Some recent discoveries re Zoho Inventory in Australia ...

Some recent discoveries re Zoho Inventory in Australia ...

We have been using Zoho Inventory in our business now for the past two years or so.  As an inventory based business, when I chose Zoho (One) as our software at the time, part of the attraction upon looking at the features was Inventory's possible integration with Amazon, eBay etc (in case we wanted to utilise some of these marketplaces at some future point), as well as the shipping integrations available, particularly with Australia Post, which is our main carrier. 

Throughout most of the intervening period, we have been more focused on getting other aspects of the software up and running, and tweaked for our business use, and have not really looked into implementing any of those integrations mentioned above until fairly recently.  (With respect to shipping, we have been doing this through our own Australia Post eParcel account, separately, outside of the Zoho system completely.)

OK, so fast forward to more recent times, I thought it would be a good idea to finally try out some of these integrations and get them set up and working for us, only to discover the following:

The ONLY marketplace integration available for the Australia region is Etsy, so no go for us with the Amazon and eBay Australia marketplaces which are the ones that we would be selling on.  Annoying, coupled with a feeling of being somewhat mislead with the initial Zoho marketing (although it's probably there somewhere in the fine print).

So, if we want to have any kind of integrated solution in order to sell on these marketplaces, we are (yet again) left with having to work out a 'work around' solution : /

But what really takes the cake is the shipping integration with Australia Post.  Whilst we CAN integrate our Australia Post eParcel account with Zoho Inventory (via EasyPost), we CAN'T produce a manifest for any of the parcels created.  Not in Inventory, nor from within our eParcel account, because creating the parcels within Inventory does not 'replicate' them in our eParcel portal.  So, because we MUST provide a manifest to Australia Post for the parcels being sent out on any given day through eParcel, and because eParcel is the only API option from Australia Post's perspective, this essentially renders the 'integration' that Zoho promotes itself as having as entirely USELESS!  

Now, I'm sure there will be 'ways around' this as well, but, seriously, that's besides the point Zoho. 

I have to wonder what I'll discover next in my attempts to fully utilise Zoho's touted, but in reality non-existent, capabilities ...




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