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