Zoho Books

Temponia talks to both of Zoho's billing products. They appear as two separate entries in the integrations list, Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice, and behave identically inside Temponia. The only difference is which Zoho service Temponia calls, so pick the one your finance team actually uses.

As with the other accounting integrations, contacts and people travel into Temponia, finished invoices travel out, and invoice statuses come back.

Before you start

• A Zoho login for the organisation you bill from.
• Temponia owner or admin rights. Integrations sit under the Account menu.
• The Invoicing module switched on, if you intend to export invoices.
• No other accounting integration connected. Temponia allows one at a time.

1. Connect Zoho

Zoho is the one integration that does not send you off to the provider's website.

1. Open Integrations from the Account menu.
2. Under Add an integration, pick Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice. Two extra fields appear.
3. Fill in Login and Password with your Zoho credentials and select Add integration.

Temponia exchanges those credentials for an access token and stores the token, encrypted. The password itself is not kept.

2. Pick the organisation, then the tax system

If your Zoho login only reaches one organisation, Temponia selects it and you are done. With several, you land on the integration's settings page at Select a company.

Choose the organisation and save. The page comes back with Select a tax system added, listing the tax groups defined in that Zoho organisation. It could not appear earlier because the tax groups belong to the organisation you had not chosen yet. Choose one and save again.

Tax is not optional here. Exporting an invoice that carries tax without a tax system selected stops with "Please select the appropriate tax system under integrations before exporting". Until the tax system is set, saving keeps returning you to the settings page.

Importing contacts and people

The Zoho row in the integrations list carries two buttons.

Clients opens the mapping screen. Each Temponia client gets a dropdown of Zoho contacts, starting at Unmapped, and choices save as you make them. Zoho contacts are shown as the company name with the contact name in brackets, which is how you tell two similar records apart. Once the existing clients are matched up, select Synchronise clients: mapped clients have their name and billing address refreshed from Zoho, and any Zoho contact with no match is created as a new Temponia client.

Users does the same for people, then Continue shows the active Zoho users who are not linked yet. Tick who you want and select Invite users. They are created in Temponia and emailed an invitation. Matching is by email address first, falling back to an exact full name match.

Invoicing with Zoho connected

On New invoice, the client panel gains Select a corresponding client and a Create client in Zoho Books checkbox. One of the two has to happen before the invoice can be exported.

From the invoice overview, Export to Zoho Books creates the invoice, and Sync with Zoho Books re-reads what you exported and updates the status here. Temponia recognises Zoho's draft, sent, void, partially paid, paid and overdue states. The Exported column shows which invoices have gone across, and once an invoice is exported its Temponia edit button disappears.

Download invoice from Zoho Books fetches the finished PDF as Zoho rendered it, so the document your client receives is the one your accounting package produced.

Two things that stop an export

• A missing currency. Your Temponia company currency has to exist in Zoho. If it does not, the export stops with "Please create the currency … in Zoho before exporting". Add it in Zoho and try again.
• Invoice numbering. If Zoho is set to generate invoice numbers automatically, it assigns the number and Temponia adopts it. If Zoho is not, Temponia's own number is sent across, so keep your numbering settings from colliding with a number Zoho already used.

Disconnecting

Select the delete icon on the Zoho row of the integrations list. The stored token is removed and Temponia stops reading from and writing to Zoho. Invoices and contacts already created in Zoho stay where they are, and the accounting slot is freed so another package can be connected.