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Hello,

While the ACCOUNTS and CONTACTS (Including the primary contact) are synced with the CONTACTS module in CRM, the vendor's CONTACTS are not synced with CRM - which basically forces the users to re-enter all vendor's contacts twice and then update the info in two places manually.

The VENDOR entity is very similar to the ACCOUNT entity and I am not really sure why ZOHO decided to implement half functionality for the VENDORS. 
Vendors have many contacts, sometimes more than clients, and they should be synced just like ACCOUNTS with CRM. This is a critical functionality that is part of the premise of the ZOHO platform.

This inconsistent implementation also creates inconsistent data which renders the entire platform as not-usable. Quality of data is extremely important but if we have to manually update contact information in 2 places then it defeats the purpose of such platform. ZOHO should save us work - not add on more work.

Please address this ASAP.

10 users have this problem.
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  • 1 year ago

We are struggling to understand and efficiently manage the Zoho CRM - Books integration. We have seen many issues in a short time of controled testing, currently ticket open with Zoho to address backend erros and inconsistent/partial sync results.  As of now I am extremely hesitant to use this integration and will probably resort to developing our own sync solution that is more robust and reliable. What a shame and waste of money, this is something Zoho should have thought out better before implementing.

  • Zoho MVP
  • 1 year ago

Zoho really needs to standardize the databases across applications for baseline entities like Users, Accounts, Customers, Vendors, etc.

Rather than having a buggy "sync" trying to keep Customers in the Finance database matching the CRM database matching the Projects database, etc., there should be one, singular Customer table that all of the applications that have Customers refer to. No synchronizations, actual integrations.

I realize that's not how the applications were built, but it's how users expect them to function. More to the point, it's how Zoho implies that everything works together when touting the interoperability of the ecosystem.

  • 10 months ago

It's actually easier implementation than you think. The problem is getting Zoho to understand the integration is partial and not working for business owners.

  • 1 year ago

Hi guys, I've been doing Salesforce and Zoho for the las 15 years and I came across a customer asking me to build Zoho CRM - Books integration where they can create "Deals" for their vendors in the same way they do for their Accounts. Their Vendors do sell products and their Accounts buy these products, but some times Accounts can sell products and Vendors can buy them. My initial idea was to create Vendors as Accounts/Contacts and ignore the Vendors module, but in Books they need the Vendors to be 'Vendors' in order to use the Purchase Orders and the Vendors portal. So, I know Zoho has left us down here, but here is what I'll try just in case it works for you, and also any comment/feedback will be helpful.

The idea is to setup a couple workflows to sync Accounts and Vendors in the CRM and leave the native CRM-Books integration to keep Vendor synced on their side, and Accounts on their side. I mean, each Vendor will be a Vendor in Books and CRM, but at the same time they will be Accounts/Contacts in Books and CRM. And we will handle Buying Deals with Vendors and Selling Deals with Accounts. I'm still curious about how to connect the POs in Books related natively with Vendors, with the Deals in the CRM that are natively related to Accounts, but in the worst case scenario it will be a custom Account lookup field in the POs, or just a URL field with the Deal URL, and a PO URL field in the Deal with the PO link to Books.

And also I'm curious about how Books handles Vendors contacts, vs Account contacts, can a contact be related to an Account and a Vendor at the same time? because as part of the Accounts in the CRM they will sync with Customers/Contacts in Books, but they will be also Vendors/Contacts.. so, we will see.. I may update this post with my results.

  • 10 months ago

Whenever you try to create sync processes that are outside of the normal process, you are risking your data integrity and would need to manage your data by yourself. This is kind of counter-productive.

Fixing this issue is relatively simple - probably no more than a week worth of work, including design, implementation, testing and QA. It should be done by Zoho team.

Hello, 

Are there any plans to implement Vendor Contact sync? For us it is also essential.

  • 10 months ago

Hello

,

Thank you for writing on our forum.

We would like to inform you that syncing vendor contact persons between Zoho Books and Zoho CRM is not included in our current worklist. However, please be assured that we are noting all your votes for this enhancement, and we will certainly revisit it in the future to explore implementation.

Regards,
Shireen Farhana
Zoho Cares

  • 10 months ago

 this is not an enhancement but rather a fundamental basic functionality that should have been there from day 1.
You already have the infrastructure to sync the accounts and you can easily do the same with vendors.

A vendor could be a record in the ACCOUNTS table but with a flag field indicating it's a vendor. Everything else would be the same since I'm sure you are keeping tables with foreign keys  in the database.

Don't wait for votes - this is a half-baked integration that should be fixed.


  • 10 months ago

Yea right? Zoho guys went to implement the email improvement on Vendors in CRM but they lost that time. They should go with making the Vendors - Books integration in the same way the Accounts - Books integration works, now they have to work double and what they did with Vendors email thing will be lost. And we keep waiting for the Vendors Contacts - Books Contact Persons integration. What a shame!!!

Having said that, you can do it with workflows from CRM -> Books, or in both sides for a CRM <-> syncronization. I know it's not clean, and there are many issues to solve, but this is Zoho you know?

  • 10 months ago

This took me literally 10 minutes to design and draw. It is by all means not the entire data model but it demonstrates how easy it is to change the data model for something more flexible that will meet the user's needs.
Seriously ZOHO TEAM, this is not that complicated....



  • 10 months ago

That's not the problem. The problem is that they have thousands of customers and anything released needs to work with everything out there where there may be tons of different versions of everything. Imagine integrations with other Zoho apps, with 3rd party apps. Imagine all workflows and custom functions built in all the programming languages they have now related to this issue, any of that can break if they don't do it carefully. You can't release something and then have everybody's CRMs broken, you know? And on top of that they have who knows improvements being developed, tested and released as we speak.. so, when they said this is not in their development pipeline, imagine, this will take years to be brought there, build, tested and released. I'd say this may be released in 10 to 20 years. So, saying bad things to them will not change anything.. just put your vote, explain your case scenario and hope that they'll do it as soon as possible.

seems like this topic is rather to be forgotten by Zoho? would really help if not...

  • 11 days ago

Replying to @Juan

With all do respect, I assume you are not experienced with software development. 

The number of customers has no effect on the implementation as the software is developed once for all users. 
This isn't like older days where the software was running on local server at the client and customized for clients who paid for the customization, hence, created multiple brunches of the software versions.
Zoho is a cloud-based software and is implemented once. 

Yes, it would require the team to carefully design the change and test it with all other applications but guess what? we are living in the 21st century and it is not that hard. 

As for the requirement itself, the inconsistency of the way Vendors and Ventor's Contacts are handled, compared to Accounts and Contacts, is an important factor that should put this request on high priority. 
Such inconsistencies contribute to negative user experience and reduced productivity which is a direct contradiction to the purpose of using CRM.

I don't think the users here are intended to say bad things to Zoho team but rather expressing their frustration with inconsistencies that introduces limitations in functionality. 

Rather than justifying the reasons for not implementing upgrades, we should really strive - both the community and Zoho team - to constantly improve the platform and make it shine above other platforms. It would definitely benefit Zoho too. 

  • 11 days ago

It looks you are missing the little word "everything". I never said versions of Zoho. It's different when you have a little app used by a few people where you release an update to find out that nobody used it for a while vs something like Zoho where there are thousands of thousands of different integrations with different apps with different APIs and languages (programming and spoken), interfaces, OSsss, etc.. where thousands of thousands of users "use" the system 24/7. Any release can disrupt a lot, and I'm pretty sure it actually does, but they keep it small I guess. The server thing yes is from 100 years ago and if you read again what I wrote you may find I never said that. You seem to be one of those person against everybody else, I'm not justifying Zoho having ignored this fix for this long but just trying to explain to you and people that think that this could be fixed in 1 week that it's not that easy as fixing something in a little app. You may feel that Zoho is implemented once and no changes have to be done later, but in reality the CRM changes constantly with each release of new features that you just don't notice because fortunately they do it well enough to not disrupt your daily use. You started this Problem 2 years ago, and I'm pretty sure we'll be here in 5 and 10 years more discussing the issue and why it hasn't been fixed. This is how it is.

  • 10 days ago

"....It's different when you have a little app used by a few people where you release an update to find out that nobody used it for a while vs something like Zoho where there are thousands of thousands of different integrations with different apps with different APIs and languages..."

Could you elaborate more about your experience with software development? I have over 30 years of experience in design, implementation and deployment of large enterprise software systems. What do you mean by "little app used by few people"? 
The change in ZOHO would require the same effort regardless of whether its being used by 1 user or 1 million users. It would go through the same process of design, implementation, test, QA and release.

"...
You may feel that Zoho is implemented once and no changes have to be done later, but in reality the CRM changes constantly with each release of new features that you just don't notice because fortunately they do it well enough to not disrupt your daily use...."

I am not sure you understand what it means to implement once. It means you only maintain a single branch of the software. No other parallel versions but a single implementation that is getting updated and each update becomes available to all users once released. This is called "Software-as-a-Service" (SaaS) which means that Zoho only needs to push ONE update instead of updating each copy of the software on servers and desktops around the world - For example: Windows Updates.

"...
You started this Problem 2 years ago, and I'm pretty sure we'll be here in 5 and 10 years more discussing the issue and why it hasn't been fixed. This is how it is...."

2 Years to fix a critical functional issue is a very long time in software development. I'm certainly glad the world doesn't go by your philosophy

  • 10 days ago

And just to add, here is an example demonstrating that Zoho can implement a fix pretty fast when they want. The fix was implemented in the same year it was reported as an issue.

Reply to Eyal KattanA
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