Finance Integration support in CRM Sandbox

Zoho CRM supports integration with the Zoho Finance Suite both in production (IDC) and in the Sandbox environment. The Sandbox integration is an extension of the existing Finance integration available in production, enabling teams to test Finance workflows before rolling them out.

The Finance suite integration in Sandbox is currently in Phase 1. Only a subset of Finance products are supported at this stage, with full product coverage and deployment capabilities planned for future phases.

Zoho Books sandbox setup

When integrating Zoho Finance in Sandbox, a dedicated Sandbox account is created with Zoho Books. The following rules apply to this account.

Each organization is limited to one Sandbox account in Zoho Books.
The Sandbox account operates independently from the production Books environment.
Integration occurs between Zoho CRM's Sandbox and Zoho Book's Sandbox - not the Production Books account.

Note. Only one sandbox account per organization is permitted at any time. Creating multiple sandbox accounts or the same org is not supported.

How the integration works

The Zoho Finance Suite integration in Sandbox is accessible via Settings in the CRM Sandbox interface, similar to how it appears in the production environment. Users can navigate to the Finance Suite section to configure and enable the integration.

When the Finance integration is enabled in Sandbox, four modules are automatically created and placed under the Zoho Finance tab within CRM. These modules are available for testing purposes and allow users to create records during the sandbox session.

Modules are created via a scheduled job triggered at the time of enabling the integration.
Users can create records in these modules while working in Sandbox.
These modules and their records will not appear in the production environment's deployment log.
No deployment logs are generated for modules created through the Finance integration in Sandbox.

The sync configuration available in the Sandbox Finance integration mirrors the configuration available in the production environment. Users can set up test sync settings as they would do so in production.

Notes.

No deployment support - Changes made to the Zoho FInance integration within Sandbox cannot be deployed to production.
Integration not copied from production - If a Finance integration is configured in the production environment, it's not automatically replicated into the Sandbox environment. It must be set up independently.
Limited finance product coverage - Only Zoho Books is supported in the Sandbox environment. The remaining Finance Suite products - Inventory, Expense, Billing, and Invoice - are not available for Sandbox integration in the phase.