Reporting Tags

Note: If the Advanced Reporting Tags feature has not been enabled for your organization, you will continue using the old flow.

As your business grows, you may have a rapidly expanding customer base spread across various domains and locations. When generating reports, it can become difficult to find details related to a specific domain or location.

Reporting Tags in Zoho Billing let you filter and track records with precision by creating tags and associating them with different records. You can associate tags with items, customers, transactions, and more. You can also organize options in a parent-child hierarchy, control their visibility by mapping them with other tags or locations, and restrict user access to transactions based on associated tags and locations. By using reporting tags, you can filter and compare reports to gain detailed insights, track performance, and make more informed business decisions.

Note: This feature is available in early access only for certain plans of Zoho Billing. Visit the pricing page to check if it's available in your current plan.

Scenario: Mark runs a company with departments like Sales, Marketing, and Finance. To track departmental spending, he creates a reporting tag called Department with options for Sales, Marketing, and Finance, and adds sub-options under Sales, such as Sales Manager and Sales Executive. A client visits Mark's company, and the Sales team incurs expenses for the meeting, such as lunch or travel arrangements. Mark records this as an expense and tags it under Department > Sales. If the expense was specifically incurred by the Sales Manager, he selects the Sales Manager sub-option; if it was incurred by a Sales Executive, he selects Sales Executive. Later, he can filter reports by this tag and its options to get a clear breakdown of expenses across roles within the Sales team.

You can associate reporting tags with Customers, Plans, Addons, Items, Quotes, Subscriptions, Invoices, Retainer Invoices, Credit Notes, Expenses, Recurring Expenses, Payments Received, and Sales Receipts.

Enable Advanced Reporting Tags

Warning: Once you enable this feature, it cannot be disabled.

To enable Advanced Reporting Tags:

Go to Settings.
Select Organization Settings.
Select Reporting Tags under Customization.
Click Enable Advanced Reporting Tags in the top right corner.
Click Enable in the confirmation pop-up.

Once enabled, any reporting tags previously created in your organization will be updated with the new features. You can then edit them to configure options, set visibility conditions, and manage access control.

Create Reporting Tags

To create a reporting tag:

Go to Settings in the top right corner.
Select Organization Settings.
Select Reporting Tags under Customization.
Click + New Reporting Tag.

You will be directed to the reporting tag creation page. In the Create Reporting Tag tab, enter the following details:

Enter a name for your reporting tag in the Reporting Tag Name field.
Enter a Description if necessary.
Under Associate This Reporting Tag To, select the modules you want to associate the reporting tag with. For certain modules such as Sales, you can choose to apply the reporting tag either At Transaction Level or At Line Item Level. Once associated, the tag will appear on that module’s transaction creation or edit page, at the level you selected.

Note: You can associate a reporting tag with the Items module only if it is applied at the line item level in Sales. When At Transaction Level is selected, the Items checkbox will be locked and unavailable. This is because the Items module tracks tags for individual items, and a tag applied at the transaction level cannot be assigned to specific items.

Check Make this reporting tag as mandatory to ensure the tag is applied to all relevant transactions. A mandatory reporting tag must have at least one active option. This will be skipped for auto-created transactions and in certain apps where this field is not present.
Click Save and Continue.

You will be redirected to the Configure Options tab.

Note: Every reporting tag you create will be saved as Not Ready. To mark it as ready, go to Settings > Customization > Reporting Tags, click the More icon next to the tag, and select Mark as Ready from the dropdown. A reporting tag can be marked as ready only if it has at least one option.

Configure Options

In the Configure Options tab, you can create options for each reporting tag. These options act as the values you’ll select while recording transactions, helping you classify your sales, expenses, and other entries, and making your reports easier to filter and analyze.

You can arrange options in a parent-child hierarchy by creating a main option and adding sub-options under it, up to five levels deep. You can also reorder options as needed.

Note: The number of options you can add to a reporting tag varies based on your plan. Visit the pricing page to check the limits for your current plan.

To configure options for your reporting tag:

Enter an option name in the Configure Options tab.
Click + Add Option to add a new option, or hover over the list and click the + icon to choose from the following:
- Add Option Above — adds an option above the selected option.
- Add Option Below — adds an option below the selected option.
- Add a Child — adds an option as a child of the selected option.
Click the Delete icon to remove an option.
To bulk-add options, click Import Options to import a list from a file. To export existing options, click Export Options.
Click Save and Continue to proceed to the Configure Visibility Conditions tab. If you prefer not to configure visibility conditions, click Save and Exit to save your changes.

You will be directed to the Configure Visibility Conditions tab.

Configure Visibility Conditions

Note: This feature is available only for certain plans of Zoho Billing. Visit the pricing page to check if it's available in your current plan.

This feature is disabled by default. When enabled, you can control when each option of a reporting tag appears in your transactions by mapping its options to the options of other reporting tags that act as filters. If Locations is enabled in your organization, it will also be available as a filter.

Once enabled, Zoho Billing checks the filter options selected in a transaction and shows only the options that match the conditions you’ve set.

Scenario: Mark creates a reporting tag called Department with options such as Sales, Marketing, and Finance, and selects Location as a filter for this tag. He then sets visibility conditions by mapping each Department option to the relevant Location options. For example, he sets the Marketing option to appear only when the selected Location is New York. When Mark records a transaction, the Marketing option under the Department tag will be shown only if the selected Location meets this condition.

To configure when each option of a reporting tag should appear in your transactions:

Enable the Configure when tag options should be visible toggle.
Under Choose Filters, select the reporting tags you want to use as filters for the current tag. You can only apply tags that appear before the current tag on the Reporting Tags list page as filters.

Note: If a tag cannot be used as a filter, it will be listed under Show Excluded Tags. Click Show Excluded Tags to see why it is excluded.

Map each option in the current tag to specific options of the filter tags you selected. An option will be visible only when any one of the mapped filter options is selected for each filter tag or filter location. You can add up to five filters per tag and map up to 200 options to it.
When mapping reporting tag options, select specific options to use as filters, or choose All from the dropdown to map a reporting tag’s option to all options of another reporting tag. To display options even when no option is selected in the mapped tag, select Untagged.
Click Save and Continue.

You will be redirected to the Configure Access Control tab.

Configure Access Control

Note: This feature is available only for certain plans of Zoho Billing. Visit the pricing page to check if it's available in your current plan.

Access Control in Zoho Billing lets you manage and restrict what each user can view and access in a transaction based on reporting tags. When you enable access control, you can assign specific reporting tag options to a user. They will only be able to view transactions that include one of the tag options assigned to them. For example, if a user is assigned the Sales and Marketing options in a reporting tag, they will only see transactions tagged with Sales or Marketing, while all other transactions remain hidden.

Access control is configured at the role level, meaning all users within a role follow the same restrictions. You can also combine Locations with access control to limit users to transactions associated with their assigned locations. Additionally, you can allow users to view transactions they normally wouldn’t have access to, or display transactions from modules that don’t use reporting tags.

Note: You can enable access control for only one reporting tag in your organization.

To enable access control for a reporting tag:

Enable the Access Control toggle.
Click Save.

To enable access control for a role in your organization:

Go to Settings.
Select Organization Settings.
Select Roles under Users and Roles.
Create or edit a role.
Go to the Segmented Access Control tab.

In the Segmented Access Control tab, the Transactions option will be enabled by default for Locations and for the reporting tag for which you’ve enabled access control. This means users with this role can access only the transactions that belong to the locations associated with them, or the transactions that contain the reporting tag for which access control is enabled.

Check Allow Access to All Unassigned Records if you want users with this role to access transactions that have no associated reporting tags.
Click Save.

The selected role will have controlled and secure access to transactions based on the locations and reporting tags assigned to users in that role.

To enable access control for a user in your organization:

Go to Settings.
Select Organization Settings.
Select Users under Users and Roles.
Invite or edit a user.
Go to the Restrict Access To section.
Under the Locations section, select the locations you want the user to have access to. The user can access only the transactions that belong to these locations.
Select the options you want to associate with the user for the reporting tag for which you’ve enabled access control.
Click Save.

Each user can be associated with up to 500 reporting tag options.

Associate Reporting Tags

Once you create reporting tags, you can associate them with items, customers, and other transactions.

Associate Reporting Tags with Items

To associate reporting tags with items:

Go to Items on the left sidebar and select Items.
Edit or create an item.
Enter all the necessary details.
Click the dropdown next to the reporting tag you want to associate with the item and select the required option.
Click Save.

The reporting tag will be associated with the item. When you create a transaction and add this item as a line item, its associated reporting tag will be applied by default. You can also select a different option if needed.

Associate Reporting Tags with Customers

To associate reporting tags with customers:

Go to Sales on the left sidebar and select Customers.
Click + New to create a customer, or edit an existing one.
Enter all the necessary details and go to the Reporting Tags tab at the bottom of the page.
Click the dropdown next to the reporting tag you want to associate and select the required option.
Click Save.

The reporting tag will be associated with the customer. When you create a transaction and select this customer, the associated reporting tag is applied by default to track and categorize transactions.

Associate Reporting Tags with Sales

To associate reporting tags with a sales transaction:

Go to Sales on the left sidebar.
Create a transaction (for example, a Quote).
Enter all the necessary details.
Depending on whether the reporting tag is set to apply at the transaction level or the line item level:
- At Transaction Level — click the dropdown next to the reporting tag and select the required option.
- At Line Item Level — go to the Item Table, click the Reporting Tags dropdown next to the line item, then click the dropdown under the reporting tag and select the required option.
Enter all the other necessary details.
Click Save.

The reporting tag will be associated with the transaction at the line item or transaction level.

Edit Reporting Tags

To edit a reporting tag:

Go to Settings in the top right corner.
Select Organization Settings.
Select Reporting Tags under Customization.
Hover over the reporting tag you want to edit and click Edit.
Make the necessary changes.
Click Save.

Reorder Reporting Tags

To control which tags can be used as filters, you can reorder reporting tags. Here’s how:

Go to Settings in the top right corner.
Select Organization Settings.
Select Reporting Tags under Customization.
Click Change Order.
Drag the reporting tags to reorder them.
Click Save.

Note: A tag that is used as a filter for another reporting tag cannot be moved above the tag it acts as a filter for.

Mark an Option as Default

Marking an option as default for a reporting tag ensures that the selected option is automatically applied whenever the tag is used in a new transaction.

To mark an option as default:

Go to Settings in the top right corner.
Select Organization Settings.
Select Reporting Tags under Customization.
Select the reporting tag for which you want to mark an option as default.
Hover over the option you want to set as default and click the More icon.
Select Mark as Default from the dropdown.

The option will be set as the default for the reporting tag.

Generate Reports

Once you’ve created reporting tags and associated them with transactions, you can use these tags to filter and compare reports.

To filter reports using reporting tags:

Go to Reports on the left sidebar.
Select a report under the Business Overview section (for example, Profit and Loss).
Click the Customize icon.
In the Customize Report page, go to the General section.
Under Advanced Filters, select the reporting tag you want to filter by in the first dropdown, choose the comparator in the second dropdown, and select the option you want to filter with in the third dropdown.
Click Run Report to generate the report. You can also click Save as Custom Report to save it for future use.

To compare reports using reporting tags:

Go to Reports on the left sidebar.
Select a report under the Business Overview section (for example, Profit and Loss).
Click Compare With and select Compare Based on Reporting Tags from the pop-up.
If you want to compare the reporting tag options hierarchically:
- Check Organize the selected Reporting Tag by corresponding Parent-Child Hierarchy.
- Select a reporting tag under Select a Reporting Tag.
- Click Apply.
Use the dropdown below each reporting tag to select the options you want to compare the report with. You can also click Select All next to a tag to compare the report using all available options for that tag.
Click Apply.

This way, you can filter and compare your reports using reporting tags.

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