#11 Zoho Books Digest

#11 Zoho Books Digest

Hello Readers,

We are back with the 11th edition of Zoho Books Digest. Here's what we have in store for the community this month.

Upcoming Events

Solutions Talk series with Zoho Books

Are you a business owner in the Middle East looking to streamline your entire Quote-to-Cash process? We've got you covered! Join us for our free solutions talk in partnership with Alnafitha IT, a Jeddah based IT services leader. We will be discussing some major accounting challenges in the IT services segment, industry-specific insights, and how to balance cost and growth using powerful financial platforms.

Date: 29 March 2022
Time: 12 PM AST

Feature Spotlight

Contextual Chat in Zoho Books

Have trouble coordinating and collaborating with your teammates on transactions? Contextual Chat in Zoho Books is here to help you! With contextual chats, you can initiate discussions with other users about transactions, contacts, items, bank accounts, or projects—all from Zoho Books. This feature is powered by Zoho Cliq, an app that makes collaboration and communication easy for teams.

With contextual chats, you can:
  • Discuss transactions and records with specific participants
  • Get instant notifications every time a user initiates a discussion over contextual chat
  • Share images and documents
  • Initiate audio and video calls with users of your Zoho Books organization
Check out our help document to learn how to set up contextual chat for your organization and collaborate seamlessly.

What's New

Upload Documents from Vendor and Client Portal

Before, customer and vendor related details could only be uploaded through the respective attachment sections in Zoho Books.

Now, you can directly upload and share documents via the vendor and client portal. The uploaded document will appear in the attachment section of the customer or vendor profile in Zoho Books.

To allow your customers and vendors to attach documents through the portal:
1. Log in to Zoho Books.
2. Go to Settings, then Preferences.
3. Select the checkbox next to 'Allow customer to edit their information in the portal.'

Note: Only the primary contact of a client or vendor will be able to upload documents from the Client or Vendor portal.




In case you missed it

This year, April 1st is a day of compliance. But don't worry, we've been updating Zoho Books so that it's ready to help you stay on top of any new mandates and regulations hassle-free.

Audit Trail and E-invoicing (India)

According to the notification issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, the deadline for companies to start using an accounting software with audit trails is April 1, 2022. The CBIC has also said that e-invoicing will now be mandatory for businesses with an annual turnover of INR 20 crore and above, starting from April 1, 2022.

Click to learn about how you can get Audit Trail and E-invoicing ready with Zoho Books.

MTD for VAT (UK)

From April 1, 2022, all VAT- registered businesses are required to file their VAT returns digitally through MTD, regardless of their turnover. Businesses are required to use HMRC-authorized and MTD-compatible software to keep digital records and file VAT returns.


Accounting reads

Let's face it, collecting payments from customers is one of the most tedious and time-consuming tasks for business owners. Our experts have your back with a detailed plan on how to recover overdue payments effectively and get your money back in your register.


Customer Stories

In this edition of Digest, we are thrilled to share the success story of Ramakrishna Math and Mission, which is a renowned, spiritual non-government organization that has been doing humanitarian and social service activities for more than a century. Here is what they have to say about their experience with Zoho Books:

"With the increase in non-profit tax laws and compliance regulations, organisations need to move towards user-friendly automated systems that can do all their accounting and tax-related tasks in just a few clicks. This will allow NGOs to focus and work towards their mission. If you are an NGO looking to manage your accounting operations, we believe Zoho Books will be a suitable option. It is an intuitive, tax-compliant, feature-packed solution that can seamlessly integrate with other Zoho Finance apps, and it has an excellent support team."

We're eager to hear and share more stories about businesses using Zoho Books. If you would like to share your story with us, let us know in the comments, and we'll get in touch with you!

P.S.: Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and subscribe to our YouTube Channel. Turn on your notifications to stay up to date on what we're doing.

Until next time!

Cheers,
Diksha Uniyal
Customer Relations | Zoho Books




        • Recent Topics

        • Bigin’s 2025 Evolution: Highlights from 2025 and What’s Ahead in 2026

          Dear Biginners, Wishing you a very happy New Year! As we stand at the cusp of endless possibilities in 2026, we would like to take a moment to reflect on what we achieved together in 2025. Your continued support, thoughtful feedback, and kind words of

        • Send Supervisor Rule Emails Within Ticket Context in Zoho Desk

          Dear Zoho Desk Team, I hope this message finds you well. Currently, emails sent via Supervisor Rules in Zoho Desk are sent outside of the ticket context. As a result, if a client replies to such emails, their response creates a new ticket instead of appending

        • Zoho Desk - Change Time Zone for all users and set default for new user

          Hi,   Is there a way to set a default time zone so that when user creates an account via the Zoho Desk invitation, they don't need to select the time zone via the hundreds of choice?   And, for already created users, can we edit the incorrect time zone selected by the user at the account creation ?   Thanks ! Fred

        • Introducing WhatsApp integration in Bigin

          Greetings! In today's business landscape, messaging apps play a significant role in customer operations. Customers can engage with businesses, seek support, ask questions, receive personalized recommendations, read reviews, and even make purchases—all

        • Why is Zoho Meeting quality so poor?

          I've just moved from Office 365 to Zoho Workplace and have been generally really positive about the new platform -- nicely integrated, nice GUI, good and easy-to-understand control and customisation, and at a reasonable price. However, what is going on

        • Allow Manual Popup Canvas Size Control

          Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We hope you're doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the PageSense popup editor regarding popup sizing. Current Limitation: Currently, the size (width and height) of a popup is strictly controlled by the selected

        • Why does Zoho’s diff viewer highlight parts of unchanged lines?

          Hi everyone, I’ve noticed something odd in the Zoho editor’s diff view. When I delete a single line, the diff doesn’t just mark that line as removed. Instead, it highlights parts of the next line as if they changed, even though they are identical. Example:

        • All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

          The address field will be available exclusively for IN DC users. We'll keep you updated on the DC-specific rollout soon. It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition. Latest update

        • CRM x WorkDrive: File storage for new CRM signups is now powered by WorkDrive

          Availability Editions: All DCs: All Release plan: Released for new signups in all DCs. It will be enabled for existing users in a phased manner in the upcoming months. Help documentation: Documents in Zoho CRM Manage folders in Documents tab Manage files

        • Wrapping up 2025 on a high note: CRM Release Highlights of the year

          Dear Customers, 2025 was an eventful year for us at Zoho CRM. We’ve had releases of all sizes and impact, and we are excited to look back, break it down, and rediscover them with you! Before we rewind—we’d like to take a minute and sincerely thank you

        • Passing the CRM

          Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

        • Where can we specify custom CSS in Zoho Forms custom theme ?

          I'm using a form with a dark theme. The OTP popup window is unreadable, because for some reason, the OTP popup background fixes color to white, but still takes the font color specified in the custom theme. This ends up as white on white for me, rendering

        • Automating Employee Birthday Notifications in Zoho Cliq

          Have you ever missed a birthday and felt like the office Grinch? Fear not, the Cliq Developer Platform has got your back! With Zoho Cliq's Schedulers, you can be the office party-cipant who never forgets a single cake, balloon, or awkward rendition of

        • Drop Down Value

          Hi, May I know why Zoho Flow treat this drop down as number and not as string. If so, how can I fetch the right value for filtering. This field is from Creator, in Creator upon checking by default it is a string since it's not a lookup field.

        • Create PO from an invoice

          We are a hardware and software sales company which receives orders over the internet. We drop ship most of our products from a warehouse outside of our company. Our orders get sync'd into Zoho from our store via onesaas as invoices. It would be great

        • SMS to customers from within Bigin

          Hi All, Is there anyone else crying out for Bigin SMS capability to send an SMS to customers directly from the Bigin interface? We have inbuilt telephony already with call recordings which works well. What's lacking is the ability to send and receive

        • Zoho Survey reminder settings are extremely confusing

          Hi, I just want to set 3 reminders, one week apart from the first email out. Your form is too confusing and I don't understand. Can you simplify and be more specific regarding the language used on the form ?

        • Add deluge function to shorten URLs

          Zoho Social contains a nice feature to shorten URLs using zurl.co. It would be really helpful to have similar functionality in a Deluge call please, either as an inbuilt function or a standard integration. My Creator app sends an email with a personalised

        • Add specific field value to URL

          Hi Everyone. I have the following code which is set to run from a subform when the user selects a value from a lookup field "Plant_Key" the URL opens a report but i want the report to be filtered on the matching field/value. so in the report there is

        • form data load issue when saving as duplicate record is made

          Hello. I have a form with a lookup when a value is selected the data from the corresponding record is filled into all of the fields in the form. But the form is loaded in such a state that if any value is changed it will take all of the values pre loaded

        • Recurring Tasks and Reminders in Projects

          Recurring tasks are tasks that are created once, and then recreated automatically after a designated time period. For example, the invoice for your billable tasks is due every week. You can set that task to recreate itself every week. Also, the future

        • Unable to remove the “Automatically Assigned” territory from existing records

          Hello Zoho Community Team, We are currently using Territory Management in Zoho CRM and have encountered an issue with automatically assigned territories on Account records. Once any account is created the territory is assigned automatically, the Automatically

        • Track online, in-office, and client location meetings separately with the new meeting venue option

          Hello everyone! We’re excited to announce meeting enhancements in Zoho CRM that bring more clarity and structure to how meetings are categorized. You can now specify the meeting venue to clearly indicate whether a meeting is being held online, at the

        • Google Fonts Integration in Pagesense Popup Editor

          Hello Zoho Pagesense Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to submit a feature request to enhance Zoho Pagesense’s popup editor with Google Fonts support. Current Limitation: Currently, Pagesense offers a limited set of default fonts. Google Fonts

        • Improved Contact Sync flow in Google Integration with Zoho CRM

          Hello Everyone, Your contact sync in Google integration just got revamped! We have redesigned the sync process to give users more control over what data flows into Google and ensure that this data flows effortlessly between Zoho CRM and Google. With this

        • CRM Canvas - Upload Attachments

          I am in the process of changing my screens to Canvas.  On one screen, I have tabs with related lists, one of which is attachments.  There doesn't appear to be a way to upload documents though.  Am I missing something really obvious?  Does anyone have

        • Pro Lite Upgrade - Quick Access Tray

          Hello, I was going to upgrade to Pro Lite but the Quick Access Tray feature isn't available for Windows. Of the four features not available for Windows, the QAT is what I'm most interested in. Are there plans to add this feature for Windows anytime soon?

        • Custom Fonts in Zoho CRM Template Builder

          Hi, I am currently creating a new template for our quotes using the Zoho CRM template builder. However, I noticed that there is no option to add custom fonts to the template builder. It would greatly enhance the flexibility and branding capabilities if

        • Improved Functionality PO Bill SO Invoice

          Hello, I need to enter over 100 items, it's frustrating to scroll a few item rows and wait for more to load, then scroll again. It would be nice to have buttons that scroll to the top or bottom with one click. Furthermore, these items I'm adding are VAT

        • Camera access

          My picture doesn't appear in a group discussion. (The audio is fine.) The guide says "Click the lock icon on address bar," but I can't find it. Advise, please

        • Wishes for 2026

          Hello, and a happy new year 2026! Let's hope it's better for everyone. I'd like to share some thoughts on Zoho One and what could be useful in the short, medium, and long term. Some things are already there, but not applied to Zoho One. Others seem like

        • How to Integrate Zoho Books with Xero (No Native Connection Available)

          Hi everyone, I’m currently facing an issue with integrating Zoho Books invoices with Xero, as I’ve noticed Zoho does not provide a native integration with Xero at this time. I would like to ask: What are the common or recommended solutions for syncing

        • How to install Widget in inventory module

          Hi， I am trying to install a app into Sales Order Module related list, however there is no button allow me to do that. May I ask how to install widget to inventory module related list?

        • Picklist field shows "none" as default

          Hello, Is there an option to avoid showing "none" as the default value in a picklist field? I also don't want to see any option displayed. My expectation is to have a blank bar, and then when I display the drop-down list, I can choose whichever I wa

        • error while listing mails

          I can't access email in any of my folders: Oops, an error occurred - retry produces the second error response: error while listing mails (cannot parse null string). I've signed in and out of Zoho, restarted my iMac.

        • Unlocking New Levels: Zoho Payroll's Journey in 2025

          Every year brings its own set of challenges and opportunities to rethink how payroll works across regulations and teams. In 2025, Zoho Payroll continued to evolve with one clear focus: giving businesses more flexibility, clarity, and control as they grow.

        • Introducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone

          Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to

        • CRM project association via deluge

          I have created a workflow in my Zoho CRM for closing a deal. Part of this workflow leverages a deluge script to create a project for our delivery team. Creating the project works great however, after or during the project creation, I would like to associate

        • Zoho Browser??

          hai guys, this sounds awkward but can v get a ZOHO BROWSER same as zoho writer, etc. where i can browse websites @ home and continue browsing the same websites @ my office, as v have the option in Firefox, once i save and close the browser and again when i open it i will be getting the same sites. If u people r not clear with my explanation, plz let me know. Thanks, Sandeep  

        • Sync desktop folders instantly with WorkDrive TrueSync (Beta)

          Keeping your important files backed up and accessible has never been easier! With WorkDrive desktop app (TrueSync), you can now automatically sync specific desktop folders to WorkDrive Web, ensuring seamless, real-time updates across devices. Important:

        • Next Page