What's New in Zoho Books - April 2020

Hello, everyone!

First off, we hope you're all staying safe during this time.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all businesses, both small and large. At Zoho, we've been working remotely to ensure your business doesn't face any technical setbacks during these hard times. Our teams have been tirelessly working on providing technical assistance whenever required and making the necessary enhancements to the application. Here are some of the significant enhancements we've made while working remotely hoping they'd be useful for you:

Introducing the Vendor Portal

In business, it's important to maintain your contacts, keep track of all the transactions, collaborate and work as one. Zoho Books provides a gateway for your vendors to access every transaction you've made with them. They can access all records, comment on and discuss transactions, and generate account statements for their reference. Learn More

To enable this: Select the vendor > Click the More dropdown > Select Configure Vendor Portal.

Integrate Zoho Books with Mercado Pago

If your business is located in the Latin American region, you can integrate your Zoho Books organization with the popular payment gateway, Mercado Pago. It lets you collect online or offline payments for invoices securely and effortlessly. You can collect payments via cash, debit/credit cards, and redlink transfers. Learn More

To enable this payment gateway: Go to Settings > Online Payments > Mercado Pago.

Restructured the invoice details page

To enhance your experience with the app, we've been tinkering around with the Invoice Details page. We've reorganized some actions and understand that this might take a while for you to adapt. Here's what we've done:

Edit, mail, share, and other actions have been moved to the left to provide a cleaner view.
Comments and History section has been moved to the top-right corner of the page and will be visible upon clicking.
Payments Received tab details all the payments received, mode of payment, and other details.
Related lists and other associated transactions (such as sales orders, bills and journals) will be available at the bottom of the invoice.

Customize layout and print reports

Based on a business' way of operating, one might require a distinct format of reports rather than the one provided by Zoho Books. This could be used to pass on to their accountants for verification or for their business' audit purposes. Start by selecting the table design and density based on the amount of data. Then continue to choose the details you wantdisplayed, pick the font, choose the orientation and paper type, and even set margins before printing your data.

To customize the layout: Go to Reports > Click Configure Report Layout.

Generate customer and vendor balances summary report (India)

You can now generate the balances of your contacts As on a Particular Date using the Customer and Vendor Balances Summary. This shows the outstanding balances of all the bills, invoices, or credit without considering the payments made on a later date. You can customize the date range and show/hide the columns to view the Net Credits/Debits, Opening Balances, etc,.

To generate these: Go to Reports > Receivables/Payables > Customer Balance Summary/Vendor Balance Summary.

Apply taxes on shipping charges (UK and Global)

Users can now apply taxes on shipping charges and tax VAT accordingly. Enter the shipping charges and then choose the rate of tax to be applied to them.

To apply taxes on shipping: Enable shipping charges under Settings > Preferences > General. Create an invoice, enter the amount and VAT rates.

Create items with identical names

If you would like to create multiple items with the same name, you can in Zoho Books. You can enable this option in preferences and provide a distinct SKU number for each product you're creating.

To enable this: Go to Settings > Preferences > Item Preference > Enable the Allow Duplicate Item Name option.

Share transactions via Whatsapp (India)

The latest version of the Zoho Books Android app allows you to share Invoice Links and PDFs of your transactions with your customers directly via Whatsapp if you've saved them as a contact on your mobile device. The recent updates also allow you to initiate payments to your vendors when you've integrated with the ICICI Bank.

You can also see all the updates we've made to Zoho Books in our What's New Timeline. Do try these features out and let us know your feedback in the comments. If you require any assistance, feel free to contact us at support@zohobooks.com, We're here for you.

Regards,

Aashika M
The Zoho Books Team