We have been getting quite a few requests from our customers as to how they can import data from their Blinksale account to Zoho Invoice.  Earlier we used to send manual procedures and assist customers individually but still it was not easy for our customers to import the data.

Now with the last upgrade, we have made this import lot easier.  Here is how you can import your data from Blinksale to Zoho Invoice –

1. Sign-in to Zoho Invoice and click on the “Settings” link at the top right.
2. Now, click on the “Import from Blinksale” link at the left under the “Import & Export Settings”
3. Fill in the requested details and click on the “Import” button

All your invoices and customers along with their associated details will be imported into Zoho Invoice.

We also recommend you to take a look at the following wiki doc – “Importing data from Blinksale” in which we have listed out the known issues.

After moving to Zoho Invoice, if I want to switch to some other invoicing service how easy or difficult will it be?

We sincerely hope you won’t do that :)  Anyway it is your choice.

You can export data out of Zoho Invoice anytime you want.  All you have to do is export the data from Zoho Invoice, change it to the format supported by that particular service and import it into that service.  We have a pretty comprehensive set of options to export your data.  We help exporting the data in CSV, TSV, XLS, JSON and other standard formats.  For further details you can refer the blog post that I made on importing and exporting options in Zoho Invoice.

What Next?

We are also working on our APIs and we will be releasing them shortly.  APIs will definitely add to the list of import/export options and will make the job of importing/exporting data lot easier.

Give this a try and share your comments.

Regards

Siva

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

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

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

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

Continuing the Zoho Apps integration series, we are pleased to announce the integration between Zoho Invoice and Zoho CRM. Users can now use the customer information in Zoho CRM while raising invoices or estimates using Zoho Invoice.

A few points before you read on:

• This is just a first step towards our goal of complete integration.
• You will be able to use the customer information from Zoho CRM in Zoho Invoice but not vice versa. That is the invoice information from Zoho Invoice will not be available in Zoho CRM.

To import customer information, what you should do?

Importing customer information from Zoho CRM to Invoice is very simple, just three simple steps -

1. Go to the "Settings" page and click on the "Import" link on the left under "Import/Export" section.
2. Specify your Zoho CRM login name and API key. If you don't have an API key, you can request for one from your Zoho CRM account. For further details refer - Getting API Key.
3. After filling in the necessary details, click on the "Save & Import" button.

How to get the latest customer information from Zoho CRM to Zoho Invoice?

After the import, keeping the customer records updated in Zoho Invoice is very simple. Click on the "Sync" link on the left. That's it! All the records will be automatically updated!!

When I say, we will be updating the records, we will be syncing up only those records that have been modified, but still this update is costly, use it judiciously. You also have options to -

• Sync up the records individually.
• Sync up a selected set of records.

Soon, we will be providing you options to synchronize the custom views defined in Zoho CRM.

How does this integration work?

When you click on the import button, we use the "Login Name" and the "API Key" that you have provided to connect to Zoho CRM. Then we pull up the records using Zoho CRM's APIs.

Customer information in Zoho CRM will be considered the master. So, in case of conflicts the records in Zoho Invoice will be updated with the one from Zoho CRM.

Some specific details:

There is no concept like contact's address in Zoho Invoice, so we will not be pulling out this information from Zoho CRM. Remember, contact's address is different from customer's address. We do make use of the customer's address.

What next?
Our next immediate priority on this front includes (but not necessarily limited to) -

1. Help import product and pricing information.
2. Help map custom fields defined for various entities - customers, products etc.
3. Once our (Zoho Invoice) APIs are ready, we will be targeting a much tighter integration whereby it will be possible to see invoices generated in Zoho Invoice from the Zoho CRM client.

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

Check into this feature by logging into Zoho Invoice now.

One of the most important feature requests in Zoho Invoice has been the ability to specify the Tax or VAT ID in the invoices that gets generated. We are happy to announce the availability of this feature in our service. Now you can specify your company's and customer's Tax or VAT ID in the invoices.

Where to specify Tax or VAT ID? Where will they appear on the invoices?

• Company's Tax or VAT ID: You can specify these values in the "Company Profile" page under "Settings". Make use of the custom fields, refer to the image below for details -

• Customer's Tax or VAT ID: You can specify these values while adding new customer or while updating the customer record. Make use of the custom fields, refer to the image below for details -

How to change their position in the invoice that gets generated?

If you use pre-defined templates then they will appear in the invoices as shown in the above image.

Note:

1. You can specify up to three custom fields for "Company" and "Customer". The first two fields will appear between the "Name" and "Address". The third custom field will appear below the "Address". The idea is to give some flexibility in positioning of the custom fields.
2. If you just have some static value to be inserted into the invoice, which cannot be expressed as label and value, then put this in the value field without specifying the label. It will appear as such in the invoice that gets generated.

If you make use of the custom template, then you are at your liberty to decide the position of these custom fields.

Additional Information:

If the custom fields are common across your customers, you can save the label of the custom fields as default so that they appear automatically whenever you add a new customer. This will save you from the pains of entering the details again and again.

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

Check into this feature by logging into Zoho Invoice now.