Building extensions #1: Creating and testing extensions for Zoho Finance Suite applications

Building extensions #1: Creating and testing extensions for Zoho Finance Suite applications

Hello developers!

We're excited to announce a new series called "Building extensions" to assist developers in creating efficient extensions for Zoho Finance Suite products. We'll support and guide you through the process of creating an extension and using the features offered in the developer portal.

What are extensions?

Extensions are installable plugins or add-ons that help enhance the existing functionality of your Zoho product or seamlessly integrate and interact with third-party applications for data transmission.

How can you build extensions?

Zoho offers a developer platform called Zoho Developer that allows you to build different types of applications. Sigma is a platform offered within Zoho Developer that is specifically designed for creating extensions for various Zoho products. Throughout this series, we'll look at how to create and develop extensions for the Zoho Finance Suite applications using Sigma.

Get to know all about extensions and building them further in detail.

Sigma extension support

The Zoho Finance Suite consists of seven applications: Zoho Books, Zoho Inventory, Zoho Expense, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Billing, Zoho Checkout, and Zoho Payroll. Currently, the Sigma platform supports creating and building extensions for these five Zoho Finance applications:
  • Zoho Books
  • Zoho Inventory
  • Zoho Expense
  • Zoho Invoice
  • Zoho Billing
Creating an extension
  • Log in or sign up at developer.zoho.com.
  • Go to Sigma and access your workspace.
  • Once you enter your workspace, you'll be taken to the Extensions section in Sigma.
  • Click the New Extension button to start building an extension.                                                                                     
  • Enter a name and description for the extension and choose the service you want to build the extension for. As mentioned earlier, Sigma offers support for Zoho Books, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Inventory, Zoho Billing, and Zoho Expense.                                                                                          
  • For our demo, let's choose the service as Zoho Books. Accept the terms and conditions, and then click Create.                                                                                          
  • The extension is successfully created. You can click the Extension Details icon to see an overview of the extension.                                                                                          
The extension details page shows the general details of the extension, such as creation date, creation time, and version, and allows you to associate developers with the extension.
  • Click the Edit Extension icon to start developing the extension.                                                                                  
  • The Zoho Books Developer Portal opens with the options and native features available to customize, curate, and develop your extension.                                                                
Zoho Books Developer Portal sections

The developer portal has four different sections to help customize and build your extension.

Learn: This section lists the native Zoho Books capabilities that can be used to create and develop extensions. Clicking the Set up Now button next to each feature will take you to the feature's development setup page.
                                                                                           

Build: This is the development setup section, which includes customization, automation, and components like connections, widgets, schedules, webhooks, and signals. You can customize your extension preferences, establish connections to integrate with other applications, and design custom interfaces to enhance user experience.
                                                                                          

Configure: This section assists with handling your extension's required configurations, whether they are generic settings or customizations required from the user. You can add global fields, which can be incorporated as either variables that store static data or through custom widgets that retrieve user inputs. You can also define functionalities that happen during installation and uninstallation.
                                                                                          

Publish: Once the extension has been built and configured, you can use this section to publish it for either private or public use. In both cases, the Zoho Books team will review the extension; for public extensions listed on Zoho Marketplace, the Zoho Marketplace approval team will also review them. You can share your privately published extension with other users using the Shared List option.
                                                                                          

We will explore more about each of these sections and their features in upcoming posts.

Testing an extension

The Zoho Books Developer Portal offers a dedicated testing environment for each extension, allowing you to test and validate it before publishing.

As a developer, you can use the Test Your Extension option in the top right corner of the portal to access your extension's sandbox environment.
                                                                  

This will redirect you to the sandbox testing environment for the extension you're developing, which is similar to Zoho Books and contains relevant modules to test with.
                                                                  

You can populate necessary data and test your extension functionality. Once everything is validated, you can go ahead and publish your extension for private or public use.

For support or questions related to Zoho Finance Suite extension development, you can email developer@zohofinance.com.

We hope you found this guide useful. Keep following this space for more information!

Next>>



        • Recent Topics

        • IMPORTANT: It doens´t show full article name on search - Should add line break

          When we search for articles, it doesn´t show the full name. There should be a line break so the user can see the full article name, otherwise the user can´t know if that´s the article he/she is looking for. This is very important, otherwise the user has

        • IMPORTANT: It doesn´t search for letters with portuguese characters.

          Some of my articles have for example the word "vídeo". But if I search for "vídeo" it doesn´t find them. If I search for "video" it does find them. Idealy, it should find the articles either way. But if I have to choose, it would be better to find the

        • How to hide Activity Side Panel

          How do you hide the activity side panel? Clicking on the link and reviewing the activity does not remove it and it does not seem to timeout. I have any activity that have been listed there since January. Thank you.

        • Need a Universal Search Option in Zohobooks

          Hello Zoho, Need a Universal Search Option in Zohobooks to search across all transactions in our books of accounts. Please do the needful Thanks

        • This user is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

          Hi Team, when I,m trying to create a email account (imagixmidia.com.br) it's showing this error >>  This user is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details plz help me  thanks

        • Zoho Mail Android app update: UI revamp

          Hello everyone! We are excited to share that the first phase of the Zoho Mail Android UI revamp is now live. In this update, we have redesigned navigation bar at the bottom to quickly access the Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Settings modules. Also, the

        • Add Support for Authenticator App MFA in Zoho Desk Help Center

          Hello Zoho Desk Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement related to security for the Zoho Desk Help Center (customer portal). Currently, the Help Center supports MFA for portal users via SAML, JWT, SMS authentication,

        • Resubscribe with Zoho Campaigns

          Hi, I am new to Zoho Campaigns and sent a campaign to a contact list with only my email address. I wanted to see what the footer links did, so clicked unsubscribe and now can't include my email address into any more campaigns. I don't have a sign up form on my website to resubscribe and can't find how to resubscribe anywhere else. Can you help?

        • Add a way to connect Log360 Cloud logs with Zoho analytics

          Hi, Several month ago Log360 Cloud was added to zoho one - and this is great. But as far as I see there is no prebuilt way to connect Zoho analytics to the logs we have in Log360 Cloud. Please add a prebuilt connection like we have for so many other zoho

        • Dynamic Multi-Staff Selection for Ad-Hoc Bookings

          Summary Allow customers or internal schedulers to select specific staff members at the time of booking, with Zoho Bookings automatically surfacing only the time slots where all selected members are simultaneously available. Current Behaviour Zoho Bookings

        • Migration from Global edition of Books to German version

          Has anyone successfully completed this migration? We are a Zoho One customer currently using the global edition of Books. Facing numerous issues concerning compliance on a regular basis. Does the German version of books provide a simplified way to export

        • Share Edit while in Workflow

          There are times that while a writer document is in the middle of a workflow the user that's responsible for that stage of the workflow needs to bring in other people to work on the document. Currently there is no way for the user to be able to allow other's

        • How can I use the API to add a drop-shipping address to a sales order for one-time use?

          I need to be able to add a drop-shipping address for one-time use to a sales order via the API. Adding every such address to the contact (customer), then feeding the shippingaddress_id into the sales order, is not an acceptable approach; we have some

        • Merge tag didn't work in the campaign sent to test email list

          Hello, I just sent out a campaign to my list of test emails (including my personal one). The merge tag that's supposed to put a first name of the contact $[UD:FIRST_NAME||]$ didn't work. Where the first name of the contact should be displayed there's

        • Auto sync Photo storage

          Hello I am new to Zoho Workdrive and was wondering if the is a way of automatically syncing photos on my Android phone to my workdrive as want to move away from Google? Thanks

        • Major journey crash and not loading. Zoho Marketing Automation

          Hi all. Last night (19MAR, 2026) Marketing Automation for a specific journey completely crashed, and since the crash the specific journey has failed to load at all (blank journey canvas, no journey appears, no menu accessible) but other separate journey's

        • Adding options in the salutation drop down list (Books)

          Hello,  I am a new user still in the trial phase so I apologize if I have missed this. I did search the knowledge base and community first. I need to add a "Mr and Mrs" option in the salutation drop down options in Books. I have tried to find the edit

        • Izettle or Sumup Integration for Zoho Books.

          The Stripe & Square clearing works great in Zoho Books. Any further integrations planned in the future for Izettle or Sumup? These card processors are very common for taking payments with a card reader.

        • Is anyone experience missing functions in the new UI until hard refresh?

          The set of functions including search is almost always missing upon loading an app in the new UI. If you refresh, the functions return. (see second screenshot) Anyone else experiencing this?

        • Mail Search should allow grouping by conversation like Gmail.

          Having switched from gmail I have found the search function hard to use. Mostly because mail is not grouped by conversation in search. If I search for a word when looking for a conversation had with someone then sometimes 10 emails will come up from the

        • Server-based Appication API access for Social, Sites, Flow, Pages.

          Hello, I am trying to hook up API access for a number of apps and I have hit a wall trying to add these scopes to the API feed. We cannot find the correct way to list the scope for these Zoho apps; Social, Sites, Flow, Writer. Error on web-page comes

        • Zoho Landing Page "Something went wrong" Error

          Hello, Every time I try to create a new landing page, I receive a "Something went wrong" error with no explanation. I cannot create any new pages, which means we cannot use this application. I did create one landing page successfully over a month ago,

        • Zoho → ShipStation Integration – Sales Order–Driven Fulfilment Workflow

          Hello All, I’m reaching out to explore the best way to integrate a shipping tool into our inventory which will speed our process up. We are looking to integrate ShipStation into our existing order-to-fulfilment workflow, as we’re keen to standardise on

        • Bank Feed shows redacted description numbers (xxxx)

          Hi All, Is there any way to change this behaviour? Either Zoho or Yodlee is redacting important numbers from the transaction description, preventing us from being able to easily recognise and reconcile transactions. For example, a transaction with a description

        • Handling large product migrations in Zoho?

          Hi everyone, How do you usually manage large product catalog migrations (10K+ SKUs) into Zoho One? Main concerns I’m thinking about: Avoiding downtime Preventing data loss Keeping supplier and product relationships intact Do you prefer bulk imports or

        • Reassign Partially Saved Entries

          Hi, I would like to be able to go to Partially Saved Entries and like the option to delete them I would like the option to multi-select and be able to reassign them to another user to complete (Such as when a user has left the company). Thanks Dan

        • Preventing auto-redirect to Parent Record on Save...

          Our users often create records from the related list on th left side of the screen. They click the blue "plus" button to create the record. This is handy, but for some modules, or situations, they would like to remain on the record AFTER clicking "Save",

        • Introducing Version-3 APIs - Explore New APIs & Enhancements

          New Update - The end of life timeline for V2 APIs has now been extended to 30th June, 2026 Happy to announce the release of Version 3 (V3) APIs with an easy to use interface, new APIs, and more examples to help you understand and access the APIs better.

        • Correlated subqueries not supported in Zoho Analytics. This creates huge limitations

          Running into a major limitation in Zoho Analytics: correlated subqueries simply don’t work, even in completely standard SQL patterns inside a JOIN. Example: LEFT JOIN "Bills" b ON d."Id" = b."Deal ID" AND EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM "Bill

        • Unknown table or alias 'A1'

          I would like to create a subquery but i am getting the following error: Unknown table or alias 'A1' used in select query. This is the sql statement:  SELECT A1.active_paying_customers, A1.active_trial_customers, A1.new_paying_signup, date(A1.date_active_customers), 

        • Feature announcement - Introducing recipient authentication via Didit in Zoho Sign

          Hi everyone! Zoho Sign already integrates with trusted providers like IDology (US), eID Easy (EU), and Stripe Identity. Today, we're excited to add another powerful option: Didit. Some benefits of using Didit: Unified ID verification Streamlined eKYC

        • 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

        • Super Admin Logging in as another User

          How can a Super Admin login as another user. For example, I have a sales rep that is having issues with their Accounts and I want to view their Zoho Account with out having to do a GTM and sharing screens. Moderation Update (8th Aug 2025): We are working

        • Regarding the integration of Apollo.io with Zoho crm.

          I have been seeing for the last 3 months that your Apollo.io beta version is available in Zoho Flow, and this application has not gone live yet. We requested this 2 months ago, but you guys said that 'we are working on it,' and when we search on Google

        • Message as bot

          I would like to be able to send a Cliq message truly as a bot. the current implementation of this function, while it sends the message as a bot it sends that message inside a chat from the user how authenticated the flow cliq connection instead of directly

        • Using a custom single line External ID form as merge fields in templates

          Hey everyone, We're looking to integrate a few external systems better with our Zoho CRM, and we had hoped to use external fields for this purpose. In this case, it would mean being able to use our own inoice system's invoice numbers are a direct id compatible

        • Build an approval management system with Custom Modules

          Dear users, Task management is at the heart of project management. But not all tasks are created equal. You can have your tasks reviewed before any work begins, to improve transparency or stay within budget or as part of your process. Zoho Projects allows

        • CRM's sandbox now supports the Zoho Desk integration

          Hello everyone, Sales and customer support teams often collaborate to solve tickets and identify pain points. In Zoho's suite of products, sales teams primarily use Zoho CRM while customer support teams work in Zoho Desk. These two tools are often integrated

        • Countries List Global Set- Complete with Phone Country Code and Continent.

          Dear Zoho Team I saw your recent addition to the Global Sets regarding the Countries list and states. While working on it, why didn't you also add things like Continent and Phone Country Code? Also, some ISO codes from some Countries/regions are mis

        • mask Customer phone number and agents cant see customer phone number

          Is there any way we can integrate Zoom Phone with Zoho CRM while ensuring that customer phone numbers remain masked? We need a solution where agents can make outbound calls but cannot see customer phone numbers. Please let us know if there is any solution

        • Next Page