In our previous blog on customization functionality, we discussed the customization capabilities of Zoho Books that can tailor business processes for better efficiency and productivity. If you haven't read it, here is our blog on customizing Zoho Books.
Now, let’s dive into Zoho Books's automation features, a treasure trove of time-saving features to make your accounting tasks a breeze. From simplifying repetitive tasks to ensuring timely updates, Zoho Books’s automation capabilities can help improve efficiency and help you focus on your core business activities.
With the automation features, Zoho Books can execute actions based on triggers and filters you set. Let's see how you can save time with these effortless automations!
Email alerts
One of the most valuable features for Zoho Books users is the email alert capability, providing instant notifications for any action. Zoho Books allows users to create workflows where you can specify a set of rules along with the type of action which needs to be performed when the rules are met.
For example, as a business owner, you may want to personally check on any high-value invoices created by your sales team to ensure priority customer service and follow up. With Zoho Books, you can simply set up a workflow that checks all invoices and triggers an email notification complete with order details to you whenever an invoice above a set amount is created.
In-app notifications
Zoho Books has many built-in notifications that are triggered for instances. They include reminders for restocking inventory items, alerts on comments or payments made by your customer through the customer portal, and more. In addition to this, you can automate Zoho Books to generate in-app notifications for other activities, too.
For example, in your organization, you may want to set up an alert to congratulate members of your sales team responsible for closing sales above a certain amount and notify all your users about it. To do this, you can create an automation to filter qualifying sales orders based on the total amount and trigger a notification to give a shout out to the responsible sales person.
Field updates
Field updates in Zoho Books automate changes to field data in specified modules when triggered by workflows, ensuring data accuracy and efficiency. You can set time-based or condition-based updates to trigger the field update with simple logic.
To illustrate this feature, let's consider quote expiry. While quote expiry is available as a feature, you can choose to automatically update this field based on certain conditions rather than manually selecting a date. For example, you can extend the quote expiry timeline for quotes with a higher total price or shorten it based on set filters.
Webhooks
Webhooks are an exciting way to automate communication from Zoho Books to external applications. While Zoho Books seamlessly integrates with various applications for extended operations, webhooks may enable specific automations tailored to particular needs.
For example, you can automatically add a lead to your sales management software whenever a quote is created for them in your Zoho Books account. Similarly, when there is a sales order raised for the transaction, a sale can be marked closed against the salesperson in the external application.
Note: If you are using Zoho CRM, you can leverage the native integration with Zoho Books. With that, the contacts and sales status can be synchronized with no manual intervention.
Custom functions
Custom functions in Zoho Books enable users to define specific tasks beyond the scope of standard actions like emails, in-app notifications, or field updates triggered by actions within the platform. This can be done by writing small pieces of code to trigger your intended task.
To illustrate further, consider the following scenario. Your business typically sets an invoice payment due 30 days from the date of issuance. However, for customers who have made partial payments or for regular customers with a certain threshold of transactions, you may want to extend the due date by an additional 15 days after the initial due date has passed. This can be achieved by implementing a custom function.
Explore our custom function series to discover interesting implementations and new use cases with the accompanying code.
https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/tag/custom-function-series
Schedules
Do you have periodic, repetitive manual tasks, say weekly or monthly, that burden you and your team? Zoho Books lets you craft a simple code to schedule such specific tasks to free up your team and keep things on track.
Imagine this: You wish to send out emails every quarter to your regional managers. This email will list the regions or cost centers that achieved their quarterly targets, and a shout out will go out to those managers. Manually, it would be a tedious task to generate the reports, compile the list, and email them separately. However, with schedules, not only will you save valuable time, but you will maintain impeccable accuracy.
Incoming webhooks
Imagine incoming webhooks in Zoho Books as a special delivery service for important information from external applications. You can automate tasks in your Zoho Books organization triggered by these incoming webhooks.
For example, you are running a design agency and you use project management software. Whenever a project is ready to be delivered, your project managers mark the task "Completed" in the external software. This information will be sent across as an incoming webhook to Zoho Books where it can automatically create an invoice for the project. In this way, you never delay raising invoices.
Signals
With signals, you can trigger in-app notifications based on actions in external applications. It will help your Zoho Books users stay informed about critical updates and take timely actions.
For example, if your business involves delivering goods to customers using a third-party delivery or courier service, you can configure signals for real-time notification. You automatically fetch details about any failed delivery and trigger a notification with relevant details inside Zoho Books like the customer name, reason for failure, and more. This can enable prompt intervention to resolve the issue and communicate the information to the customer, ensuring an overall positive customer experience.
Find ways to reclaim valuable time and ensure seamless accounting with these powerful yet simple automations. We are keen to know all about your innovative customizations and automations you build for your business processes using Zoho Books. Do let us know in the comments.
Explore and learn more about automation and other features available in Zoho Books.
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