Zoho Books

Zoho Books

Zoho Books is online accounting software for invoicing, expense tracking, bill management, and tax compliance.

Multi-Organization

Many Zoho accounts have multiple organizations. Call the list-organizations tool first to get the organization_id, then pass it to every subsequent call. Single-org accounts work without it, but multi-org accounts fail without it.

Data Model

• Contacts — customers and vendors with addresses, payment terms, and outstanding balances.
• Invoices — accounts receivable documents with line items, taxes, discounts, and payment status. Create requires customer_id + line_items.
• Bills — accounts payable from vendors. Create requires vendor_id + line_items.
• Estimates — quotes/proposals sent to customers before invoicing.
• Expenses — individual expense entries tied to accounts and optionally billable to customers.
• Items — products or services with sell rate, purchase rate, SKU, and tax config.
• Sales Orders — confirmed customer orders before invoicing.
• Purchase Orders — orders placed with vendors before bill creation.
• Credit Notes — credit memos issued to customers, applicable against invoices.
• Customer Payments — payment records allocated against one or more invoices.
• Journals — manual debit/credit entries for adjustments. Line items must balance.
• Bank Accounts — linked bank feeds and manual cash ledgers (read-only).
• Bank Transactions — imported or manually entered bank statement lines (read-only).
• Taxes — tax rates and configurations used on line items (read-only).
• Users — team members with roles and permissions (read-only).

Workflow Patterns

1. Invoice a customer: list contacts → find/create contact → create invoice with customer_id + line_items + is_discount_before_tax=true → (optional) record customer payment.
2. Record a vendor bill: list contacts → find/create vendor contact (contact_type="vendor") → create bill with vendor_id + bill_number + line_items.
3. Track expenses: create expense with account_id (must be an expense-category account) + amount.
4. Quote-to-cash: create estimate → (customer accepts) → create invoice from estimate data → record payment.
5. Adjusting entries: create journal with journal_date + balanced debit/credit line items.
6. Record a payment: list-banking to get account_id → create customer payment with customer_id + amount + account_id + invoices allocation array.

Important Constraints

• Invoices: Always set is_discount_before_tax=true to avoid "Discount after tax cannot be applied" errors on UK and regional orgs.
• Bills: Always provide bill_number — many orgs do not auto-generate it.
• Sales orders and purchase orders: date is required — Zoho rejects null dates.
• Purchase orders: Line items must reference purchase-type items (items created with purchase_rate). Sales-only items are rejected.
• Customer payments: Require both account_id (which bank account to deposit into) and invoices (allocation of the payment to specific invoices with invoice_id + amount_applied).
• Expenses: The account_id must be an expense-category account (e.g. Travel, Office Supplies), not a sales or income account.
• Contacts: Use contact_type="customer" for customers and contact_type="vendor" for vendors. Bills and purchase orders require vendor-type contacts.