Zoho Inventory Add-on in Zoho Books

The current Zoho Books inventory management feature lets you keep track of your stock, set preferred vendor, set reorder points and adjust inventory. With the Zoho Inventory add-on, you can do advanced inventory management, using native inventory modules like Item Groups, Packages, Shipments and Bulk Adjustments. This allows you to access and manage your Zoho inventory modules from Zoho Books.

To enable the Inventory add-on in Zoho Books, you must have a paid Zoho Inventory account. In this page, we’ll look at how you can enable the add-on and its included features.

IN THIS PAGE…

Enable Zoho Inventory Add-on

To enable the Zoho Inventory add-on:

Go to Settings and select Items under Items.
Under the General tab, click integrate with Zoho Inventory in the Inventory Management section.

Your Zoho Books organization will now be enabled with the Zoho Inventory add-on.

Inventory Modules in Zoho Books

After enabling Inventory modules in Zoho Books, you will be able to access:

Item Groups

Item Groups allow you to create several similar items together based on their shared attributes, rather than creating each of them individually.

Let’s take the example of Mark, who sells t-shirts. The t-shirts have 3 different attributes: size, color, and material. With basic inventory management, he would create all of the possible kinds of shirts as individual items, which would be time-consuming. With the Item Groups module, he can create all the t-shirts under one item group with 3 different attributes (size, color and material). Now, the individual items are automatically created based on the possible combinations of attributes. If Mark wants to edit the items individually, he can still go to the Items module and do so.

Create a New Item Group

Go to Items on the left sidebar and select Item Groups.
Click the + New in the top right corner.
Select the Type of the item group, whether it is a Product or Service.
Enter the Item Group Name.
Add a Description of your item.
Fill in or select the Unit amount from the dropdown.
To create multiple items, add attributes. (Note: Create Attributes and Options is checked by default. Uncheck it if you want to create a single item with no attributes instead.)
- Enter a name for your first attribute (for example, “Color”).
- Enter the options for this attribute, separated by commas (for example, “red, blue, green”).
- Click Add more attributes to enter another attribute. You can add up to 3.
Select Inventory or Non-Inventory product type.
- If your product type is Non-Inventory, select whether it is a Sales Only product, Purchase Only product, or Both from the right side of the bar.

Configure Items of a Group

To configure items in an item group:

The Item Name is auto-generated, but you can also manually change it.
Enter an item identifier in the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) field. (Note: Storing a barcode in this field will enable you to use a barcode scanner to add items to your orders, invoices and bills.)
Record your item’s Purchase Price.
Record your item’s Selling Price.
Check Include Opening Stock to record the Opening Stock and the Opening Stock Value of the item.

Note: The opening stock of an item refers to the stock you have at the moment of creating that item. The opening stock value refers to the purchase price of your opening stock. This will be used for FIFO Cost Lot Tracking.

Add product codes including UPC (Universal Product Code), EAN (International Article Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) and ISBN (International Standard Book Number).

Note: The UPC and EAN fields are numeric fields. The MPN and ISBN are alphanumeric fields that support letters, numbers, spaces and hyphens.

Set Reorder Levels to be notified when the current stock on hand drops below the reorder point.

Packages

When you are fulfilling a Sales Order, you will pack the items in the order and assign package slip numbers to it to track whether it is shipped, not-shipped or delivered. The Packages module allows you to track and record whether it is shipped, not-shipped, or delivered. Also, you can use it during the shipping of the package.

Prerequisites

The sales order must be confirmed.
You need to have the package slip numbers of your physical packages.

Package Workflow

Create Packages

To create a package:

Go to Sales on the left sidebar and select Sales Orders.
Select the sales order which has items to be packed.
Click the More button at the top of your sales order and select Create Package from the dropdown menu.
Enter the package slip number.
Enter the quantity of each item to be packed.
Enter internal notes for your reference.
Click Save.

Note: You can create multiple packages for a single sales order.

Status of Packages

There are 3 possible statuses for a package:

Status	Description
Not Shipped	This is a package that has been created and is awaiting shipment.
Shipped	The package advances to the shipped status as soon as a shipment order is created for it.
Delivered	When the package reaches the customer, it becomes delivered. You can also mark a package as delivered for a manual shipment.

Shipments

You can create a shipment either from the sales order or from the package slip. When you create a shipment from the package slip, you can choose to either ship it manually or ship it via one of your configured carriers.

To create a shipment from a sales order:

Create a package from the sales order.
Click the More dropdown on top-right corner of the Sales Orders’ page.
Click Create Shipment.

To create a shipment from within a package slip:

Open the package slip.
Click the Ship button.
You can either choose to Ship Manually or Ship via Carrier from the dropdown menu.
- Shipping manually:
  - Package Number and Shipment Order# are auto-populated. You can edit them, if needed.
  - Enter the Ship Date, Carrier, and Tracking# (if applicable).
  - If shipping is already complete, check Shipment already delivered.
  - To notify the customer about the shipment, check Send notification to customer option.
  - Click Save.
- Shipping via Carrier:
  - Select a carrier from the list (these are configured in Zoho Inventory).
  - Edit the From and To addresses, if needed.
  - Click Save & Continue.
  - Select the Parcel Type that describes your method of packaging.
  - Enter the Weight, Weight Unit, and other carrier-required package information.
  - Click Get Rates.
  - Click Create Shipment to confirm.

Warehouses

This module allows you to select a warehouse from where the items will be packed and shipped. You can assign warehouses at either the transaction level or the item level.

Assigning them at the transaction level: You can select a warehouse in the Warehouses dropdown while creating a sales order, invoice, credit note, bills, purchase order or a vendor credit.
Assigning them at the item level: When you add an item to a transaction, the warehouse is listed along with the quantity. You can click on the warehouse and change it, if needed.

Note: At the moment, you can add warehouses only in Zoho Inventory and they will be listed in Zoho Books.

Sales Orders

Afer you enable the Zoho Inventory Add-on in Zoho Books, a Sales Order will display the package, shipment and warehouse details. This allows you to see the status of the order and shipment easily.

Sales Order Status

Status	Description
Draft	Sales Orders will be in Draft status before it is sent to a customer.
Open	The status will change to Open when you send a sales order to a customer.
On Hold	When your backorder is not fulfilled for the items in the Sales Order, the status will be On Hold.
Closed	Once the sales order is converted as an invoice, then the status changes to Closed.
Void	When you mark a sales order as void, it will be in Void status.

Invoice Status in Sales Order

Status	Description
Partially Invoiced	When a part of the items in the sales order is invoiced, then the status will be shown as Partially Invoiced.
Invoiced	Once a sales order is converted as an invoice, the status will change to Invoiced status.

Shipment Status

Status	Description
Partially Shipped	When a part of the items in the sales order is shipped, the status will be shown as Partially Shipped.
Shipped	When all the items in the Sales Order is shipped, the status changes to Shipped.
Fulfilled	When the shipped items are delivered to the customers, the status changes to Fulfilled.

Change Warehouse in Marketplace Sales Orders

By default, the primary warehouse is associated with all the sales orders generated from a Marketplace. You can change the warehouse associated with it in a sales order. To change:

Go to the Sales Orders module.
Select a marketplace sales order whose warehouse you want to change.
Click Change Warehouse Location.
Select an appropriate warehouse from the dropdown menu in the pop-up.
Click Save.

Note: In a Marketplace Sales Order, you can only change the warehouse location.