of a good CRM. I find it very surprising that this has still not been addressed adequately by Zoho. When trying to use the existing "mailing label" included: 1. the data

    • Pageless mode needed to modernise Writer

      When we switched from GSuite to Zoho, one of the easiest apps I found to give up, was Docs. In many ways, Writer has always been more powerful than Docs, especially in terms of workflows/fillable forms/etc. However, I went back into Docs because I notice

    • Zoho Projects - Visual improvement to parent and sub-task relationship

      Hi Projects Team, My feature request is to improve sub-task visibility. Please see screenshot below. I really think parent child relationships could be visually improved. Even if the first letter of the parent task was inline with other same level tasks

    • AI Interview Insights: Turn Recorded Interviews into Quick Transcripts & Summaries

      Evaluating interviews shouldn’t require replaying long recordings or taking manual notes. With AI Interview Insights, you can now review complete transcripts and AI-generated summaries of your One-way (Recorded) interviews right inside Zoho Recruit. This

    • API method to get activity feed in Recruit

      Hi community, I'm trying to figure out - is there any API method tto get information about datetime when Recruit/Candidates record tag where added?

    • Printing Mailing labels

      Is there any way to adjust the size of the printing labels? or product would I use to print labels from Zoho? Thanks, Josef Krieger Moderation Update (14th April 2025): We have another post discussing the same topic with votes and feedback from users.

    • Next Page