Ok we ran into a major, fundametal problem if we want to use CRM and Books / Inventory.

1. We have Zoho One

2. We have integration of CRM with Books

3. We have integration of CRM with Inventory

4. In CRM we have 1000 Products, 1000 Accounts, 100 Vendors

5. We have data sharing rules and other ways to control information, so that

- Employee 1 - can see 500 Products, 100 Accounts, 10 Vendors

- Employee 2 - can see 100 Products, 500 Accounts, 1 Vendor

This is I think normal for any company.

1. Inventory and Books are synced 1:1, you cannot have different settings for the two

2. If you change how Books integrates with CRM, the same settings are automatically taken for Inventory, which is very strange and there is nothing you can do about it

3. If you change how Inventory integrates with CRM, the same settings are automatically taken for Inventory, which is very strange and there is nothing you can do about it

4. If you enable the Zoho Books / Zoho CRM integration you can issue Estimates, Invoices and POs from CRM, but using entirely the Books capabilities / settings. CRM capabilities / settings are disregarded

5. You cannot brake the integration between Books and Inventory. 

And here is the problem.

- Employee 1 - in the CRM they can see 500 Products, 100 Accounts, 10 Vendors

But when they write an Estimate (even if they do not have access to Books) - they can see ALL Products, ALL Accounts and ALL Prices

If they write a PO - they can see ALL Products ,ALL Vendors, ALL Purchase Prices

This is absolutely crazy and basically Books and Inventory bypass any rules, data management, compliance, security and whatever measures you can think of and shows ALL data to anyone who should be able to make an Estimate.

So at the end:

- Any Employee, regardless of their level of the company will be able to see ALL Sales Prices if they can write an Estimate and ALL Purchase Prices if they can make a PO. If you have 100 Employees, some of them front desk  that need to sell only 1 Product to walk ins - you will still let them see ALL you Products, event those that cost 1,000,000 euro

1. We want to have ALL Products, All Vendors, ALL Accounts in Books, since logically Accountants need to have full access

2. We want to have ALL Estimates, ALL POs, etc in Books since Accounting needs all that data

3. We want to have SOME Products (honestly no idea why there is Non-Inventory Items in a module called Inventory), SOME Vendors (non-trading Vendors have no place in Inventory), SOME Accounts in Inventory

4. We want to limit Employees to be able to see only SOME of the Products, SOME of the Accounts, SOME of the Vendors in Inventory, maybe based on their profile so they can manage only products and warehouses they are responsible for

1. Syncing Custom Views - this was the first idea, but does not work. With Custom Views you can sync SOME Accounts, SOME Products, SOME Vendors, but:

- since the same setting is automatically (I really have no idea in what world this makes sense) in Books, the same happens in Books, so there you do not have ALL the data

- still you can further allow which Employee can sell / order which product like in the CRM

2. Custom code - this can transfer data, but not updates, notes, etc. 

3. Automation / Flow - same as above and you need to make such a complex set of Flows, that supporting it will be crazy

Does anyone have any idea how this can be overcome, since Zoho support is just passing me between CRM, Inventory and Books support?