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

    • Zoho Books Payroll

      How am I supposed to do payroll and pay my employees with Zoho Books? I think it's pretty strange that an accounting software doesn't have the ability to perform one of the most common functions in business; paying your employees. Am I missing something,

    • Different Task Layouts for Subtasks

      I was wondering how it would be possible for a subtask to have a different task layout to the parent task.

    • 60 Days Into Zoho - Tiktok Branding Startup -7 Questions?!

      Wsp Everybody I co-own a TikTok Branding / Consulting Startup & have been using Zoho for the past 60 days - Am now looking to make our overall operations & processes more Efficient & Effective! Curious to know how others are using the platform & what's

    • Notifications in Cliq client for Linux

      If I got it right, Cliq desktop client for Linux does not use the generally accepted notification method via org.freedesktop.Notification interface. For this reason, Cliq notifications do not look and behave as all other notifications. Is it possible

    • Canvas templates can now be shared with different CRM organizations

      ----------------------------------------Moderated on 14th February, 2023------------------------------------------- Dear all, This feature is now open for all users in all DCs. To learn more about importing and exporting canvas templates, read our help

    • Unable to produce monthly P&L reports for previous years

      My company just migrated to Books this year. We have 5+ years financial data and need to generate a monthly P&L for 2019 and a monthly P&L YTD for 2020. The latter is easy, but I'm VERY surprised to learn that default reports in Zoho Books cannot create

    • Change Last Name to not required in Leads

      I would like to upload 500 target companies as leads but I don't yet have contact people for them. Can you enable the option for me to turn this requirement off to need a Second Name? Moderation update (10-Jun-23): As we explore potential solutions for

    • Reply to Email for SO/PO

      Hello, We are new to Zoho Books and running into an issue. Our support@ email is our integration user. When our team is sending out PO/SO's we are updating the sender email, but for some reason many of our responses are coming back to our support@ email

    • ZOHO Payroll Canada

      Any plans on the roadmap for Canada?

    • What's New in Zoho Billing | January 2026

      Excited about the latest enhancements in Zoho Billing? Our January updates bring an intelligent AI assistant, smarter subscription management, and improved tax compliance, saving you time and reducing manual work. Dive into the details below to see how

    • Zoho Books Sandbox environment

      Hello. Is there a free sandbox environment for the developers using Zoho Books API? I am working on the Zoho Books add-on and currently not ready to buy a premium service - maybe later when my add-on will start to bring money. Right now I just need a

    • Multi-currency and Products

      One of the main reasons I have gone down the Zoho route is because I need multi-currency support. However, I find that products can only be priced in the home currency, We sell to the US and UK. However, we maintain different price lists for each. There

    • Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

      Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

    • ZOHO Writer Folders

      Hi We would love to have ability to create folders on the left hand side. We would then be able create and store our documents within each folder Hope you can provide this feature soon ! dux.centra

    • How can Data Enrichment be automatically triggered when a new Lead is created in Zoho CRM?

      Hi, I have a pipeline where a Lead is created automatically through the Zoho API and I've been trying to look for a way to automatically apply Data Enrichment on this created lead. 1) I did not find any way to do this through the Zoho API; it seems like

    • Escalation request: organization merge and data export (Ticket [154609577])

      Hello Zoho Team, I am posting here because my support ticket has not received substantive responses through the usual channels. Summary of the issue (ongoing for three weeks): I requested assistance with a data migration and a merge of two Zoho organizations.

    • Do buttons and vba msgbox work on mobile, specifially the iPhone zoho sheets app?

      In Zoho sheets on the web, I inserted a button and assigned a VBA macro to it. It pops up a msgbox with some text. When I go onto the iPhone mobile zoho sheets app, the button is there. When I click on that button, the spinning asterisk appears for a

    • Different form submission results for submitter and internal users

      I'm looking for suggestions on how to show an external submitter a few results while sending internal users all the results from the answers provided by the external user. The final page of our form has a section with detailed results and a section with

    • Help Desk Services Solution

      I am here looking for Help Desk services solution for organization. I also searched this on many different website and found many solutions. We are bit confused to which one to choose. One of my friend suggest me this platform, and i am hoping i will

    • Formatting and slow

      Creating campaigns are difficult.  I'm fairly computer literate but some of the way Zoho Campaigns formatting works is painful.  Images fail to upload or are very slow. To top it off, syncing the contacts is a pain as well as temperamental links to create Segments. At this rate I'm afraid we might need to migrate back to Mailchimp.

    • Boost your Zoho Desk's performance by archiving tickets!

      The longer your help desk operations are, the more likely it is to accumulate tickets that are no longer relevant. For example, ticket records from a year ago are typically less relevant than currently open tickets. Such old tickets may eventually lead

    • Paste emails to create segment

      We are moving over from Mailchimp to ZOHO. However Mailchimp allows me to create a segment by pasting in emails from excel (or importing a .csv) can I do the same in Mailchimp?

    • Getting the Record ID of a form once it is submitted - so that form can be edited later

      In Zoho Forms, where can I access the record ID of a form once the form is submitted? - Record ID is not available in webhook payloads - It is not available to form fields, including in formulas - It is not available as a parameter in a thankyou page

    • Auto-Generate Line Numbers in Item Table Using HTML & CSS Counters (Zoho Books & Zoho Inventory Custom Templates)

      <div> <style> /* Start counter from 0 inside tbody */ tbody#lineitem { counter-reset: rowNumber; } /* Increment counter for each row */ tbody#lineitem tr { counter-increment: rowNumber; } /* Show counter value in first column */ tbody#lineitem tr td:first-child::before

    • Possible to define default font and size in Zoho Campaigns?

      Is it possible to define a default font (font, size and colour) for the text, H1 and H2 in Zoho Campaigns? For example: In a campaign, I add a text block, and the text is automatically century gothic, size 11, grey (6f6f6e) by default? Thank you!

    • Zoho Sites - General Feedback

      Hi Everyone-- Quick question for discussion: is it me or is working with Zoho Sites like entering the Twilight Zone? I've built many sites over the years, but this platform seems impossible. I've spent an entire day and a half trying to get a simple one-color

    • File Upload field not showing in workflow

      Hi, I have added a field on Zoho CRM. I want to use it in a workflow where that particular field is updated based on another field, however it is not showing up in the field list to select it in the workflow. Why is this please?

    • You cannot send this email campaign as it doesn't have any eligible contacts in the selected mailing list. You can try adding contacts or choose other mailing lists.

      please help

    • Strengthening the capabilities of CommandCenter in Zoho CRM Plus

      When you look at the prospect-to-customer journey in most businesses 10 to 15 years ago, it was relatively straightforward. Many of us remember walking into a store, sharing our requirements with a sales associate, reviewing a few options, and making

    • World date & time format

      Hello, Is there a timeline to get the worldwide used date and time format ? I mean not the american one... I mean day month year, and 24 hours clock. Regards

    • Announcing Kiosk 1.1 - Customize screen titles, configure new fields & actions, use values from your Kiosk to update fields, and more.

      Hello all We are back again with more enhancements to Kiosk. So what's new? Enhancements made to the Components Add titles for your Kiosk screens and adjust its width to suit your viewing preferences. Three new fields can be added to your screen: Percentage,

    • Any recommendations for Australian Telephony Integration providers?

      HI,  I am looking for some advice on phone providers as we are looking to upgrade our phone system, does anybody have experience with any of the Australian providers that integrate with CRM Telephony? So far we are looking at RingCentral and Amazon Connect, and would love to hear feedback on any of the other providers you might have tried.  Thank you

    • Zoho Campaigns Workspaces

      Hi, I’m currently working on a Zoho CRM + Zoho Campaigns setup for a franchisee-based organization, where each franchise must only see and use its own contacts. At the moment, franchisees cannot properly access their contact lists in Zoho Campaigns unless

    • Limited System because of Limited Number of Fields for Car Dealership

      Dear Zoho Support, we want to have all the information about a car inside of a car record. We want to have Zoho CRM as our single source of truth for our data, but the limited number of fields are not allowing that. The data consist of: technical data

    • Newsletter in multiple languages

      Hi We are planning on starting to use Zoho Campaigns for our newsletters. Since we send our newsletters in three languages, I would need the "unsubscribe page" and other pages related to the NL (Thank you page and so on) to be available in different languages

    • Fixed assets in Zoho One?

      Hi, We use Zoho Books and have the fixed asset option in it. I started a trial for Zoho One and I do not see that as an option. Is the books that is part of zoho one equivalent to Zoho Books Elite subscription or is it a lesser version? Thanks, Matt

    • Set Default Status of Assembly to "Assembled" When Entered in UI

      I've just discovered the new "confirmed" status of Assemblies within Inventory. While I understand the intent of this (allowing for manufacturing planning and raw material stock allocation), it was initially confusing to me when manually entering some

    • I need to Record Vatable amount and non vatable amount separately in zoho books in a single line

      I need to Record Vatable amount and non vatable amount separately in zoho books in a single line give me the customisation option and in invoice copy to customer the total amount should be inclusive 5%vat and no need to show the vatable and non vatable

    • Sort Legend & stacked bar chart by value

      I'd love to see an option added to sort the legend of graphs by the value that is being represented. This way the items with the largest value in the graph are displayed top down in the legend. For example, let's say I have a large sales team and I create

    • Scanned Doc - selecting Item overwrites Rate

      I have a Vendor Invoice which was uploaded to Documents. I select Add To > New Bill. The OCR is actually quite good, but it is reading an Item Description instead of an Item Number. I remove the description and select the correct Item Number... and it

    • Next Page