How to use IBM App Connect 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.

Availability:

App Connect Enterprise as a Service connector
Local connector in containers (Long Term Support Cycle-3 release) 13.0.7.0-r1 or later
Local connector in containers (Continuous Delivery release) 12.0.12.3-r1 or later

Supported product and API versions

To find out which product and API versions this connector supports, see Detailed System Requirements on the IBM Support page.

Connecting to Zoho Books

Complete the connection fields that you see in the App Connect Designer Connect > Applications and APIs page or flow editor. If necessary, work with your Zoho Books administrator to obtain these values.

BASIC OAUTH: Server URL is the URL for the API server that makes runtime calls.
Tip: To determine the domain where you're accessing Zoho Books from, go to the Zoho Books web app and check the URL. For example, if the URL contains crm.zoho.com, you're accessing it from the .com domain.; Token base URL is the token URL value relative to the server URL. Select a server URL to use as the base for the token URL.
Note: The domain extensions for the server URL and the token base URL must remain the same.; Organization ID is your organization ID. In Zoho Books, your business is termed as an organization. You can obtain the organization ID from the Manage Organizations page in the admin console.; Application client ID is the unique client identifier to use for authentication.; Application client secret is the client secret to use for authentication.; Access token is the access token that is generated from the application client ID and client secret.; Refresh token is the refresh token that is generated from the application client ID and client secret.; Set Allow self-signed certificates to true if you want to be able to accept self-signed certificates that are trusted and used only in a nonproduction environment. The default is false.; Override server URL is required if you want to connect to an endpoint in a private network by using the private network client, or if you want to override the server URL. Specify an override value for the host and port for the connector in the format <http or https>://<host_name>:<port>. If you're not using the private network client or don't need an override, don't enter a value in this field.; Private network connection: Select the name of a private network connection that App Connect uses to connect to your private network. This list is populated with the names of private network connections that are created from the Private network connections page in the Designer instance. You see this field only if a switch server is configured for this Designer instance. For more information, see Connecting to a private network from App Connect Designer. (In App Connect Designer 12.0.10.0-r1 or earlier instances that include this field, the display name is shown as Agent name.)

To obtain the connection values for Zoho Books, see Obtaining connection values for Zoho Books.

To connect to a Zoho Books endpoint from the App Connect Designer Applications and APIs page for the first time, expand Zoho Books, then click Connect.

Tip:

Before you use the account that is created in App Connect in a flow, rename the account to something meaningful that helps you to identify it. To rename the account on the Applications and APIs page, select the account, open its options menu (⋮), then click Rename Account.

General Considerations

Before you use App Connect Designer with Zoho Books, take note of the following considerations:

You can see lists of the trigger events and actions that are available on the Applications and APIs page of the App Connect Designer.
For some applications, the events and actions depend on the environment and whether the connector supports configurable events and dynamic discovery of actions. If the application supports configurable events, you see a Show more configurable events link under the events list. If the application supports dynamic discovery of actions, you see a Show more link under the actions list.
If you are using multiple accounts for an application, the set of fields that is displayed when you select an action for that application can vary for different accounts. In the flow editor, some applications always provide a curated set of static fields for an action. Other applications use dynamic discovery to retrieve the set of fields that are configured on the instance that you are connected to. For example, if you have two accounts for two instances of an application, the first account might use settings that are ready for immediate use. However, the second account might be configured with extra custom fields.

Events and Actions

Zoho Books events

These events are for changes in this application that trigger a flow to start completing the actions in the flow.

Show more configurable events: Events that are shown by default are pre-configured by using optimized connectivity. More items are available after you configure events that can trigger a flow by polling this application for new or updated objects. For more information about configurable events, see Configuring polled events to trigger flows.

Zoho Books actions

Your flow completes these actions on this application.

Object	Action	Description
Customers	Create customer	Creates a customer with the provided information
	Retrieve customers	Retrieves all customers with pagination
	Update customer	Updates an existing customer
	Retrieve customers by contact ID	Retrieves details of a customer by using contact ID
Invoices	Create invoice	Creates an invoice for your customer
	Retrieve invoices	Retrieves all invoices with pagination
	Update invoice	Updates an existing invoice
	Retrieve invoice by ID	Retrieves the details of an invoice by using invoice ID
	Delete invoice	Deletes an invoice by using invoice ID
	Email invoice	Sends an email by using the invoice ID
Items	Retrieve items	Retrieves the list of all active items with pagination
Items	Create item	Creates a new item
Chart of accounts	Create account	Creates an account with the provided account type
Chart of accounts	Retrieve chart of accounts	Retrieves all charts of accounts along with pagination
Expenses	Create expense	Creates a billable or nonbillable expense
	Retrieve expenses	Retrieves all the expenses with pagination
	Update expense	Updates an expense
	Retrieve expense by ID	Retrieves the details of the expense by using expense ID
	Create employee for an expense	Creates an employee for an expense
	Retrieve employees of an expense	Retrieves employees that are linked to an expense
Quotes	Create quote	Create an estimate for your customer

Examples

Dashboard tile for a template that uses Zoho Books

Use templates to quickly create flows for Zoho Books

Learn how to use App Connect templates to quickly create flows that complete actions on Zoho Books. For example, go to the Discover page and search for Zoho Books.

Learn more

Use IBM App Connect to build flows that integrate with Zoho Books.

Read the blog in the IBM Community to learn how to create a quote in Zoho Books for each new Shopify order and send the quote through Slack. The blog also explains how to create an item in Zoho Books for each new Shopify product. Click Read the blog to go to the blog.

Read the blog

Model Context Protocol (MCP) support

The Zoho Books connector supports MCP, and all Zoho Books actions for the listed objects can be added to an MCP server as tools. For more information on how to configure an MCP server, see Creating and managing MCP servers.