Using IBM® App Connect to interact with Zoho Books
Zoho Books is a complete solution for businesses of all sizes that manage finances across an enterprise. The system automates numerous financial processes, including accounts payable and receivable, time tracking, payroll, transaction management, inventory control, and banking.
Building a flow in IBM App Connect with Zoho Books
Use App Connect to build flows that integrate with Zoho Books and other applications. The connector is displayed as Zoho Books on the App Connect User Interface (UI).
To allow App Connect to connect to your Zoho Books account, you need to fill in the connection fields that you see in the App Connect Designer Catalog page or flow editor.
Supported authorization types:
BASIC OAUTH
OAUTH2 WEB
For detailed information about different authorization types, how to generate connection field values, and how to use the Templates gallery, see How to use IBM App Connect with Zoho Books on the IBM Documentation page.
Supported objects in Zoho Books
The following are the Zoho Books objects that can be run in App Connect.
| Object |
Description |
| Customers |
In Zoho Books, you can add customers that you deal with in your business. |
| Invoices |
An invoice is a financial document that indicates the sale of goods or services between a seller and a buyer. |
| Items |
The products or services you deal with in your business are called items. |
| Chart of accounts |
Numerous accounts that are typically used with any kind of business are included in the Chart of Accounts in Zoho Books. The accounts are broken down into several categories, such as income, expense, equity, liability and assets. |
| Expenses |
The costs associated with operating a business are called expenses. They may be incurred for a variety of routine business expenses, such as housing, food, and travel. |
| Quotes |
A quote is an offer you make to your clients that includes a list of all the products and their associated costs that you are planning to sell them. |
Scenario 1: Create a quote in Zoho Books for each new Shopify order and send the quote through Slack
Consider the scenario:
In this flow, when a new order is placed in Shopify, the flow retrieves the order details and creates a quote in Zoho Books, which includes all the line items of the order. The flow sends a Slack message to the customer to inform them about the quote that is created.
The following are the steps involved in the flow:
Scenario 2: Create an item in Zoho Books for each new Shopify product
Consider the scenario:
In this flow, when a product is added to Shopify, the flow retrieves the items in Zoho Books and creates a new item for the new product added to Shopify.
The following are the steps involved in the flow:
4. The flow verifies the products from Shopify in Zoho Books. If the products in Shopify do not exist in Zoho Books as items, the flow creates a new item in Zoho Books for each new product.
Resources
You can view this template and other useful templates in the Templates gallery of your App Connect Designer instance.
Get started with a free IBM App Connect Enterprise as a Service trial for 30 days to try out all our templates, visit https://ibm.biz/app-trial.
If you are running a containerized instance of IBM App Connect, use the following URL to directly access the template:
- Create a quote in Zoho Books for each new Shopify order and send the quote through Slack:
https://<your-instance-id>/templates/Create%20a%20quote%20in%20Zoho%20Books%20for%20each%20new%20Shopify%20order%20and%20send%20the%20quote%20through%20Slack
- Create an item in Zoho Books for each new Shopify product:
https://<your-instance-id>/templates/Create%20an%20item%20in%20Zoho%20Books%20for%20each%20new%20Shopify%20product
Note: Replace <your-instance-id> in the URL with your custom instance ID.
You must enable the Designer AI features in your containerized environment to access the App Connect templates. For more information, see The preloaded IBM App Connect templates.
You also have the option to import the .yaml file for this template directly into your App Connect Designer instance. These templates are available in a public GitHub repository.
