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Hello everyone,

We hope you're all doing well and having an amazing holiday season. We are back with another great episode of Ask the Experts - Zoho Inventory, this time to discuss anything and everything about Zoho Inventory.
Inventory software can touch nearly every part of a business, connecting functions and departments from the accounting desk to the warehouse. In this episode, let's discuss Zoho Inventory as a whole, and the features it offers for taking your inventory and order management to the next level.

Some of the important topics that we hope to discuss in this episode include:
  • Setting up Zoho Inventory
  • Managing your warehouses
  • Managing sales and purchasing operations, including backorders and drop shipments
  • Payment integrations that give easier, more flexible payment options to the customers
  • Integrating marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy, including Amazon FBA inventory movements between customers and vendors
  • Integrating with shopping carts to manage your online store's sales and inventory needs
  • Using shipping integrations for faster fulfillment operations and shipment tracking
  • CRM and analytics integrations for a data-driven approach and better customer experience

Feel free to post all your questions about the Zoho Inventory app below, and we will be excited to discuss and answer all of them during the session. We'll be live on January 4, 2022 from 4pm to 9pm IST, and 9am to 3pm PST

Don't forget to check out our previous episode of Ask the Experts - Zoho Inventory to learn all we discussed about the Google Shopping Integration in Zoho Inventory.

Cheers,
The Zoho Inventory Team

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Thanks for doing this Q&A time. We are new to the software and have some questions on getting it set up for our business.

First:
How do you set up a custom function to automatically create an invoice/payment for orders that are synced with Etsy and Shopify? The orders are importing in as "Unpaid/Uninvoiced" since those orders are all paid through the cart or through the marketplace, I want to be sure we don't accidently send invoices for additional payment, and I want to be sure that these orders are being recorded on Zoho Books as revenue.

  • 3 years ago

Hei Rob,

Thank you for choosing Zoho Inventory and being a part of our community today. You can enable the custom functions from the custom function option available in the settings in Zoho Inventory. You can convert the online sales orders directly into Invoices by writing a script for the same in the custom function module and having an automation setup to trigger the custom function accordingly. This functionality is available from the premium plan of Zoho Inventory.

You can find the codes to this custom function here in our tips and tricks section. Also, if you need our developer assistance, feel free to write out to our support team support@zohoinventory.com and we will be glad to help you out with its implementation as well. 
Hope this helps. 

Thanks, 
Salman Nazar
Zoho Inventory Team

I have a big problem and the solution is difficult:
In Account in CRM I have defined the level of commission that will be given, but the commission depends on which agent, each account can have up to 5 agents (lookup for custom module).
As I do in Inventory, to be able to select only one agent of this account and then see what % of commission that agent offers for the level that the account has and thus being able to calculate the value of commission.

  • 3 years ago

Hi Lucas,

Thank you for joining us today,
This requirement seems to be achievable through automation. However, we would like to know more about the workflow you are expecting here.

We already have the ability to calculate salesperson commissions in Zoho Books, which is also implemented using Automation. But the commissions are posted as either expenses or bills there.
So we have to know how you would like to work through that part.
Please send us an email to support@zohoinventory.com elaborating on the workflow. We can have this discussed further in the email.

Thanks,
Thejas. V | Zoho Inventory Support

  • 3 years ago

Hi all, would like to check on the following:

1) If we make a purchase order and a bill of an item bottle of water at $1 with an allocated landing cost (shipping) under COG account of $1 and an allocated landing cost (tax) under COG account of $1. How are we able to get the data of the actual cost of that bottle inclusive of the allocated landing cost? Currently, I have to go into the bill and click all the landing costs and manually sum for each individual product to get the true cost, which in this case is $3.

2) In a sale order and invoice, there is Shipping Charges after the item detail. Let say shipping charges is $10 When you create the packages for the sale order, there is another Shipment Rate field. Is the shipment rate in the package the same as the shipping charges in sales order? Do we also fill the shipment rate as $10 or is it a different thing that will create a double entry?

Thanks in advance!

  • 3 years ago

Hello there,

Regarding these clarifications.
1. When you create a Purchase Order, and you convert the same into a Bill and record the pricing of the items, you can also allocate the cost of shipment as well. This can be added to the 'Landed Cost details' by clicking on the 'Add Landed Cost' button. You can then associate the cost of landing to the different item on a unit or value basis. Please follow this link to know how to create a Bill with Landing Costs associated to the cost of the products.

2. You can associate shipping charges to Sales Order and Invoices when you create a transaction. The value carried over from the Sales Order to the invoice will be recorded against the relevant accounts in your accounting system while if you have any values associated to the Shipments being generated from its associated packages, these values under 'Shipping charges(if any)' fields are given only for references.
But it is possible to add these 'Shipping charges' values from the multiple shipments associated to the sales order shipping fields and then associate/add it into the invoice which will be then recorded in the chart of accounts. This can be done with the help of custom functions and the automation functionalities. 

We hope this helps. 

Thanks,
Salman Nazar
Team Zoho Inventory


Loss management - reports
What about it
We need to calculate losses or profit on invoice wise ...

Is it in your development

  • 3 years ago

Hello Sandeep,

Thank you for joining us today.
As you are already aware, profit & loss reports are available only in Zoho Books as of now. However, providing a Profit & loss report specifically for Zoho Inventory is definitely there in our plans. This will include line-item based and Invoice based Profit reports etc.

Until we bring this option, I would suggest you use Zoho Analytics - Inventory integration to create any customized reports.

Thanks, 
Thejas. V | Zoho Inventory Support

When we make a sale order or invoice, the rate we enter should come automatically as we gave the last time, how will it be possible, Right now we have to do recent transactions every time

How it is possible

  • 3 years ago

Hi Sandeep,

This could be possible through automation. We can set up a 'custom function' for achieving this requirement. But this is also dependent on various other aspects like the number of items per transaction and cases when an invoice is edited etc.

So we would like to hear the entire workflow of the requirement and different use case scenarios that come along. Please write to us at support@zohoinventory.com elaborating the flow. We can discuss this further.

Thanks,
Thejas. V | Zoho Inventory Support

  • 3 years ago

Hi Zoho Team

I have been wondering why the Packing Slips produced in Zoho are still missing important features. Why can't I show the quantity ORDERED and quantity PACKED as well as a list of BACKORDERS. this is something every other tool is able to do. The information exists in your system under the STATUS section of sales orders.
I want to know when/if you will implement this solution as it has caused some problems and confusion from our customers.

  • 3 years ago

Hi Pierce,

Yes, we do have plans to show this information in sales transaction PDFs, this includes packing slip as well. Though I won't be able to commit to an ETA at the moment, I can assure you that this is in the pipeline.

Thanks,
Thejas. V | Zoho Inventory Support

  • 3 years ago

Hello, has any thought been given to including serial number tracking in lower levels of the product? It is prohibitively expensive for a small operation.

  • 3 years ago

Hi Mike,

We are sorry to inform you that the serial number tracking will be available only from the Professional plan and above. But, please write out to us at support@zohoinventory.com and we will see how we can help you in this regards to help you with your requirements.

Thanks,
Salman Nazar
Team Zoho Inventory.

  • 3 years ago

Hi,
We are migrating to Zoho CRM and hoping to use Zoho Inventory for order processing.

Our scenarios:
1. Sales Agents use pipelines for deals. Create a Sales Order and issue an Invoice for payment in advance. When paid we then create the products, pack and ship to the client.
2. Ecommerce sales from various marketplaces, Etsy and our own Woocommerce store. All prepaid orders which we then process.

Both order scenarios above have the following stages:
Order created > Invoiced > Invoice Paid > Order Processing > Order Branding > Order Assembly > Shipping Labels printed > Shipped > Completed.

Stock needs to be deducted when the Invoice is paid.

Currently we see these issues:
1. Paying an invoice is the last step in Inventory and the CRM.
2. Stock is deducted when order is shipped
3. Inventory orders and other modules don't have any links to the CRM contacts, deals or accounts
4. Inventory orders don't allow for tagging users in notes or creating tasks. We often have a lot of communication on each order.
5. Due to point 4 we looked at using the CRM for order processing. They built in modules in the CRM, Sales Orders etc, have lots of customizations and Kanban boards. So this could help us with order processing. It doesn't look like the Inventory integration tab in the CRM has these features.
6. Can we sync shipping tracking urls back to the 3rd party integrations we receive orders from?

  • 3 years ago

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for choosing Zoho Inventory. Please find your answers inline.

1) In Zoho Inventory, it is not mandatory that the Invoice payment has to be done in the last step only. Instead, you can always do the following,
i) You can always record an invoice from a sales order as soon as it is created and record a payment against it.
ii) Create the invoice first and record the payment. You can create the Sales Order later and link it with this invoice.
iii) Record the payment directly from the payment module and then link it with the required invoice later.

2) Zoho Inventory follows two methods of stock tracking, namely Accounting Stock and Physical Stock.
The physical stock is the one that gets deducted when we create a shipment. But the accounting stock gets deducted when invoices are created.
I would request you to keep your mode of stock tracking as Accounting so that the stock deducted during invoicing will get updated across your marketplace.

3) The Zoho Inventory - Zoho CRM integration does have the capability to sync accounts and contacts across both platforms and link them together. Kindly check your integration settings and see if the Accounts and contact sync preferences are set to appropriate options. You can contact us at support@zohoinventory.come Let's check this through a screen share and see what went wrong.

4) Yes, that is correct, at the moment we don't have an option to tag users in the comments/note sections of any transactions in Zoho Inventory. We will have this discussed with our development team and see if we can bring such an option in our future updates.

5) Yes, the inventory- CRM integration connects transactions uniquely. The transaction modules will not sync with the native CRM modules, instead, it creates a new Zoho Finance module in CRM and sync the transition into it. These transactions in the finance module don't have any CRM features.

6) I'm afraid at the moment marketplace integrations can only sync back the tracking number and Carrier details of a shipment, not the tracking URLs.

I hope this clarifies. Please do feel free to get back to us at support@zohoinventory.come if you have any further questions. We can continue this conversation.

Thanks,
Thejas. V | Zoho Inventory support

  • 3 years ago

Hi salman

1. i have been working on zoho from cpl of days , i can find some serious issues in reports generated ,for eg.. when i run inventory summery report purchased qty reflecting in Inventory report and reports generated downloading transfer order the Qtys doesn't match,

2. I find it difficult to make any internal transfers because the internal qty transferred is showing in sold qty which is incorrect, their is difference between sales and internal transfers same needs to be addressed such minor bugs can hamper entire system of inventory

3. how does the draft invoice impact on system, i would like to understand if invoice is in draft mode will the Qty from inventory gets reduced.

Hi Giridhar,

1) The inventory summary report considers Bills/Receives, Inventory adjustments, and Transfer orders while calculating the qty-in, so it does not necessarily have to match the qty that came in through transfer orders.

2) As long as the internal transfers are recorded using Transfer Orders, they will not be considered as sales by the system. No accountant entries will get posted when a transfer order is created. However, if the internal transfers are handled by Inventory adjustments or invoices, then the system will consider it as sales.

3) No, draft invoices will not deduct stock. Any transaction with draft status is not considered live by the system.

Regarding the first two points, you can contact our support team (support@zohoinventory.come), we can have these issues checked through a screen-share.

Thanks,
Reshma Nambiar
Presales Engineer

  • 3 years ago

When we make a sale order or invoice, the rate we enter should come automatically as we gave the last time, how will it be possible.  skylight paycards

  • 3 years ago

Hi Eric,

I am afraid we cannot populate the item rates directly from their previous invoices or sales orders right now. However, the better option is to run a custom function in the app which will update the item rates in the 'Selling Price' field automatically from the sales transactions created for these items. Please reach out to our support at support@zohoinventory.com so that they can help you with the scripts and the implementation of this custom function as well.

Thanks&Regards,
Salman Nazar
Zoho Inventory

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