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Preferences

The Preferences section under Settings allows you to customize certain functions of Zoho Billing. This section is broadly divided into General, Customers, Items, Projects, Sales and Purchase modules.

General

To configure General Settings:

Through the General Settings, you can customize your Zoho Billing account by selecting your preferences for the various options provided below.

General preferences in Zoho Billing

Enable modules

Check the modules you want to enable in Zoho Billing. Once you enable a module, that module will be available in the left sidebar of your Zoho Billing account for you to use them. You’ll be able to access and configure these modules only when you enable them in this page.

First day of work week

By default, the first working day of the week is Sunday in Zoho Billing. However, you can change the first day of your work week to Sunday, Monday, or Saturday.

When you change the first day of your work week, the days and dates in the calendar will be updated accordingly. This will be useful when you are selecting dates for sales and purchase transactions, and other modules.

For example, let’s say you’ve set the first day of the week as Monday. When you create an invoice and select the invoice date, this is how the calendar will be displayed.

First Day of the Week

The day you choose here will also affect the reports you generate in Zoho Billing.

PDF attachment

Discounts

If you give discounts to your customers, you can select the level of discounts applicable on the transactions. Choose how discounts are applied in transactions:

I don’t give discounts:
If you don’t give discounts to your customers, then select this option.

At Line Item Level
Discount is provided for every item individually in a transaction (like an invoice)

Line Item Level Discount

If you have applied taxes on the line item(s), you can choose whether the discount should be inclusive or exclusive of tax.

At Transaction Level
Discount is provided on the whole amount in the transaction.

Transaction Level Discounts

If you select a discount to be applied at transaction level, you can also choose to apply the Discount Before Tax or Discount After Tax.

General preference in Zoho Billing

Additional charges

You can add shipping charges and adjustments for your invoices by enabling them here. These additional charges will show up when you are creating transactions like an invoice.

Additional Charges

Tax on item rates

Choose if your item rates are inclusive of tax or exclusive of it.

If you choose the Tax Inclusive or Tax Exclusive option, then you can choose if you want your item rates to be tax inclusive or not while creating a transaction.

Round off the sales amount

Check this option if you want your sales transaction’s total amount to be a whole number. If this option is enabled, your transaction amount will be rounded off to the nearest whole number.

Salesperson

If you have sales persons in your organization who manage different sales transactions, then you can associate them with the corresponding transactions (like an invoice) in Zoho Billing.

To enable sales persons for your organization, check I want to add a field for salesperson.

To view all the sales done by different sales persons in your organization, navigate to Reports > Sales > Sales by Sales Person.

Markup for billable expenses

The expenses that you incur on behalf of your customers, which you will invoice them later are billable expenses. There are two common methods of invoicing customers:

To set a default markup percentage for billable expenses, enter the Default Markup Percentage and click Save.

Now, when you choose the billable option in an expense, the default markup percentage will be pre-filled in the Default Markup Percentage field.

Weekly summary report

All the admins of your organization can receive the summary of business transactions done in a week in their email. You can also receive the report through your Slack channel if you have integrated your Zoho Billing organizaton with Slack.

To enable weekly summary reports, check Send Weekly Summary report.

Organization address format

You can change the way your organization or business address appears on all your sales and purchase transactions.

Rearrange the existing placeholders to change the format or add new placeholders by clicking Insert Placeholders. The format you configure here will be displayed only in that transaction’s PDF.

After making all the changes in the General section, click Save.


Branding

Personalize your Zoho Billing account to go with your brand.

If your company has a brand logo, you can upload it under Organization Logo. All the transactions that you send out to your customers from Zoho Billing will be branded with this logo.

Themes

You can choose and apply themes to your Zoho Billing organization. If you have multiple organizations, you can differentiate between them by setting a theme for each organization.

Add logo in Zoho Billing

Portal

This tab allows you to configure your Customer Portal.

Customer portal preferences

Customers

Configure preferences related to the Customers module. Learn more.

Items

Configure preferences related to the Items module. Learn more.

Quotes

Configure preferences related to the Quotes module. Learn more.

Invoices

Configure preferences related to the Invoices module. Learn more.

Credit Notes

Configure preferences related to Credit Notes. Learn more.

Delivery Note Settings

If you ship or deliver the products you sell to your customers, then you can configure your Delivery Note settings here. A Delivery Note lists the contents of the package, what the recipient has ordered and what has been sent to them. Typically, a Delivery Note includes description and quantity of the items delivered. In some cases, a copy of the Delivery Note is signed by the recipient and then returned to the seller or consignor as a proof that the items have been delivered.

To configure Delivery Note settings:


Packing Slip Settings

A packing slip will include details of the contents in a package you deliver. The purpose of a packing slip is to inform all the parties, i.e. transport agencies, government authorities and customers, about the contents of the package which is being delivered.

To configure Package Slip settings:

Packing Slip Settings

Field Customization

All Zoho Billing modules have a set of default fields that captures information common to all businesses. Custom Fields lets you store additional information that is unique to your business. These fields can be used to save more details about your customers, items, invoices, or all other transactions.

When will custom fields be used?
Let’s say you run a business that sells clothing for kids. In such a case, you might want to record more product details such as colour and size of the dress. To do this, you can create custom fields in the Items module with the appropriate label.

Now, let’s see how you can create and manage custom fields in Zoho Billing.

Create Custom Field

To create a new custom field:

Fill in the following fields:

After entering all the details, click Save. From now on, when you enter data in the respective module, this custom field will be displayed.

Note: You can create up to 3 Custom Fields of the data type Text in each module.

Edit Custom Field

You can change the details of a custom field at any time. Here’s how:

Mark Field as Inactive/Active

If you’d like to stop using a custom field temporarily, you can choose to mark it as inactive.

To mark a custom field as inactive:

If you have marked a custom field as inactive, you can make it active again by following the same steps as above and selecting Mark as Active.

Delete Custom Field

You can delete a custom field you have created in Zoho Billing. Here’s how:

If you have added data in a custom field which is associated with a transaction, you cannot delete the custom field. If you want to delete the custom field, you would have to delete the corresponding transaction.

Alternatively, you can mark the custom field as inactive.

API Field Name

Once you save a custom field, you can edit it to find the API Field Name. This name will be used when referring to this custom field for an API call.

API Custom Field
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