Zoho Books

Zoho Books: Generate Bank Text File for Download

: Category: Zoho Books; 02 October 2023; 02 October 2023; Hits: 32730; Rating:

( 219 Ratings )

What?
This is an article to document how we created a button off a Bill record in ZohoBooks which generates a text file to be sent to a bank and downloads it to the staff member's workstation.

Why?
Why is this a challenge? The file contains bank details and should not be stored anywhere. Generating a text or CSV file and then having it emailed to anyone is an easy task but here we cannot have that file sat on someone's mailbox. It must be downloaded (as in browser downloads it to the computer immediately) and then removed from wherever it was downloaded from... All within ZohoBooks without using any other apps or software.

How?
Here's how to use it:

Staff member clicks on button
File downloads to their workstation

Here's what's happening in the background:

File is generated
FIle is attached to the last record of the source data
File identifying number is returned from being attached
File is opened in a new tab/window to trigger downloading.
File is deleted from attachments based on its identifying number (allows other attachments to remain intact)

ZohoBooks: Error Code 15: Ensure Billing Address has less than 100 characters

: Category: Zoho Books; 18 September 2023; 18 September 2023; Hits: 39396; Rating:

( 695 Ratings )

What?
Another article on something I learned today despite never running into this issue before; but sending a billing/shipping address included in a request to create or update an estimate in ZohoBooks will fail...

Why?
I have a function to push a ZohoCRM quote to a ZohoBooks estimate and a client asked that the address on the CRM record 'pulls through'. Sending the address in the same request however gives me the following error:

{ "code": 15, "message": "Please ensure that the billing_address has less than 100 characters." }

How?
So the quick answer is 2 separate API calls after you have sent the code to either create or update the estimate in ZohoBooks. You will need the returned estimate ID and I'm not 100% sure the attention/phone number goes along as my client didn't include these in her estimate template... But I'm sending them anyway.

Zoho Books: Get Invoice Payment Terms via API

: Category: Zoho Books; 06 July 2023; 06 July 2023; Hits: 24531; Rating:

( 363 Ratings )

What?
A quick article on getting the payment terms in Zoho Books along with their IDs.

Why?
I often need to send through an automatic payment term on the creation of an invoice but lots of my clients set their due dates differently.

How?
The following snippet of code will query the metadata api in Zoho Books and return a JSON of what the payment terms are.

Zoho Finance Suite Schedule: PATTERN NOT MATCHED

: Category: Zoho Books; 12 June 2023; 12 June 2023; Hits: 10733; Rating:

( 152 Ratings )

What?
A super quick article on resolving this issue if it ever appears again.

Why?
At time of print, this error was happening to schedules in Zoho Books, Zoho Inventory, and Zoho Subscriptions. Unless you can monitor when these type of schedules are failing, you won't see this error until you go in and try to save it again.

How?
The super quick answer is remove any spaces from the name of the schedule.

Zoho Books/Inventory: Trigger a workflow when an invoice has been paid

: Category: Zoho Books; 17 August 2022; 17 August 2022; Hits: 39160; Rating:

( 238 Ratings )

What?
An article on something that has taken me several days to get working: Get Zoho Books or Zoho Inventory that when an invoice is marked as paid, update 2 custom fields with the Payment Method, and the Payment Date.

Why?
This was requested by a customer and the problem happened in that the workflow would simply not trigger when the invoice was paid. The customer had added 3 custom fields: Payment Method, Payment Date, and Last Four Digits. They needed these because sometimes their customers needed to know what card they had paid with (if paid by card). The customer wanted payment method and payment date to appear on the invoice.

How?
This sounds rather straightforward, write a function that given an invoice, checks the customer payments and updates the custom fields. Executing the function this worked as expected. Now put it on a workflow where the settings were:

When an invoice is "Created or Edited"
Execute the workflow when "When any field is updated"
Filter the triggers when Status is "Paid"
Just once or every time is "Everytime"
Actions is a custom function called "fn_invoice_updatepaymentmethod"

But this wouldn't work despite being as per the documentation (see sources below).

Zoho Books: Display Sales Order Shipping Address on Package Slip

: Category: Zoho Books; 07 October 2021; 07 October 2021; Hits: 20861; Rating:

( 852 Ratings )

What?
I probably won't forget this but just in case I do, this is an article to explain how I got the shipping address from a sales order in Zoho Books into the template of the Package Slips.

Why?
It took me a while of playing about with the placeholder reference fields in the template before Zoho advised on a 'hidden' away setting which was key to changing what these display.

What I had:

${CONTACT.CONTACT_DISPLAYNAME}
${CONTACT.CONTACT_ADDRESS}
${CONTACT.CONTACT_CITY}
${CONTACT.CONTACT_CODE} ${CONTACT.CONTACT_STATE}
${CONTACT.CONTACT_COUNTRY}

and in my Sales Order:

BILLING ADDRESS          SHIPPING ADDRESS
-------------------      -------------------
Test Company             Joels PO Box
1 Test Street            1 Different Street
Test City                Another City
Test State Test Zip      Another State Another PostCode
Test Country             A different Country

But the packing slip would display the Ship to address as the same as the billing address... Or more specifically, the primary contact, company, address and phone from the customer record and not from the sales order change.

How?
The key is a setting you need to change by going to Settings > Preferences > Packing Slip Settings > and Enable "Delivery To":

Zoho CRM & Zoho Books: Get Books Currency and Tax IDs

: Category: Zoho Books; 24 September 2021; 24 September 2021; Hits: 21404; Rating:

( 482 Ratings )

What?
A quick note for when I want to quickly generate maps of a currency or a tax from a client's Zoho Books.

Why?
The use-case here is that we are creating a Sales Order in Zoho Books from Zoho CRM and want to map the correct currency and tax by their ID numbers.

How?
Using the REST API and InvokeURL in Zoho Deluge to look at Zoho Books. This uses up an extra 2 calls so you could run them once, store them as a map on your function if you don't want to use up these 2 every time your sales team push a CRM Sales Order to Zoho Books.

ZohoCRM to ZohoBooks: Please ensure that the shipping_address has less than 100 characters.

: Category: Zoho Books; 22 September 2021; 22 September 2021; Hits: 31092; Rating:

( 170 Ratings )

What?
An article to note something I didn't realize I needed: How to address the above error and how to update a Shipping Address for a specific Sales Order in Zoho Books.

Why?
You might think the following request to create a Sales Order in Zoho Books would be enough:

{
  "date": "2021-09-08",
  "zcrm_potential_id": "123456789012345678",
  "currency_code": "GBP",
  "reference_number": "Salespersons Test Reference",
  "terms": "These are our test terms and conditions",
  "customer_id": "234567890123456789",
  "payment_terms": 30,
  "salesperson_id": "345678901234567890",
  "line_items": [
    {
      "item_id": "456789012345678901",
      "discount": 0,
      "quantity": 1,
      "description": "A test product description"
    }
  ],
  "shipping_address": {
    "address": "Test Street",
    "street2": "Test Street 2",
    "city": "Test City",
    "state": "Test State",
    "zip": "Test Postal Code",
    "country": "Test Country"
  }
}

However, if you try forcing the billing or shipping address in you should get the following error: