Zoho Books or Invoice Integration
You can create a project budget, invoice time logs, and record expenses for all your projects by integrating Zoho Projects with Zoho Invoice or Zoho Books. Project managers can create budget to view the planned versus actual cost in real time. The invoice lists the products or services that are part of the sale, the price and quantity, the various taxes applied and the discounts given. You can save an invoice as a draft to be edited later. If the invoice crosses its due date, the status changes to Overdue automatically. It is important to record all the expenses to know the actual cost.
You can also generate quotes (formerly known as estimates in Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice) and send them to customers. Quote can be marked as Accepted if the customer agrees with it, otherwise it can be marked as Declined. Fetch timesheets, contacts, tasks, users, and bugs that are associated with Zoho Projects to Zoho Books. Keep a track of all the invoices and expenses by integrating Zoho Projects with Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice.
Feature Availability: Premium and Enterprise plans of Zoho Projects and at least Professional edition of Zoho Books.
Use case
Zyllium Event Organization uses Zoho Projects to manage their project activities. A client company named Ted International wants Zyllium Event Organization to plan an annual event for the company. The client has shared their requirements with the admin of the event organization and would like them to come up with a quote. The event organization team uses Zoho Projects to manage their project activities, and they would like to include the finance details associated with the projects within Zoho Projects. To achieve this, Zoho Projects can be integrated with Zoho Books, where the quotes (formerly known as estimates), invoices, and expenses of the project can be tracked.
After integrating, you can create a quote (formerly known as estimate) within Zoho Projects to send it to the client. The below screenshot is a quote created for the annual event that covers all the main expenses of the event.
The event planner tracks all the expenses made in the project using the Expense option under the Finance tab. Any expense made about the project can be added in here, and this will help track all the expenses made for the project.
After the completion of the event, Ted International would like a check for the final settlement. With the Invoice feature, the event planner can create an invoice and include all the expenses made for the project and send the invoice to the client.
Benefits
- Create invoice for hours logged for your projects in Zoho Projects.
- Create Quotes for your projects based on your project budget.
- Generate quotes and sent them to customers.
- Choose module based billing method for your projects.
Integrate Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice
- Click
in the upper-right corner of the top navigation band.
- Choose Zoho Apps in Marketplace. Now, select Activate Books/Invoice in Zoho Invoice/Books.
If you do not have a user account in Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice, you will need to create an account in Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice. After you have created and set up your organization, you will be directed to Zoho Invoice or Zoho Books. You can now come back to Zoho Projects and continue the integration. - Select the Integration Preference.
Select a date from when the time logs are to be invoiced. Time logs prior to this date will be marked as invoiced.
Select the profiles that are to be given the Finance Permission.
Enable Manage Expenses (Expense in Zoho Books) if you want to include Expenses in the Finance tab in Zoho Projects.
Enable Invoice Milestones & Tasks option to create fixed cost invoicing for milestones and tasks. - Enable Expense Claims & Expense Reports (Powered by Zoho Expense) to integrate with Zoho Expense.
- Set the Customer Duplicate Preference.
Overwrite: Customers in Zoho Books/Invoice will be overwritten if their name is same in Zoho Projects. Zoho Projects Client Company will be linked with the existing customer in Zoho Books/Invoice.
Clone: Customers in Zoho Books/Invoice will not be overwritten if their name is same in Zoho Projects. We will create a new customer with the client company in Zoho Projects. - Click Save.
- Users must be given permission to view all timesheets before they can be given the permission to access Invoice.
- Navigate to
> Marketplace > Zoho apps> Zoho Invoice/Zoho Books tile. Click Update. Profiles with view all timesheets permission will be listed under Configuration > Accessible to section. Selecting a profile will give users having the profile access to the Finance tab in Zoho Projects. - Budget is enabled automatically for the users integrated with Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice. Click here to learn more about budget feature.
Billing Methods in Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects supports the following billing methods. Billing
method allows users to track budget and invoice customers based on
different criteria.
- Based on Staff Hours - Users are assigned different rates,
and project billing is based on the user rates of the members working on
the project. You can set user rates when adding or editing users.
- Based on Project Hours - The billing is based on a fixed project rate. The total hours logged are multiplied with this rate to get the project cost.
- Fixed Price for Project - Clients are invoiced based on a fixed cost.
- Based on Task/Issue Hours - In task or issue based billing method clients are invoiced based on the Rate Per Hour set in task or issue. This billing method is used when your organization provides services which are independent of each other and hence each task/issue requires a different rate based on their purpose.
The Default Rate Per Hour specified while creating the project cannot be edited for issues. This can only be done for tasks. Planned cost for a recurring task will be multiplied by the number of occurrences. This will be added to the task list, milestone and project planned cost.
Create an Invoice for a Project
- Navigate to your project and select Finance.
- Click Create Invoice to create the invoice for your project.
- Choose the sorting criteria for the invoice.
- Select the fields to be shown as item name and description.
- Click Save to proceed.
- Fill the details and enter the recipients in the Email To field.
- Click Save to send the invoice to customers.
- The Bill up to field is mandatory in order to generate the invoice. So, select a date if you haven't selected yet.
- You can create invoice only for billable timesheet logs based on the selected date range. Only approved time logs will be invoiced, if the "Submit with Approval" option in your Portal Configuration is selected. (To enable this: Click and navigate to Portal Configuration > Task & Timesheet > Timesheet Settings. Enable Submit with Approval in Timesheet Approval Process section.)
- If you have not selected the approval option, all the time logs will be invoiced.
Select the option Include all the unbilled expense of the selected customer option to invoice all the expenses.
A sample invoice is shown here for your reference:
Edit an Invoice
All the invoices created are saved in the Finance tab.
- Select the required invoice to edit.
- Click
to edit the invoice details. - Click Save to update the changes.
Delete an Invoice
- Select the required invoice to delete.
- Click
to delete the invoice.
- Confirm your action.
Create an Invoice for a Milestone
- Click Projects and select the project for which you would like to invoice milestones from the left navigation panel.
- Click Milestones in the top navigation panel.
- Select a milestone which you would like to invoice.
- Navigate to the Invoices tab and click Create Invoice.
- Choose the Bill up to date range for the invoice.
- Select the fields to be shown as item name, description and Invoice line item amount.
Users can select any numeric custom field under 'Invoice line item amount' to invoice their milestones. - Select the checkbox to mark the timesheets associated with milestones as invoiced.
- Click Save to proceed.
- Fill the details and click Save.
- You can email or print an invoice as well as export the invoice as a .pdf file.
- You can filter invoices based on different criteria like void, draft, paid, and sent invoices.
Create an Invoice for a Task
Invoice can be created from the task details page of a task.
- Navigate to the left navigation panel and click Projects.
- Select the project for which you would like to invoice tasks.
- Click the Tasks tab in the top navigation panel.
- Select a task which you would like to invoice.
- Navigate to the Invoices tab and click Create Invoice.
- Choose the Bill up to date range for the invoice.
- Select the fields to be Shown as item name, description and Invoice line item amount.
Users can select any numeric custom field under 'Invoice line item amount' to invoice their tasks. - If required, select the checkbox to mark the timesheets associated with task as invoiced.
- Click Save to proceed.
- Enter the invoice details and click Save.
Create an Invoice for Multiple Tasks
Invoices can be generated for multiple tasks in bulk from the List view.
- Navigate to the left navigation panel and click Projects.
- Select the project for which you would like to invoice tasks.
- Click the Tasks tab in the top navigation panel.
- In the list view, click the checkbox beside the tasks which you want to invoice.
- Click Create Invoice and choose the Bill up to date range for the invoice.
- Select the fields to be Shown as item name, description and Invoice line item amount.
Users can select any numeric custom field under 'Invoice line item amount' to invoice their tasks. - If required, select the checkbox to mark the timesheets associated with task as invoiced.
- Click Save to proceed.
- Enter the invoice details and click Save.
- A maximum of 100 tasks can be invoiced at once.
- The Invoice tab will be displayed only if the project has a Primary Client and is synced with Zoho Books/Zoho Invoice.
Create a Quote
A Quote (formerly known as Estimate) is a proposal that you send to your customers with detailed quotation. After the customer accepts the quote, it can be converted to a sales order or an invoice.
- Navigate to your project and select Finance.
- Choose the Quotes tab and click Create Quote.
- Fill the details and enter the recipients in the Email To field.
- Click Save to send the quote to customers.
Record an Expense
- Click the Expenses tab in Invoice and Expenses.
- Click Create Expense in the upper-right corner to create a new expense record.
- Specify the expense details
- Click Save to save the expense record.
Edit an Expense Record
All the invoices created are saved in the Finance tab.
- Select the required expense to edit.
- Click to edit the invoice details.
- Click Save to update the changes.
Delete an Expense Record
- Select the required expense to delete.
- Click
- Confirm your action.
- You can attach, change, and delete an expense receipt.
- The invoice details are displayed in Timesheet, Tasks, and Bugs.
- Invoice created in Zoho Projects will be listed in Zoho Invoice or Zoho Books.
If something goes wrong during integration you can view the error summary in Zoho Books or Invoice under Settings > Integrations > Zoho Projects > View Error Summary, which contains a module-wise list of errors that occurred.
Profitability Summary
View the profitability summary of your project in the project dashboard.
- Navigate to a project and click Dashboard in the top navigation bar.
- Gain insights about the income vs expenses recorded in your project in the Profitability Summary widget.
- Select Accrual or Cash option.
- Accrual: Shows the income that have been invoiced to the customer but payment hasn't been received yet.
- Cash: Shows the income and expenses after the invoices have been paid.
- Accrual: Shows the income that have been invoiced to the customer but payment hasn't been received yet.
- View data for current fiscal, previous fiscal, last 12 months, or the last 6 months.
Delete Integration
The portal owner can delete the Zoho Invoice integration.
- Navigate to
> Marketplace > Installed Apps.
- Select Zoho Invoice.
- Click Delete Integration. Deleting this integration will result in timesheet entries no longer being invoiced. Projects synced with Zoho Books will not be affected.
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