Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice

The Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice apps bring your invoices into the conversation. They work the same way, and each connects on its own, so use whichever your company has. Once an admin connects one:

• Alerts post invoices sent, payments received, invoices paid in full and overdue invoices into the channels you pick.
• Link previews show an invoice’s customer, amount, status, balance due and due date under any link to it that someone posts.

Each app posts as its own member, Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice, so its cards are easy to tell apart from people. They work with every Zoho data center: the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia and China. Freesbe talks to Zoho in your own data center, so your invoices stay there. It’s the same Zoho sign-in as Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk, but each app connects on its own.

Connect Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice

Only owners and admins can connect them.

1. Open Workspace settings → Integrations → Finance and find Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice, under the payment alerts.
2. Click Connect Zoho Books (or Connect Zoho Invoice). Zoho asks you to sign in. Zoho finds your account’s data center on its own, so sign in as you usually do.
3. Zoho lists what Freesbe asks for. Click Accept.
4. You’re back in Freesbe with Connected next to the app, your organization’s name and its data center.

A workspace connects one organization per app: your default organization in Zoho, if you belong to more than one. Freesbe works as the person who connected it, so it sees the invoices and payments they can see. It only reads: it never makes, changes or sends anything in Zoho.

Alerts

Under Zoho Books alerts (or Zoho Invoice alerts), click Add alert, then pick:

• Post to channel. Any channel, public or private. Alerts in a private channel are only visible to admins who are in it.
• Alerts to post:
  • Invoices sent: a new invoice that’s been sent to the customer, not drafts.
  • Payments received: each payment a customer makes, with its amount and the invoices it pays.
  • Invoices paid in full.
  • Overdue invoices, when an invoice passes its due date unpaid.
• Smallest amount to post. Invoices and payments for less than this are left out. Leave it empty to post them all.

Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice don’t send changes to other apps as they happen, so Freesbe checks your organization every ten minutes while an alert is on, and alerts arrive within about ten minutes. Overdue invoices are checked once an hour. Each check uses a few of your organization’s daily Zoho API calls, about 300 a day in all, well inside every Zoho plan’s limit.

Add more alerts to send different things to different channels: payments to #finance, overdue invoices to the people who chase them. Each card shows the customer, the amount and status, the balance due and due date, and an Open in Zoho Books button.

From an alert’s ⋯ menu:

• Send a test alert posts a sample card, marked Sample alert, so you can see where alerts land.
• Edit changes the channel, the kinds of alerts or the smallest amount.
• Turn off pauses it, and Delete removes it.

Last alert under each one says when it last posted. Alerts start with what happens after you add the first one: Freesbe doesn’t post older invoices or payments, and it posts each one once.

While every alert is off, Freesbe stops checking. After more than two hours off, it picks up from when you turn one back on, without posting what happened in between.

Link previews

When someone posts a link to an invoice in your connected organization, Freesbe adds a preview under the message, for example books.zoho.eu/app/20076543#/invoices/982000000567114. Up to three links in a message get a preview.

Everyone in the conversation sees the preview, including guests, so turn Show a preview under Zoho Books invoice links off under Zoho Books link previews if amounts shouldn’t be shared that way. Links to other organizations are left alone.

Disconnect

In Integrations → Finance, click Disconnect next to the app. Freesbe’s access is removed in Zoho, and alerts and previews stop. Your alerts are kept, so connecting again picks up where you left off, from that moment.

If someone removes Freesbe in Zoho first (My Account → Connected Apps), or the person who connected it leaves the organization, the app shows Needs reconnecting: click Reconnect to bring it back.

Privacy and security

• Freesbe signs in to Zoho with OAuth, keeps Zoho’s access encrypted, and only asks to read your organization, its invoices and the payments it receives. It doesn’t copy your invoices: alerts and previews are made from them when they’re posted.
• Your Zoho account’s data center is kept: Freesbe calls Zoho in that data center only.
• Disconnecting deletes Freesbe’s access straight away.

Setting it up for a finance team? See Set up Zoho Books alerts for your finance team. If something isn’t working, see Zoho Books alerts aren’t posting.

For your bank and card payments, see Payment alerts for Mercury, Stripe and Airwallex.