Our goal is to make invoicing fast, easy and painless for our customers. When we say invoicing, we include the entire process of creating, sending, tracking and managing the invoices. More often than not, tracking and following-up for payments takes a lot of time and energy than the other activities. We clearly understand this. So, here we are in line with our goal introducing a brand new feature “Automatic Payment Reminders” which we hope will definitely help reduce your pain points.

Yes, now you can automate the process of sending payment reminders to your customers. We have tried to make this feature as flexible as possible (at least that is what we think :~))

1. You can specify when each of these reminders has to be sent. Say for example you can configure that the first reminder has to be sent 2 days after the invoice due date, the second one 14 days after the due date and the third one 21 days after the due date.
2. You have full control over the content of each of these reminders, still better you can make use of the placeholders in the content.
3. You also have complete control over who has to be notified via each of these reminders. You can send it to yourself or send it to your customers directly and have yourself copied.

Configuring these automatic payment reminders is simple,

1. Click on the “Settings” link and select the “Payment Reminders” link under “Invoice Settings”.
2. In the “Payment Reminder” page that comes up each of these reminders can be configured by clicking on the appropriate row in the table.

You can try out this feature by signing into Zoho Invoice now. We would definitely like to hear your comments and don’t forget to drop us a note when you enjoy using this feature.

Happy Invoicing
Siva

Popularity: 9% [?]

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Yes, three easy steps are all it takes to export your data from Zoho Invoice to Zoho Sheet. You can export and view all of your invoices, quotes, contacts, customers and items in Zoho Sheet. I am sure most of you would be using this feature already, exploring it for the benefit of others-

Let’s say you want to export and view all your invoices in Zoho Sheet, all you have to do is-

1. Select the “Invoices” tab.
2. Click on the “Export Invoices” link at the top.
3. Click on the “View” link in the Spreadsheet/CSV/TSV format.

That’s it! All your invoices will be exported and will be shown in a new window in Zoho Sheet. Now you can play with it as any other sheet document.

Hope you find this feature useful. We will be happy to hear your comments.

Just like Zoho Sheet, we will also be supporting Google Sheet shortly.

Happy invoicing.
Regards
Siva

Popularity: 19% [?]

Posted to:  General, Uncategorized, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Sheet  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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Sometime back one of our beloved customer had asked us to support “ritenuta d’acconto” in Zoho Invoice.  Yes, you read it right!  “ritenuta d’acconto” in Italian stands for tax that is pre-paid by the seller.

In some countries (especially Italy) it is a common practice for the sellers to pre-pay the tax.  Say for example (I am using the same example posted by our customer) a $1000 consultancy made by a professional would have a +20% VAT on its price and a -20% “ritenuta d’acconto” (a pre-tax paid by the seller) on its price.  The total would amount to $1000.  The law however requires both the tax and the pre-paid tax be shown on the invoices.

Now you can do that!  Just add the tax as is it and add the pre-paid tax as a negative tax.  Shown below is a snap of invoice that I had created for the above example.

You can see the original request here.

Hope this feature will come handy for our other customers also.  Give this a try and let us know your comments.

Happy Invoicing
Siva

Popularity: 10% [?]

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Now it is easy for you to move your contacts between Zoho Invoice and your mail clients (address books) like Microsoft Outlook, Mac Address Book, GMail, Yahoo mail etc.  Yes, we are happy to announce the support for vCard import and export, the most commonly used standard to manage and transfer contact information.

How do I import the contacts from my mail client to Zoho Invoice?

1. The first step will be to export the contacts from your mail client in vCard format.  The procedure to export contact information as vCard differs for each mail client.  Here I have explained the procedure for one of the most popular mailing service – GMail.  Shortly we will be publishing the procedure for other popular mail clients in our help docs.
   • Sign-in to your GMail account.
   • Click on the “Contacts” link and select the contacts you want to export.
   • Click on the “Export” link and select “vCard format” for exporting the data.
   • Click on the “Export” button and save the file.
2. Now Sing-in to your Zoho Invoice account.
3. Click on the “Customers” tab and click on the “Contacts” link on the left.
4. Click on the “Import Contacts” link at the top right.
5. Click on the “Import” link next to “vCard”.  Browse and give the file that you have saved from your mail client.
6. All your contacts will be imported into Zoho Invoice.

Note: We will re-use the “last name” of the contact for Company/organization name if it is not specified for the contact.

How do I export the contacts from Zoho Invoice?

1. Sign-in to your Zoho Invoice account.
2. Click on the “Customers” tab and click on the “Contacts” link on the left.
3. Now click on the “Export Contacts” link at the top right.
4. In the export page that comes up, click on the “Download” link next to “vCard”.
5. All your contacts will be exported as a single vCard file.

You also have to option to import or export your contacts individually from the contact’s details page.

Hope you find this feature useful; don’t forget to share your comments with us, as it goes a long way in improving our service.

Regards
Siva

Popularity: 10% [?]

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Now you have complete flexibility and freedom to move your data in and out of Zoho Invoice at your will.  Yes, we are happy to announce the support for import and export functionality in Zoho Invoice, a feature long awaited but well worth the wait.

What can you import or export?

Your complete set of data!

Yes, you can import or export your customer information, contacts, the items you sell (products or services), invoices and quotes.

What are the formats supported?

We have support for most of the standard formats.

• Data can be exported in CSV (Comma Separated Values), TSV (Tab Separated Values), XLS (Spreadsheet) and JSON formats.  Additionally we also support exporting of customer and contact information in vCards (.vcf files) format.
• You can import your data in CSV (Comma Separated Values) or TSV (Tab Separated Values) formats.  Additionally we also support vCard format for importing your contacts or customer information

If you feel, we have missed out any important format drop us a note.  We will be more than happy to add support for that format.

Couple of screenshots for a quick look:

Importing contact information into Zoho Invoice:

Exporting invoices from Zoho Invoice:

Please feel free to share your comments.  You can try out this feature by signing into Zoho Invoice now.

Happy invoicing,
Siva

Popularity: 14% [?]

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We get this question quite often -

Does Zoho offer a backup function which will let me download all my data?

We have various options depending on each Zoho service.

Zoho Writer : Offers a variety of different formats that you can export a document to - doc, docx, pdf, odf (odt), latex, sxw, html, rtf & txt. Click on Export to see the options.

Also integrates with Google Gears. Offers upto 50 documents to be downloaded to your desktop. You can access these documents from http://writer.zoho.com/offline. Click on Go Offline to download Google Gears and your Zoho Writer documents

Zoho Sheet : Click on Export. Again offers a wide variety of options from xls to pdf to ods to xml. There is also a batch export option available from the sidebar.

Zoho Show : Open a presentation. Click on Export and you will see the options available (ppt, pdf, pps and odp)

Zoho Projects : Export all your tasks as an xls or csv file. Under Tasks and Milestones, click on Export button

Zoho Creator : Export all your data as xls, pdf. Also as RSS, JSON feeds etc.

Zoho Wiki : You can download all the pages of your Wiki as a zip file. Available under Settings -> Click to download the backup

Zoho CRM : Choose the module (Leads, Contacts etc) and click on Export. You can also export all your CRM data in one go also. We charge a nominal fee of $10.

Zoho DB & Reports : Export your reports as csv, pdf or an image file

Zoho Invoice : Export each invoice, estimate as pdf. Export customer’s info as VCard (vcf).

Zoho Notebook : Has an Export as mht option. The exported page can be viewed in Internet Explorer.

We will be coming up with more export options in upcoming updates.

Popularity: 76% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator, Zoho DB, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Notebook, Zoho Projects, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Wiki, Zoho Writer  Permalink  Trackback  Post Comment
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Reading documents is a pain, watching and learning is easy and fun. Yes, we understand this. That is why we have come up with a video to demonstrate the basic features of our invoicing service.

The video obviously does not walk you through each and every feature of the service, but quickly demonstrates how to create and send invoices to your clients. I have embedded the video below for a quick view-

For better quality checkout http://zoho.com/invoice/videos/index.html

Hope you find this useful. We would like to hear from you, feel free to share your comments.

This is just our first video, we have more to follow!

Happy Invoicing!
Siva

Popularity: 19% [?]

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We are happy to announce the support for attaching documents while sending your invoices. Now you can attach your purchase order (PO), expense receipts and other supporting documents with your invoices.

How to attach documents?

You can attach documents while sending the invoice to your client. It is like attaching documents to your e-mail.

1. Click on the “Send” button in the invoice details page.
2. In the “Send Invoice” screen that comes up, click on the “Add” link in the attachment window to add your attachments.

Look at the image below for details:

What Next?

We will be enhancing this feature further. Instead of searching and attaching the documents while sending invoice to your client. We will give you options, to attach documents to the invoice as and when they are ready. Say for example, you will be able to attach an expense receipt to an invoice upon incurring that expense. While sending the invoice, the documents will be automatically attached to the invoice; of course you will have the option to remove the attachments.

Hope you find this feature useful. We would like to hear from you, feel free to share your comments.

Check into this feature by signing into Zoho Invoice now.

Happy invoicing,
Siva

Popularity: 18% [?]

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Curtis Partridge at Small Business Tech blog in a post titled ‘Zoho Portfolio Continue to Grow‘ says,

One company that has been quietly building a stunning collection of applications is Zoho. They now offer an impressive array of software including office applications, invoicing, project management, and customer relationship management, database, and more. They have formed world-wide alliance partnerships around the globe to assist small business with using their products. They seem much more serious than others about developing a cloud computing business beyond the geek crowd.

In the coming weeks, we are going to dig more deeply into each of the Zoho applications and compare functionality with other online-based products.

We are eagerly waiting to hear what you would have to say about Zoho, Curtis!

Looking for a free or affordable project management app? David Glumac from Budapest, Hungary suggests some ‘alternatives to MS Project‘. David writes about Zoho Projects,

The team at Zoho is one of the coolest “Web 2.0” companies out there. Their online office suite includes tools for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, CRM, project management, invoicing and other applications. Being web-native, all Zoho applications are operating system independent. It supports creating tasks, ownership, setting deadlines and tracking milestones; working with calendars, Gantt charts, reports, share supporting files—all the cool features expected in a project management package.

Anali at the MCLC Library Tech Talk blog in her ‘Talking Tech Friday - Zoho‘ post does a brief overview of some of the Zoho apps.

 Just to prove that Google doesn’t rule the world, I thought I would do a brief overview of the Zoho suite of online tools.

[Zoho Sheet] looks very much like Excel, and also allows you to import or export .xls files from or to your computer. You can embed sheets into a blog or website, collaborate with others, and use a broader variety of tools than with Google Spreadsheets, including macros. One feature I just noticed here, and is the same for Writer, is you can export in a wide variety of formats, including .xls, xml, html, pdf, open office, etc. Very handy!

The [Zoho] wiki uses a nicer WYSIWYG interface than many wiki or blog editing applications I’ve seen. No silly wiki text markup (the bane of my existence), and it looks nicer to me than the PB Wiki design. However, the wiki allows you to choose your own editor, set your own brand and logo, and manage editing and viewing permissions.

Enda Madden at his SaaS Technologies blog says ‘Run your business with Zoho‘.

The last few months I’ve been road testing the Zoho applications by using it for my own company’ day to day administration. Originally Zoho was best known for their meeting application software which was a great substitute for WebEx. Over the last year they’ve constantly added new useful apps and at this stage have almost anything that any SME business would need.

One of my personal favourites is Zoho Invoicing which is a quick and very smart way to generate estimates and invoices http://invoice.zoho.com/login/jsp/login.jsp).

Better still it integrates into Zoho CRM.

Thanks to all the above bloggers!

Popularity: 63% [?]

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We are happy to announce the support for stacked or compound tax feature in our invoicing service. Now it is very easy for you to specify your QST (Quebec Sales Tax) or PST (Provincial Sales Tax) or other similar compound taxes in the invoices.

Where and how to specify, that a particular tax is a compound tax?

You can specify this in the tax settings page while adding or modifying taxes. Make use of the “Apply On” field in the tax settings.

If the tax is a compound tax, do the following -

• Select “Item Amount + Tax1″ as the value for “Apply On” field. Refer the image below for details (here PST is a compound tax)

• Specify the tax as the second tax (Tax2) while associating it to an item (product/service). Refer the image below for details

If the tax is not a compound tax then select “Item Amount” as the value for the “Apply On” field. Nothing specific needs to be done while associating the tax to an item.

Here is a example as to how it works:

In certain provinces you are required to charge two taxes, the best example is GST (Goods and Services Tax) and PST (Provincial Sales Tax).

GST is generally charged on the selling price before PST, whereas PST depending on the province may be charged either on the selling price or on the total of selling price plus GST. Now you can handle both these scenarios easily in Zoho Invoice.

Scenario1: PST is charged on the selling price + GST

To achieve this, add both the taxes (PST & GST) in the tax settings, for the “Apply On” field select “Item Amount” for GST and “Item Amount + Tax1″ for PST. Now associate them to the item (product/service) for which you want to charge the taxes. While associating the taxes to the item specify GST as Tax1 and PST as Tax2.

Scenario2: PST is charged on the selling price

To achieve this, add both the taxes (PST & GST) in the tax settings, for the “Apply On” field select “Item Amount” for both these taxes. Now associate them to the item (product/service) as Tax1 & Tax2.

Note: While associating compound tax to an item (product/service) you will always have to associate it as the second tax (Tax2).

For further details on tax settings refer our help.

Hope you find this feature useful; feel free to share your comments.

Check into this feature by logging into Zoho Invoice now.

Popularity: 19% [?]

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