What's New in Zoho Inventory - March & April 2020

Hello, everyone!

Hope you're all safe and well. The past few weeks have been challenging not just for businesses, but for the entire world as we fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Even during these testing times, our team has been working remotely to provide you with maximum assistance. Here's a myriad of updates that were rolled out in Zoho Inventory in the past couple of months.

Reporting Tags

Reporting tags allow you to create customized tags and associate them with items, contacts, and transactions. You can then run your reports based on these tags.

To create a reporting tag: Go to Settings > Reporting Tags > click the + New Tag button.

Learn more about reporting tags.

Zoho Desk Integration

Zoho Desk is a help desk software used by businesses to address customer queries and feedbacks over a variety of channels. You can integrate it with Zoho Inventory to charge your customers for the tickets handled and for the time spent on each ticket.

Learn more about Desk integration.

Documents tab

The Documents tab is a space in Zoho Inventory where you can upload files. You can later attach these files to your contacts and transactions. You can also create folders to organize your uploaded files.

To access the Documents tab, click the folder icon in the top-right corner of the Zoho Inventory dashboard.

Learn more about the Documents tab.

PayTabs Integration [GCC editions]

PayTabs is a popular online payment gateway in the GCC region. You can now integrate this gateway with Zoho Inventory to collect payments from your customers swiftly and securely. This integration is available in the Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia editions of Zoho Inventory.

Learn how you can set up PayTabs integration.

Warehouse-level distribution of opening stock

Until now, the opening stock of an item was saved in the primary warehouse, and you will have to create transfer orders to distribute this stock to other warehouses.

You now have the option to split the opening stock among the available warehouses in the item creation page itself. You'll also be able to add serial and batch numbers to the opening stock in each warehouse.

Learn how you can add opening stock to warehouses.

Customer Credit Limit

By setting a credit limit for each customer, you can restrict sales for that customer when their payment due exceeds a certain amount. This will help you keep a check on your customer's outstanding receivables.

Learn how you can set a credit limit for your customers in Zoho Inventory.

Field Validation

You can now write your own set of rules to validate the data of a field. You can also choose whether the rule is to be applied on all the transactions or on selected transactions that satisfy specific criteria. Validation rules is available for the sales orders and invoices modules.

To set up validation rules: Go to Settings > Preferences > Sales Orders/Invoices > click on the Validation Rules tab > + New Validation Rule.

Learn how you can set up a validation rule for a field in Zoho Inventory.

Reports Comparison

Compare data from different periods of a report side-by-side, and get a clear insight into your business performance.

To do so: Go to Reports in the left sidebar > open a report > click Customize Report > under Compare with, choose a period and the number of such periods to compare with.

Taxable orders can be synced from Shopify [GCC editions]

You can now fetch VAT inclusive orders from Shopify in the Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia editions of Zoho Inventory.

Warehouse to marketplace mapping

For every marketplace integrated with Zoho Inventory, you can now designate a warehouse to track the incoming orders and stock changes. By assigning a dedicated warehouse, you can track the overall sales through that marketplace, and monitor the demand for the product in that particular sales channel. This is applicable for Amazon US, Amazon CA, eBay US, eBay UK, Shopify and Etsy.

Learn how to link a warehouse to a marketplace.

Multi-piece shipment for UPS

If you have integrated Zoho Inventory with UPS, you can now create a single shipment with multiple packages. For every package in the shipment, UPS will generate a tracking ID and a shipping label which you can download and print.

Learn how you can create a multi-piece UPS shipment in Zoho Inventory.

Mercado Pago [Latin America]

Integrate your Zoho Inventory organization with Mercado Pago, a popular online payment gateway for businesses located in the Latin American regions. With Mercado Pago, you can collect online or offline payments for invoices via cash, debit or credit cards, and red link transfers, securely and effortlessly.

Learn more about Mercado Pago integration.

Taxes on Shipping Charges [UK & Global editions]

You can now apply taxes on shipping charges. Enter the shipping charges and then choose the tax rate to be applied to it.

Items with Identical Names

You can now create two or more items with identical names in Zoho Inventory. You must, however, provide a distinct SKU for each product you're creating.

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

Do try out these features and let us know your thoughts about them in the comments.

Cheers,

Lakshmi