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

    • White screen when connecting Zoho Cliq and Zoho People for birthday notifications

      Hi everyone, I'm new to Zoho and I'm trying to set up the employee birthday notifications, following this guide: Automating Employee Birthday Notifications in Zoho Cliq But when I try to connect Zoho Cliq with Zoho People, I just get a white screen and

    • Word file is messed up when i upload it to zoho sign

      Hi. I am trying to upload a word file to zoho sign and when i do that it ruins the file, It adds spaces and images are on top of each other. What can i do? Thanks.

    • Annotate widget?

      Is there something in creator or any zoho app that allows me to have an image markup field item in the form? I need to be able to complete a form that also allows the user to mark up a preloaded image. Other compay's call this an image markup field or

    • Dashboards / Home Page - Logged In User

      Lots of the dashboards that we use reference the Logged In User.  We also set up Home Pages for specific roles, where the Logged In User is referenced within the custom view.  As an admin, that means that these views are often blank when customizing and

    • I'm pissed as fuck

      What the hell Zoho! Always the same goddam problem. It takes time because the simplest things just don't fucking work. Today it just took me 3 hours to complete and send a 1page privacy letter to a client. And you know what 99% of the document was already

    • Configure Notifications for API Limit

      Hello developers, APIs are essential for businesses today as they enable seamless integration between different software systems, automate workflows, and ensure real-time data sync. To ensure that admins are notified well in advance before APIs reach

    • Introducing Blueprints for Custom Modules!

      Hello developers, We've added a new feature called Blueprints in Custom Modules. Blueprints are the online representation of a business process. In Zoho Books, you can use Blueprints to design a process flow using states and transitions. Developers can

    • Campaign Links Blocked as Phishing- Help!

      We sent a Campaign out yesterday. We tested all of the links beforehand. One of the links is to our own website. After the fact, when we open up the Campaign in our browser, the links work fine. The links in the emails received, however, opened in a new

    • Zoho Tables July 2025 Update: Smart Creation, Smarter Automation

      We’re excited to introduce a powerful set of updates across Web, Android and iOS/iPad apps. From AI-assisted base creation to advanced automations and mobile enhancements, this release is packed with features to help you build faster, automate better,

    • Zoho Voice est désormais en France !

      Nous avons des nouveautés très intéressantes qui vont transformer la façon dont vous communiquez avec vos clients. Zoho Voice, la solution de téléphonie d'entreprise et de centre de contact basée sur le cloud est arrivée en France ! Vous pouvez enfin

    • Numbers in MA

      I have an issue rationalising the various numbers around MA2. Not convinced that any are truly accurate. However have a specific problem in that i have a list with 1301 records in the list view. When i come to email there is only 1289 Then have another

    • Android mobile app unable to log in

      When I open the mobile up for zoho mail it asks me to sign in, but when i push the sign in button nothing happens. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling still not working

    • Pie chart in Zoho Analytics shows ridicoulous numer of decimals of a percentage.

      Is there a way to set the number of decimals of a percentage value in the Pie chart? Now it displays 15 decimals instead of a round-off value. The value is a count and percentage calculated in the chart, so there is no number of decimals that can be specified

    • Zoho People > Leave Management > Unable to import balance leave

      Hello Zoho I am unable to import balance leave into the system I have follow the steps It show only 5 fields - the date field i am unable to select from date and to date Error Date in excelsheet

    • Narrative 4: Exploring the support channels

      Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system - BTS Series Narrative 4 - Exploring the support channels Support channels in a ticketing system refer to the various communication methods that customers use to contact a business for assistance. These

    • Tip of the Week #65– Share email drafts with your team for quick feedback.

      Whether you're replying to a tricky customer question or sharing a campaign update, finding the right words—and the right tone—can be tough. You just wish your teammates could take a quick look and give their suggestions before you send it. Sometimes,

    • How to Initiate WhatsApp Message on SalesIQ?

      I've just activated a Business WhatsApp phone number through SalesIQ because of its touted omnichannel chat approach. Sounds exciting. I understand that when a customer sends me a WA message, I can reply to it on SalesIQ and keep the chat going, perfect.

    • Episode IV:Handling User Inputs in custom functions

      Hi Everyone, We've been exploring custom functions which help in performing advanced automation tasks. Custom functions enable you to achieve possibilities based on your organization's requirements. Custom functions require user inputs that allow the

    • Set a lead as non-marketing if they opt out of email marketing

      I'm gathering Lead data via an enquiry form and wish to give them the option to opt out of marketing emails (which we send from Marketing Automation) whilst retaining the ability to send them non-marketing emails - so the email opt-out field doesn't work.

    • Set up multiple IMAP email addresses

      Hi, I just started using CRM and its great, but I just found out I can only add one imap email address for incoming mail in the included salesinbox ...this is ridiculous. All companies have different email such as sales@domain, info@domain , personal@domain

    • Zoho Recruit to Zoho People integration

      In the mapping of field from Zoho Recruit to Zoho People i am unable to map all fields What can i do

    • Zoho Recruit > Career Site > Customisation

      Hi All I have created multiple career site to represent my different organization In my Quanta Media career site > I set it with the with Quanta Malta view In my job opening : Quanta Malta view 2 job opening In my URL for quanta media https://lri.zohorecruit.eu/jobs/Quanta-Malta

    • Formatting Blueprint Stages (buttons)

      Is there a way to format Blueprint transition buttons in Creator like background colour, text colour etc.

    • Disable Default Value in Multi-Select field

      Hello, Is there a way to disable the default value feature when setting up a custom Multi-Select field? When creating tickets I would like it so there isn't a value pre-selected in the multi-select custom field that was created.

    • How to set custom business hours for different teams in Zoho Desk?

      Hi Zoho Team and Community, I’m trying to set different business hours for multiple departments in Zoho Desk. For example, our tech support team works 24/7, while our billing team is only available from 9 AM to 5 PM (Mon–Fri). Is there a way to assign

    • Zia Auto Tag Keyword Clusters

      Is there a way to remove a keyword from a keyword cluster? We're finding that Zia auto-tag is tagging things incorrectly based on some words that don't really make sense.

    • Centralized Domain Verification in Zoho CRM Plus

      Hi Team, I have a suggestion regarding Zoho CRM Plus. It's quite frustrating to verify the same domain separately for each application within the suite. It would be really helpful if you could introduce a centralized admin console—similar to what's available

    • HOw do I make a refund?

      I have a client that needs a refund. I see a refund history in the Report area... but where do I go to make a refund?

    • Creating a work order for dispatch

      We currently uses ZOHO for CRM and Intuit Field Service for creating Work orders and dispatching. This is causing double entry and is not efficient use of time.  I would like to use ZOHO for all customer related activities so can you tell me if you can :  Create a work order that we could manipulate to meet our needs.  Also if you could then dispatch that would be ideal. Thank you

    • Residual Formatting in Text Boxes After Undoing Pasting of Formatted Text

      Hi, guys! I have another problem to report. Actually, I have been aware of this for many months, possibly years, but I have been too lazy to report it to you. My apologies! Let's say you've pasted a formatted string into a text box. You change your mind

    • Feature Request: Stripe Terminal Integration

      I would like to request the addition of Stripe Terminal integration to Zoho Books, which will help process in-person payments. While Zoho Books already supports online payments through Stripe, extending this functionality to include Stripe Terminal would

    • Improved Security in SAML/OIDC Sign-in Redirection Flow

      To enhance the security of our authentication system, we’ve made a change to how SAML and OIDC sign-in redirections are handled. This update resolves a potential open redirection vulnerability and adds an extra layer of protection during the sign-in process.

    • GA4 data

      Hi, I have data being pulled from GA4 into numerous tables. There are a few major errors in the source data. Eg for a period of time GA4 reported ecommerce sales that were $98 as $9,800 and $42 as $4,200. It's not happening now but my historical data

    • Lost Search Box with new UI Design

      I would like to suggest bringing back the Search Box in the new Zoho Project UI.  I use the search feature a lot and having to click the magnifying glass to type for a search is one extra click that we did not have with the old UI.

    • Adaptación de zoho books a la nueva regulación de facturación electrónica

      La facturación electrónica será obligatoria para todas las empresa en España en 2025, en Francia probablemente también e imagino pronto en todos los países europeos. Ya en 2024 todas las empresa grandes tienen que utilizar el sistema de facturación electrónica.

    • ZOHOBOOK Sales_QUOTE: To Add Discount At Each Line Item Table

      Hi, Our quote need to display with discount at each line item level as well. Try to edit template, >CUSTOMISE>EDIT TEMPLATE> Table, I can see template view with discount column, but when hit SAVE the template, view in PDF the discount column not shown.

    • Weekly Automation Trigger for Equipment Calibration Reminder

      Dear Team, I’m currently working on an automation in the Equipment module. The goal is to track calibration schedules for tools — all of which require regular calibration. I’ve created an automation that sends email reminders for tools that are due for

    • ADDDATE formula using 2 calculations

      Hello, I want to create an ADDDATE formula using 2 calculations, add 1 month and deduct 1 day. the formula that I need should look like this: ADDDATE(due_date, 1, "Months")+ ADDDATE(due_date, -1, "Days") Each row itself works fine, but when I'm trying

    • Upgrading from Zoho Invoice to Books was a major downgrade in functionality for me

      I have been a user for many years of a free plan on Zoho Invoice for my personal consulting business. I recent upgraded my organization to Books since some of the additional functionality looked useful to me, and played around with the free trial for

    • 🎉 Dynamic Org Chart for Zoho CRM Extension Published [2025]

      Hey Zoho CRM Community! We're thrilled to unveil our latest Zoho extension:🥁 Dynamic Org Chart for Zoho CRM 🎊 This extension is now available to transform the way your teams visualize, manage, and interact with org chart directly inside any Zoho CRM's

    • Next Page