An online retail store uses Zoho Forms to collect orders - a perfect solution for their initial growth. As their business expanded, managing the orders became a struggle. Manually processing orders, generating sales orders, and invoices were overwhelming. As we know, with growth comes the need for a more streamlined process. While Zoho Forms help in collecting orders and payments, a seamless order management process requires more. This is where Zoho Inventory comes in; this powerful tool helps manage and automate your order management process. First, let's examine a typical order journey.

1. A customer places their order through Zoho Forms.
   
2. The business accepts the purchase order and sends a confirmation email regarding order placement, along with a delivery estimate and link to track the order status.
   
3. A sales order is created, documenting the product details, quantity, payment information, and shipping details.
   
4. The order is then packed and shipped with the generated invoice.
   

This article solely focuses on automating sales order creation in Zoho Inventory for every new form submission. To do this, follow these steps:

Step 1: Create an order form

Use Zoho Forms to create an order form to collect customer and purchase details. Add essential fields like name, email, address, phone number, and shipping address to get customer information. Clearly display each product with an image, description, and associated cost. Include fields for product specifications like quantity, size, and color(if applicable). Customize your form to reflect your brand identity and share it directly with your customers or embed it in your website.

Now that we have connected our apps, it's time to configure and test the automation.

In the Zapier dashboard, click Zoho Forms.

A successful test will take you to the next step, where you will configure the action in Zoho Inventory.

In Zoho Inventory:

Step 4: Automate sales order creation

If your test successfully sends data to Zoho Inventory, you are ready to publish your Zap. Once published, whenever a new entry is submitted in your Zoho Form, a corresponding sales order will automatically be created in Zoho Inventory.

This is just a simple example of Zapier's vast capabilities. Beyond automating sales orders, you can create Zaps for various events, such as item creation in inventory and generating invoices to oversee your order management process. With more than 6,000 applications to integrate, you can choose different applications and actions to automate your various business processes.