Kaizen #9 - Handling Product Line Items in the Inventory Modules #API

Kaizen #9 - Handling Product Line Items in the Inventory Modules #API

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to another post in the Kaizen series!
This week, we will discuss handling product line items associated with the inventory modules—Quotes, Invoices, Purchase Orders, and Sales Orders.

What is a product line item?

On the Quote, Invoice, Purchase Order, Sales Order create or edit page, you add individual products in the Product Details section. This section also contains other details like the List Price, Quantity, Amount, Discount, and Tax. Every product and the corresponding details are called product line items.

In this post, we will discuss 
  1. Adding product line items while inserting a quote (through the Insert Records API)
  2. Updating a quote by adding another product line item (through the Update Specific Records API)

The JSON input is similar while adding/updating an invoice, purchase order, and sales order.

1. Adding Product Line Items to a Quote

While adding a product to a quote you can,
      a. Select a price book to associate with the product
      b. Specify a different list price for the product

1. a. Selecting a price book to associate with the product
To associate a price book with the product, you must pass the ID of that price book in the input.

What happens when you pass the Price Book's ID?
  • The discount on the product is automatically applied based on the range you specified in the price book.
  • The cumulative tax (specified for the product) is automatically calculated based on the amount (after the discount).
  • The List Price of the product specified in the associated price book is automatically taken for calculating the amount.

The sample input for Product_Details is as follows.

"Product_Details": [
    {
      "product": {
        "id": "3652397000000491147"
      },
      "quantity": 100,
      "product_description": "product_description",
      "book": "3652397000000616007"
    }
  ]

The following table gives information about each key in the Product_Details JSON Array.
Key
Data Type
Description
product
JSON Object
The ID of the product in the quote.
quantity
Number
The number of units of the product the quote is generated for. Accepts only positive integer values. The amount is calculated based on this number and the price for each unit.
book
String
The ID of the Price Book you have associated with the product.
product_description
String
Description of the product.

Here is a screenshot from the UI.


1.b. Specifying a different list price for the product
When the product does not have an associated price book or you want to give a different list price, you must specify the list price and the discount in the Product_Details array. 
Otherwise, the system enters the value for the discount as 0 and takes the list price you specified while creating that product.
The sample input for the Product_Details JSON array is as follows.
"Product_Details": [
    {
      "product": {
        "id": "3652397000000491147"
      },
      "quantity": 150,
      "product_description": "product_description",
      "Discount": 1000,
      "list_price": 1100,
      "line_tax": [
        {
          "percentage": 1,
          "name": "VAT"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]

The following table gives information about each key in the Product_Details JSON Array.

Key
Data Type
Description
Product
JSON Object
ID of the product the quote generated for.
quantity
Number
The number of units of the product the quote is generated for. Accepts only positive integer values.
Discount
Currency
The discount, in decimals, you want to apply for the product. Accepts up to 16 digits before the decimal, and up to 9 digits after the decimal. This limit may vary based on the value configured in 'Maximum digits allowed' in the properties pop-up of the field, in the UI.
product_description
String
Description of the product.
list_price
Currency
The list price of the product.
line_tax
JSON Array
Contains the percentage and the name of the tax associated with the product.
percentage
Percent
The percentage of tax applied on the product. Accepts only numeric values, up to 5 digits.
name
String
The name of the tax applied on the product.

As mentioned earlier, the Product Details section encompasses the taxes applied for each product and the aggregate tax applied to the Sub Total of the quote or any other inventory module.

You can specify the different taxes you want to apply for your products in the CRM UI.
You can add them under Setup > Customization > Modules and Fields > Products as shown in the below image.


You can use these configured values as inputs in the API.

Adding taxes to the product while creating/updating an inventory module
When you add a product to an inventory module, to apply the taxes to that product, you must specify the tax details in the line_tax JSON array inside Product_Details.

You must specify the percentage and the name of the tax associated with the product as JSON objects.
You cannot specify the amount as the system calculates it automatically based on the quantity.

Example:

"Product_Details": [
    {
      "product": {
        "id": "3652397000001363004"
      },
      "quantity": 100,
      "Discount": 20.1,
      "product_description": "product_description",
      "line_tax": [
        {
          "percentage": 10,
          "name": "Sales Tax"
        },
        {
          "percentage": 1,
          "name": "Vat"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]

Adding aggregate tax to the quote or other inventory modules
This is the tax that you want to apply to the Sub Total of the line items while generating the invoice, quote, sales order, or purchase order. The taxes you specify in the $line_tax key are added to the ones already applied to the product through the line_tax key.
The $line_tax key is present outside the Product_Details JSON array.

The structure for this JSON array is as follows.

"Product_Details": [
    {
      "product": {
        "id": "3652397000001363004"
      },
      "quantity": 100,
      "product_description": "product_description",
      "line_tax": [
        {
          "percentage": 10,
          "name": "Sales Tax"
        },
        {
          "percentage": 1,
          "name": "Vat"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "$line_tax": [
    {
      "percentage": 1.5,
      "name": "Common Tax",
      "id": "3652397000001376005"
    }
  ]

Key
Data type
Description
$line_tax
JSON Array
Contains the name, ID, and the percentage of the tax you want to apply to the quote.
percentage
Percent
The percentage of tax applied on the quote. Accepts only numeric values, up to 5 digits.
name
String
The name of the tax.
id
String
The unique ID of the tax.

Note
Make a GET request to "{{api-domain}}/crm/v2/org/taxes" to obtain the IDs of all the taxes for your organization.

The below image shows the data corresponding to the line_tax and $line_tax keys in the UI for a quote.


Points to note
  • For Product_Details
    When you have associated a price book with an inventory module, and you include the key and value for Discount inside Product_Details, this discount value overrides the discount calculated from the price book.
  • For line_tax
    You must specify the percentage of tax in every JSON object inside the line_tax array.

2. Updating a Quote by adding Product Line Items
You can associate multiple products to a quote.
While updating a quote, you can add/update/remove a line item.
Let us consider an example where you have five line items in a quote, and you want to remove two line items, and add a new one.
In this case, you must
  • Pass the IDs of the line items you want to retain as individual JSON objects.
  • Add the new line item with the required details as a new JSON object.
  • Do not include any details about the line item you want to remove. When you do not specify the ID of any line item, the system deletes it automatically.
A sample JSON structure for the above scenario is as follows.         

"Product_Details": [
    {
      "id": "3652397000001377174"
    },
    {
      "id": "3652397000001378168"
    },
    {
      "id": "3652397000001379172"
    },
    {
      "product": {
        "id": "3652397000001351002"
      },
      "quantity": 100,
      "book": "3652397000000616007"
    }
  ] 

To obtain the ID of the existing line item, make a GET request to fetch the Quote you want to update. The response contains the ID of the existing line item in the Product_Details array.

Note
  • You can add a maximum of 200 line items to an inventory module.

We hope you found this post useful. Please reach out to us if you have any questions, or let us know in the comment section.

Cheers!











      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          • Sticky Posts

          • Kaizen #197: Frequently Asked Questions on GraphQL APIs

            🎊 Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – We want to hear from you! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

          • Kaizen #198: Using Client Script for Custom Validation in Blueprint

            Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – 1 More to the Big Two-Oh-Oh! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

          • Celebrating 200 posts of Kaizen! Share your ideas for the milestone post

            Hello Developers, We launched the Kaizen series in 2019 to share helpful content to support your Zoho CRM development journey. Staying true to its spirit—Kaizen Series: Continuous Improvement for Developer Experience—we've shared everything from FAQs

          • Kaizen #193: Creating different fields in Zoho CRM through API

            🎊 Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – We want to hear from you! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

          • Client Script | Update - Introducing Commands in Client Script!

            Have you ever wished you could trigger Client Script from contexts other than just the supported pages and events? Have you ever wanted to leverage the advantage of Client Script at your finger tip? Discover the power of Client Script - Commands! Commands

          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

            Zoho Books Resources


              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                Zoho Projects Resources


                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                    Zoho Orchestly Resources


                      Zoho Creator Resources


                        Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                          Zoho CRM Resources

                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                            CRM Community Learning Series


                          • Tips

                            Tips

                          • Functions

                            Functions

                          • Meetups

                            Meetups

                          • Kbase

                            Kbase

                          • Resources

                            Resources

                          • Digest

                            Digest

                          • CRM Marketplace

                            CRM Marketplace

                          • MVP Corner

                            MVP Corner




                            Zoho Writer Writer

                            Get Started. Write Away!

                            Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ








                                ご検討中の方

                                  • Recent Topics

                                  • Subform edits don't appear in parent record timeline?

                                    Is it possible to have subform edits (like add row/delete row) appear in the Timeline for parent records? A user can edit a record, only edit the subform, and it doesn't appear in the timeline. Is there a workaround or way that we can show when a user

                                  • Knowledge Base Module

                                    How to enable the knowledge base module in zoho crm account. I saw this module in one crm account but unable to find it other zoho crm account. can anyone know about this?

                                  • Zoho sign changed Indexing of signing_order

                                    Because I missed this Announcement (is there even one?): when you work with the indexes of actions > signing_order. Previous those started with 0 now starts with 1. Changed somewhere between 15.07 and 23.07

                                  • How to Invoice Based on Timesheet Hours Logged on a Zoho FSM Work Order

                                    Hi everyone, We’re working on optimizing our invoicing process in Zoho FSM, and we’ve run into a bit of a roadblock. Here’s our goal: We want to invoice based on the actual number of hours logged by our technicians on a job, specifically using the timesheets

                                  • Zoho CRM Community Digest - June 2025 | Part 2

                                    Welcome back to the Zoho CRM Community Digest! We’re wrapping up June with more fresh updates, smart discussions, and clever workarounds shared by the community. Product Updates: Struggling to keep track of scattered customer interactions? Zoho CRM's

                                  • Allow Variable Insertion in Prebuilt "Update Record" Action in Schedules

                                    Hi Zoho Creator Team, Hope you're doing well. We’d like to submit a feature request based on our experience using Zoho Creator schedules to manage workflows integrated with Zoho Desk. We currently have an app where Zoho Desk tickets create records in

                                  • Rich Text Field Editor in Form Builder is Too Small and Not Resizable

                                    Hello, I am experiencing a significant usability issue with the rich text field in the Zoho Forms builder. The editor window for this field is fixed-size and extremely small. It does not adapt to the screen size, which makes it very difficult to manage

                                  • Publicar Formulário

                                    Obs. Não consigo publicar meus formulários, pesquisei alguns artigos, mas me deixou perdido, fala de campo sensível, não consigo entender o que significa. Segue Imagem do problema. Todo formulário que faço sempre termina assim sem o botão de publicar..

                                  • Anyone else unable to login to ZMA this weekend?

                                    Hey Is anyone else unable to log into Zoho Marketing Automation at all this weekend? I've been trying on multiple devices - despot and mobile - and multiple browser. I've reset browsing data, gone incognito. Nothing - since Friday I've been unable to

                                  • Custom Action for Subform row

                                    Dears, As for now, we only have 2 actions for each subform row: Edit and Delete. I would suggest to have custom action here, instead of create a button with Fx field within the subform. For example, I would create Duplicate button, which duplicates the

                                  • Urgent: Unable to Receive OTP Email for Portal User Registration in Zoho Creator

                                    I paid to enable the Portal User feature on 2/25, and followed the official instructions (Youtube video: Customer Portals | Zoho Creator) to set up the Portal User using my Gmail account. However, I am not receiving the OTP email and am unable to successfully

                                  • Sole Trader - Financial Advisor (Appointed Representative) - Paid via Capital Account but no Invoicing...

                                    Hi. I'm about to venture into a new business after 12 months of intensive learning/exams. A little chuffed if I may say so especially at 52! I really like the look of ZoHo Books for my modest enterprise but I'm in need of some guidance, please. My services

                                  • Display multiple fields in lookup dropdown

                                    I have a module called Technicians and a related module called submissions that registers technicians for different assignments. The lookup in Submissions to Technicians is the Technician ID (auto generated unique number). How do I display in the dropdown

                                  • Integrate with Power BI

                                    Hi, How to connect Zoho CRM dashboards & reports with POWER BI ?

                                  • No "Import Users" option in Zoho FSM

                                    I recently noticed that there is no option to import Users into Zoho FSM, and this has become a serious challenge for us. When migrating data, especially technicians or other user profiles, we often have hundreds of users to bring into the system. Currently,

                                  • Finding "like" projects

                                    Hi Everyone! My team is running into several duplicating deals. I've been trying to get them all to name things the same way ex. State is 2 letters not spelled out. Things like that. What I am wondering if there is anything I can do as the superadmin

                                  • Não consigo localizar o Botão de Publicar Formulário no meu app

                                    Depois que finalizar meus formulários, não consigo localizar o botão de publicar para concluir meu aplicativo

                                  • DATEV-Export Erfahrungen?

                                    Wir würden gern den DATEV-Export in Books nutzen, jedoch ist dieser nicht wirklich nutzbar. Gibt es positive Erfahrungen von Alternativ-Lösungen?

                                  • Kaizen #191: Implementing "Login with Zoho" using Python SDK

                                    Welcome back to another week of Kaizen!! This week, we are diving into how to implement secure user authentication using Login with Zoho and integrate it with Zoho CRM through our Python SDK. To ground this in a real-world scenario, we will look at how

                                  • WhatsApp Business Calling API

                                    Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, I would like to request a feature that allows users to call WhatsApp numbers directly via Zoho SalesIQ. This integration would enable sending and receiving calls to and from WhatsApp numbers over the internet, without the need

                                  • Custom modules not showing in developer console

                                    I'm trying to create a custom summing function for a custom module I made in my CRM. When I go to create the function, my module isnt showing up. Do I need to share the custom moldule with my developer console or something of the like?

                                  • Following retainer invoice for partial payment of a sales order

                                    HI, We issue sales orders when a client buy a product from us. We also issue multiple retainer invoices for partial payment (2 to 4 depending of the client). Team wants to follow payment of these retainer invoices for this Sales Order. If they are paid

                                  • Zoho CommunitySpacesとzoho CRM連携について

                                    お世話になっております。 いつもご質問に丁寧に回答いただき大変助かっております。 今、当団体ではZoho CommunitySpacesを利用しており、利用ユーザ一覧をzoho CRMに自動登録（連携）したいと考えております。 そもそも可能なのか、もしあれば具体的な手順や方法はあるのかをご教授いただきたいです。 上記がないのなら、ユーザ一覧のエクスポート方法（メールアドレスと姓を含む）でもよいです。 お手数となりますが、お願いいたします。

                                  • Zoho Wiki or new Zoho Learn

                                    We are currently evaluating if we should move off confluence. At present in Confluence we have multiple levels within our documentation but with learn it looks like you can only have Space       - Manual             - Chapter Is it possible to have levels below Chapter? Also the same question for the existing wiki, can I have more sub-levels?

                                  • New user After moving over from QBO

                                    New user observations/suggestions. QBO took away a lot of features I was used to with the desktop version. Chaos ensued. Zoho Books has a lot of what I was used to and a bit more. Good deal Some things I have run into and suggest some upgrades. 1: The

                                  • Sales without an invoice

                                    Sales without an invoice is not included on the “payments received” report. Also, sales without an invoice is not listed in the transactions under the customer’s profile, also making it easy to do a double entry. Is there a way for me to see my sales

                                  • Zoho Sign API - Create a document from template.

                                    1. I would like to create a document from a template and send the document to the customer for signing. Is this possible using the Zoho Sign API? If so, please share the api reference link. 2. Is there sand box for Zoho Sign to test the APIs without using

                                  • Zoho Sign embedded iframe

                                    Hello, we are looking for any of these options: a) some iframe that we can paste into our website for every signer, for onpage signing document. b) or get direct link for signers from Zoho sign API which we can redirect manually. Is any of these options

                                  • Goods in transit

                                    When creating a purchase order in Zoho Books, how can I properly reflect the inventory as "Goods in Transit" until it reaches its final destination?

                                  • how to coming soon, holding site, or "under construction"

                                    Hi! I was wandering if was possible to create a website with the simple sign of "Under construction or coming soon" while i work on the site. if possible, how? Cheers

                                  • Announcing Agentic AI - Ask Zia!

                                    We are delighted to roll out the new agentic AI capabilities in Ask Zia, where every stage of the BI workflow is assisted by AI. With a human-in-the-loop approach, Ask Zia ensures that you’re in command of the decision, while AI handles the complexity.

                                  • Zoho People LMS VS Zoho Connect Manuals VS Zoho Learn

                                    in the past I came accross Zoho WIKI but did not like the platform because it could use a lot of upgrade. Over the time I have noticed Zoho People come out with a LMS module which allows us to created a shared knowledge for our internal team I also came across Zoho Connect which as a knowledge-based for internal team referred to as Manual Now I am seeing Zoho Learn which is a new and fine-tuned version of Zoho Wiki. All of these platforms are very similar but I am wondering what are the differences

                                  • Marketing Automation Activities in Zoho CRM

                                    Hello, I've connected Zoho CRM and Marketing Automation, sent a campaign, but no data are displayed in CRM, neither in "campaigns" section inside contact profile. It is possible to display Marketing Automation activities in CRM? Also in CRM Timelines?

                                  • How do we get a follow up to Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility

                                    Hi, How do we get a followup and answers to the questions we have asked during 'Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility'. I have repsonded to the answers but have no way of following up. Thanks Brett

                                  • Frustrating Email Duplication and Timeline Issues Between Zoho Mail and CRM

                                    Hi Zoho team, Can someone please help clarify what’s going on here? Here’s what’s happening: I initiate an email to a lead using Zoho Mail. The lead is created in Zoho CRM via the integration, and the email is correctly associated with that lead. Sometimes,

                                  • Best Strategy to import contacts and when to create leads

                                    Hi, I'm new to Bigin and looking for a "best" strategy. I had and have the following idea for an use case: 1. Search for websites which I want to contact 2. Create a contact in Bigin with all the required information based on this website (via API if

                                  • Better implementation of Item Category on Invoices and Estimates

                                    1) I have added Item Category as a custom field. Honestly, this should be a native part of the item itself, and either required, optional, or not used.  2) When entering an item on an invoice, you have to enter the first character(s) of the item, otherwise

                                  • Bulk Update (via the 'Accountant' menu)

                                    Why can't we bulk update Expenses to Owner's Drawings? It always ends in failure with the error "Involved account types are not applicable". If such conversion isn't possible, why make the option available? Better to allow it though.

                                  • Set Reply_to parameter for "Email an Invoice" API Endpoint

                                    Is there a way to set "Reply To" email address when using the Email an invoice API endpoint? It doesn't seem to be in documentation, but sometimes there are undocumented parameters. If it doesn't exist, please consider adding it as parameter since all

                                  • Zoho Books adaptado a la legislación española. ¿Sustitutos?

                                    Buenas a tod@s No tenemos información sobre la adaptación de Zoho Books a la nueva ley de facturación en España. Me preguntan usuarios de zoho que deberían hacer. Propongo una lista de alternativas, si al final se opta por no desarrollar la funcionalidad

                                  • Next Page