What's New in Zoho Books - September 2023

What's New in Zoho Books - September 2023

Hello users!
 
With the onset of a new month, we're delighted to bring you new feature updates and enhancements which will elevate your accounting experience. Read on to learn more about what's new in Zoho Books this September. 

Tax Automation Using Tax Rules [Canada Edition]

We've upgraded the tax settings in the Canada edition of Zoho Books to our in-house tax engine. This brings you tax automation using tax rules along with other enhancements. Here are the newly-introduced features:

Note: This feature is available only for Zoho Books organizations created after 23 August 2023 in the Canada edition. Organizations created before this date will be able to upgrade to tax automation soon.

Tax Rules: Tax rules are a specified set of criteria that determine how tax rates will be applied to transactions in your organization.The pre-configured tax rules help you automate the process of applying taxes.

According to your Tax Returns Settings, the default sales and purchase tax rules for your organization will be configured. In line with the configured tax rules, Zoho Books will automatically apply the appropriate tax rates to transactions based on the shipping or billing address fields. This saves you the hassle of manually selecting a tax rate each time you create a transaction. 

Automated Tax Rates: If you wish to expand your business to other provinces in Canada, you won't need to create tax rates for that province from scratch. Simply configure the Tax Returns Settings for that province, and the tax rates will be created automatically.

This update also brings some much-awaited enhancements to tax settings in Zoho Books:

Tax Association to Vendors and Items: Similar to customers, you will now be able to associate a tax rule to your vendors and items as well. This is helpful in cases when your vendors or items require unique tax handling. 
For example, if an item falls under the zero-rate category, you can simply associate the zero-rate tax rule to that item, and the tax rate will be applied to all future transactions. 



Comprehensive Tax Tracking: The taxes from your transactions will be tracked under Output Tax (Liability Type) and Input Tax (Asset Type) accounts for Sales and Purchases transactions respectively. Once a tax return is marked as filed, the difference of these accounts will be shown in the Tax Payable account.

Introducing Signals

You can now use the Signals feature to receive in-app notifications from other apps that you use in your day-to-day business. You can create a signal to receive notifications either through a custom function or an API request when the app performs the specified task. You can choose if this notification is sent to all users, or only selected users in your organization. The users in your organization can enable or disable this notification by themselves based on the preference that you set while creating the signal.

Check out this help document to learn how you can set up and use Signals in your organization.

To configure Signals, go to Settings > Developer > Signals. Click + New Signal.



Receive Recurring Payments Through Stripe [India Edition]

Zoho Books now supports recurring payments through Stripe in India. You can receive recurring payments from your customers with either Visa or Mastercard issued in India. You can set up recurring payments for recurring invoices. Your customers' card information will be saved only if they choose to save their cards while making payments.

To do this, your customers must mark the "I authorize Organization Name to charge this credit card automatically for future transactions" option (as shown in the image below) while making their payment on the payment page.


Override VAT in Purchases Transactions [UK Edition]
You can now edit the system-generated tax amount in Purchases transactions. This can help you correct differences, if any, between the system-generated tax amount and the preferred tax amount. You can also enter the tax amount as 0 to remove it altogether. In Expenses, this option is available only when the selected VAT treatment is United Kingdom.



Disassociate Sales Orders from Void Invoices

You can now disassociate sales orders from void invoices. This helps you accurately track items' stock and prevent any discrepancies. If required, you can also disassociate sales orders from invoices in bulk. You can do this for up to 50 invoices in one go.
To disassociate sales orders from invoices, check the Disassociate sales order from invoice box while marking an invoice as Void, or click the Disassociate Sales Order option in the top pane of the void invoices.


Introducing the Snail Mail Extension
You don't have to purchase snail mail credits anymore. Henceforth, you can install the Snail Mail extension for Zoho Books directly from Zoho Marketplace to send snail mails to your customers.

Updates for organizations with the Zoho Inventory Add-On

Purchases by Category Report
We've introduced the Purchases By Category report where you can find a rundown of your organization's purchases by the items' categories. This report will only be available if the Category custom field is marked as Active.
To do this, go to Settings > Preferences > Items. In the Field Customization tab, hover over Category and click Mark as Active.


Allow Duplicate Batch Numbers
You can now choose to allow duplicate batch numbers while adding items in transactions. This helps you associate the same batch number for shipments from multiple vendors.

To enable this, go to Settings > Preferences > Items. Mark the Allow duplicate batch numbers checkbox.




That brings this month's updates to a close! We hope you found them helpful. Let us know what you think in the comments below. You can also visit the What's New timeline for byte-sized information on the latest updates and enhancements.
 
If you require any assistance or need clarifications, feel free to write to us at support@zohobooks.com, we'd be happy to help!

Regards,
The Zoho Books Team

    Access your files securely from anywhere

        All-in-one knowledge management and training platform for your employees and customers.






                              Zoho Developer Community




                                                    • Desk Community Learning Series


                                                    • Digest


                                                    • Functions


                                                    • Meetups


                                                    • Kbase


                                                    • Resources


                                                    • Glossary


                                                    • Desk Marketplace


                                                    • MVP Corner


                                                    • Word of the Day


                                                    • Ask the Experts





                                                              Manage your brands on social media



                                                                    Zoho TeamInbox Resources



                                                                        Zoho CRM Plus Resources

                                                                          Zoho Books Resources


                                                                            Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                                                                              Zoho Projects Resources


                                                                                Zoho Sprints Resources


                                                                                  Qntrl Resources


                                                                                    Zoho Creator Resources



                                                                                        Zoho CRM Resources

                                                                                        • CRM Community Learning Series

                                                                                          CRM Community Learning Series


                                                                                        • Kaizen

                                                                                          Kaizen

                                                                                        • Functions

                                                                                          Functions

                                                                                        • Meetups

                                                                                          Meetups

                                                                                        • Kbase

                                                                                          Kbase

                                                                                        • Resources

                                                                                          Resources

                                                                                        • Digest

                                                                                          Digest

                                                                                        • CRM Marketplace

                                                                                          CRM Marketplace

                                                                                        • MVP Corner

                                                                                          MVP Corner







                                                                                            Design. Discuss. Deliver.

                                                                                            Create visually engaging stories with Zoho Show.

                                                                                            Get Started Now


                                                                                              Zoho Show Resources

                                                                                                Zoho Writer

                                                                                                Get Started. Write Away!

                                                                                                Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                                                                                                  Zoho CRM コンテンツ




                                                                                                    Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


                                                                                                        ご検討中の方




                                                                                                                • Recent Topics

                                                                                                                • Zoho Training

                                                                                                                  Greetings! I am trainer. My focus area is Project Management and MS Project. I have used Zoho CRM to a good extent. Though, I was interested in using ZOHO projects, as there were no live projects, I could not take it up for studies. Recently a client
                                                                                                                • Detailed list of scoring rules in Zoho CRM

                                                                                                                  Good morning Zoho community, warm greetings The reason for my message today is that I have a problem with my CRM, which I will explain below: Our organization has scoring rules designed to rate our potential customers or leads in the application based
                                                                                                                • How to create a summary document from Projects details

                                                                                                                  Hi, Our team is creating many projects inside Zoho Project. When closing a project, they write a summary document containing data from the projects it-self (understand project budget, customers, etc...), and editable (ie the document is either a Writer
                                                                                                                • Request to Recover Deleted Task List – Project ID: RIV-MOD-10722

                                                                                                                  Hi Zoho Team, I hope this message finds you well. My Zoho task list associated with Project ID: RIV-MOD-10722 appears to have been deleted. When I clicked on the task link from the email notification, I received the following message: "Task has been deleted
                                                                                                                • Host in US Data Centre

                                                                                                                  I humble apply to be registered on US Data centre
                                                                                                                • convert the project to templet

                                                                                                                  i have some deployment ME product for different customer , i need to create a fixed template for use it rather then keeping creating this template every time
                                                                                                                • Best practices for managing Project Charters, Business Case and RAID logs within Zoho?

                                                                                                                  Hello everyone, I’m currently refining our PMO setup within Zoho Projects and I’m curious how others are handling high-level governance documentation. We’ve been using the standardized Project Charter, Business Case and RAID frameworks from projectmanagertemplate.com
                                                                                                                • Resource Management System built using Zoho CRM, Creator, Projects, and People:

                                                                                                                  In a Resource Management System built using Zoho CRM, Creator, Projects, and People: CRM Deal Closed → Creator Allocation Engine → Zoho Projects Task Assignment What is the recommended architecture to handle dynamic reassignment when: an employee goes
                                                                                                                • File Upload Field in Zoho Forms Not Updating Existing File in Zoho CRM

                                                                                                                  Hi everyone, I’m trying to understand the behavior of a file upload field mapped from Zoho Forms to Zoho CRM. Scenario There is a File Upload field in a Zoho CRM module. A Zoho Form also has a File Upload field, which is mapped to that CRM field. When
                                                                                                                • Dynamic Remaining Quantity in Lookup During Allocation

                                                                                                                  Hi everyone, From what I understand in Zoho Creator, lookup fields only display the stored value from the source record and do not dynamically update while a form is being filled. Because of this, showing a real-time updated remaining quantity inside
                                                                                                                • connect zoho creator with google drive

                                                                                                                  Hello everyone, I need to connect to a folder drive. The idea, is that google drive loads a text document with some data, I must read that text document to be able to autofill a form that I have in zoho creator with that data. I also attach PDFs and place
                                                                                                                • Ability to Attach Record-Specific Files Automatically in Workflow Email Templates

                                                                                                                  Currently in Zoho CRM, email templates allow attachments to be added, but these attachments are static and remain the same for every recipient. There is no straightforward option to automatically attach a file that is stored within the specific CRM record
                                                                                                                • Uploaded files are not included when using "Include user submitted data" in Email Notification

                                                                                                                  In Send Email notification workflow in Zoho Creator, there is an option called "Include user submitted data" which allows the email to contain all the form submission details. However, when this option is enabled, files or images uploaded through File
                                                                                                                • kanban view for client portal

                                                                                                                  Are kanban views an option for client portals? Access to Kanban views in the client portals would solve some mobile-compliant issues I have with the UI. Kanban functions very nicely on mobile and would be a super asset for my clients and vendors as they
                                                                                                                • Credit Card Pre-Authorization with later Capture/Settlement

                                                                                                                  We really enjoy the convenience of being able to pay off a customer's invoice using our Auth.Net integration with Zoho Books. Unfortunately, we can only take advantage of this feature with a small percentage of our customers as it leaves a gaping hole
                                                                                                                • Zoho Cliq not working on airplanes

                                                                                                                  Hi, My team and I have been having this constant issue of cliq not working when connected to an airplane's wifi. Is there a reason for this? We have tried on different Airlines and it doesn't work on any of them. We need assistance here since we are constantly
                                                                                                                • Zoho Sign 2025–2026: What's new and what's next

                                                                                                                  Hello! Every year at Zoho Sign, we work hard to make document signing and agreement execution easy for all users. This year we sat down with our head of product, Mr. Subramanian Thayumanasamy, to discuss what we delivered in 2025 and our goals for 2026.
                                                                                                                • Work Orders / Bundle Requests

                                                                                                                  Zoho Inventory needs a work order / bundle request system. This record would be analogous to a purchase order in the purchasing workflow or a sales order in the sales cycle. It would be non-journaling, but it would reserve the appropriate inventory of
                                                                                                                • Izettle or Sumup Integration for Zoho Books.

                                                                                                                  The Stripe & Square clearing works great in Zoho Books. Any further integrations planned in the future for Izettle or Sumup? These card processors are very common for taking payments with a card reader.
                                                                                                                • Train Zoho Answer Bot Based on Customer

                                                                                                                  Hi all, Is it currently possible to mark Help Centre articles to a specific customer, and restrict the answer bot to only use relevant information if it is either marked as "General", or tagged for the specific customer in question? We currently have
                                                                                                                • Trying to access records in a custom module in Zoho Desk and not having luck

                                                                                                                  I've built a custom module in Zoho Desk and am using a custom function to query the records in the module and I'm not having any luck. The only way I have found to retreive a record is by getting it by its recordID (the long zoho assigned one). The function
                                                                                                                • Composite items inside of composite items; bill of materials needed

                                                                                                                  Hi Zoho and Everyone, I am evaluating whether Zoho Inventory will work for my small business. I grow and harvest herbs and spices but also get from wholesalers. I use all these items to make herbal teas, but also sell them as individual items on my Shopify store and Etsy. I discovered the composite item bundling and am wondering if I could get some assistance since there is no bill of materials: Our herbal company's best selling tea is a sleepytime tea. Sleepytime Tea can be purchased in three weights
                                                                                                                • ZOHO Books Smart Accounting Software for Travel Agency

                                                                                                                  Dear Travel partner, Contact for Travel Agency Accounting Setup & Training Vansh Travel (ZOHO Books Authorised partner) Email: info@vanshtravel.com Mo: +91 98984 95155 Please find PDF   
                                                                                                                • 452 Mailbox delivery restricted by policy error

                                                                                                                  We have been testing Zoho desk for about a week now and have been forwarding emails in via an Exchange Online Mail flow rule without issue until yesterday. Suddenly yesterday morning we started getting the vast majority of the emails stuck in Pending
                                                                                                                • Send Email reply on behalf of Agent

                                                                                                                  Hi, When using the send email reply via the API I can set the reply on behalf of the customer by using impersonatedUserId in the header of the API call. Is there a way to do this for Agents too? I need to be able to send an email reply on behalf of an
                                                                                                                • Sharing Tickets to a team within a department

                                                                                                                  Hi there, We have a need for one department to be able to share tickets to a specific team within a department, I'm wondering if this is possible? All the shared tickets are going into the 'Shared Tickets' view for the whole department but is there a
                                                                                                                • Removing To or CC Addresses from Desk Ticket

                                                                                                                  I was hoping i could find a way to remove unnecessary email addresses from tickets submitted via email. For example, a customer may email the support address AND others who are in the helpdesk notification group, in either the TO or CC address. This results
                                                                                                                • Do not use isnull()

                                                                                                                  Does not always return booleans. Can also return null. Never use this function. Just use var==null instead.
                                                                                                                • Organization wide Account and Contacts Visibility/Sharing Capabilities?

                                                                                                                  Has anyone figured out a way to make visibility or sharing of Accounts and Contacts to be available across the entire organization without having to have every individual user edit their Sharing permissions? For our sales folks they need to be able to
                                                                                                                • Is there a way to configure dark mode for Campaigns emails that go out to customers?

                                                                                                                  I've found a lot of information on how to configure dark mode for my (The user) personal Zoho workspace and email, but is there any way to edit dark mode settings on emails that we send out to customers via campaigns?  We sent out a test email the other
                                                                                                                • When Does WorkDrive integrate with Books?

                                                                                                                  When Does WorkDrive integrate with Books?
                                                                                                                • How do I import Connected Records for a Deal?

                                                                                                                  Can you point me to an example of the CSV file that would add related records to an existing CRM Deal? I imported a Deal, then tried importing a connected record using a unique ID that references the Deal ID, but it doesn't attach it to the Deal rec
                                                                                                                • FSM integration with Books

                                                                                                                  Hi, I have spent a few months working with FSM and have come across a critical gap in the functionality, which I find almost shocking....either that, or I am an idiot. The lack of bi-directional sync between Books and FSM on Sales Orders/ Work Orders
                                                                                                                • How to close an estimate ?

                                                                                                                  Hello, I have created estimates, and converted them to invoices to get 50% payment. Now I have 2 cases where the estimate stills shows status partially invoiced, however: 1. for one of them, project stopped half way, so the remaining part will never be
                                                                                                                • Power up your Kiosk Studio with Real-Time Data Capture, Client Scripts & More!

                                                                                                                  Hello Everyone, We’re thrilled to announce a powerful set of enhancements to Kiosk Studio in Zoho CRM. These new updates give you more flexibility, faster record handling, and real-time data capture, making your Kiosk flows smarter and more efficient
                                                                                                                • How do you print out the invoices comments

                                                                                                                  I have some invoices where i need to print out the comments that show when reminders and etc were sent how do we print those out in Zoho Books.
                                                                                                                • Unable to load a specific image

                                                                                                                  Hi I am trying to upload an svg file, which reports that there is "a problem with the file", but does not say what sort of problem. I can't find anything which says which files are supported, so it may be it does not support svg. (which would be a real shame) The file itself will open in either Firefox or Chrome without problem. For the moment I am using a png file, which does not zoom well of course. David
                                                                                                                • Why does the Address field show the wrong map location even with a correct Pincode?

                                                                                                                  I am noticing an issue with the Address field map in Zoho Creator. When I enter a city name that exists in multiple locations within the same state, the map sometimes points to the wrong area even if I have entered the correct Pincode. Currently, it seems
                                                                                                                • Books <-> CRM synchronisation with custom Fields

                                                                                                                  Hello, We are synchronising Books Customers with CRM Accounts. In CRM Accounts I set up last year a "segments" multiselect field shown below In Books, I set up a custom multi-select field with the same value as in the CRM And set up the synchronisation inside Books. Want to synchronise the Books Segments with the CRM Segments, but the later doesn't exist, and another non-existing is there ?! First, I don't understand where the field Segmentation is coming from. Second, I set CRM Segmentation to sync
                                                                                                                • CRM x WorkDrive: We're rolling out the WorkDrive-powered file storage experience for existing users

                                                                                                                  Release plan: Gradual rollout to customers without file storage add-ons, in this order: 1. Standalone CRM 2. CRM Plus and Zoho One DCs: All | Editions: All Available now for: - Standalone CRM accounts in Free and Standard editions without file storage
                                                                                                                • Next Page