Vendor Portal

As your business grows, it might be difficult to manage all your supplies, keep track of each transaction, collaborate and maintain vendor relations. Which is exactly why Zoho Books has a dedicated portal for your vendors which lets them view and access their transactions. 

Once you enable the portal in Zoho Books, your vendors will be able to: 

Insight: You can allow customers to keep track of their transactions, add comments and collaborate using the Customer Portal.

Note: This feature is available only for certain plans of Zoho Books. Visit the pricing page to check if it’s available in your current plan.

Enable Vendor Portal

Prerequisite: Your vendor can upload images and PDFs of the document. The maximum file size for each document is 5MB.

You will have to enable portal access and invite your vendor or their contact persons you’ve added in Zoho Books. To enable the portal:

You can enable portal access to your vendors in three ways:

1. Click More on the top right corner of the vendor’s details page and select Configure Vendor Portal from the dropdown.
OR

Configure Vendor Portal

2. Hover the cursor over the Portal Status under the Other Details section and click the Gear icon.
OR

Click Gear icon

3. Click Invite to Portal below the vendor’s name.

Invite to Portal Configure portal access for your vendor

Sign Up for Vendor Portal

To access the portal, your vendor should:

Enter the password for the portal

They’ll be taken to the home page of the portal using which they can perform actions like view details of purchase orders, upload invoices of your purchases, track payments received, and much more.

Functions in the Vendor Portal

Let us see the functions that can be performed in the vendor portal. 

Home

Once your vendor logs in to the portal, the home page/dashboard will give them an overview of all the transactions that took place between you and your vendor. They can view the following details:

Home

View Purchase Orders

Documents created by you in Zoho Books requesting your vendors to supply specific goods along with their prices and quantities are Purchase Orders. Vendors can view the purchase orders and comment on them to negotiate the prices or add their remarks before they create the final invoice. To access the purchase orders, your vendors should:

Purchase Orders

They will also be able to filter the purchase orders by their statuses by clicking the Show All Purchase Orders dropdown. The available filters are: All, Billed, Partially Billed and Cancelled.

Accept and Decline Purchase Orders (For Vendors)

Vendors can use the portal to accept or decline the purchase orders that were created in Zoho Books. When you create a purchase order in Zoho Books, you can send it to your vendors for review.

Once the vendor accepts your purchase order, you can go ahead and purchase goods from your vendor. If your vendor has rejected your purchase order, you can try creating a new purchase order and submit it for review.

This feature comes in handy when you require the vendor’s consent to purchase goods from the vendor.

Enable Review for Purchase Orders (For Zoho Books Users)

Admins must enable this feature before the users send purchase orders for review. Here’s how:

Purchase Orders
Submit Purchase Orders for Review (For Zoho Books Users)

Once the admins in Zoho Books have enabled the option to approve purchase orders, users will be be able to submit it to their vendors for review. Here’s how:

Purchase Orders
Accept or Decline Purchase Orders (For Vendors)

Vendors can accept or decline the purchase orders that have been sent to them from the users in Zoho Books. Here’s how:

Your customer will be notified in Zoho Books when you have approved the purchase order.

Purchase Orders

Manage Invoices

When your vendor has shipped goods to you, they can upload a picture of the transaction’s document (invoice) to the portal, you can then verify it and accept or reject them in Zoho Books. Once accepted, it will be created as a bill in Zoho Books.  

Upload Documents

To upload a transaction document in the portal, your vendors should:

Upload Documents

Insight: Your vendor can upload images and PDFs of the document. The maximum file size for each document is 5MB.

The document will be in the Pending state as soon as it is uploaded. If you accept the document in Zoho Books, it will be converted into an invoice in the Vendor Portal. You will be able to add comments to the document by clicking it. 

View Invoices

Once your vendor uploads a document, you can review and accept/reject the document. If it is accepted, it will be created as an invoice in the portal. Here’s how your vendor can view the invoice in the portal:

View Invoices

Insight: An invoice created by the vendor will be a bill for you (Zoho Books user).

Add Comments

Track Payments Received

You might have made an online payment or a cash payment towards the vendor’s invoices. Your vendor will be able to view them once you record the payment manually in Zoho Books. This section will show the details of the amount, the payment mode and the reference transaction. To view this, your vendor should:

View Payments

Generate Statement of Accounts

Statement of account shows a consolidated list of all the transactions carried out between your vendor and you. Your vendor can generate this statement for any period and view the payments received and balance due. To view the statement:

Statement

Create Bills (Zoho Books Users)

You will be able to create bills in Zoho Books based on the documents uploaded by the vendor. Furthermore, you can also discuss them in the comments section.

Notification All Documents Accept Document

Pro Tip: You can hover over the document and click Convert to Bill to create bills instantly.

Convert to Bill

Enable Autoscan for Uploaded Documents

However, if you’ve enabled the Autoscan feature in the Documents module, vital information of a document such as date, amount, etc., will be automatically captured from documents and populated while creating new transaction documents.

Note: The number of autoscans that can be performed depends on your subscription. You can purchase more autoscan add-ons if necessary.

You must enable the Autoscan feature in the documents module to autoscan the documents uploaded by the vendor.

Here’s how you can enable autoscan for the documents uploaded by the vendor:

Autoscan Documents

Insight: Once you’ve enabled autoscan in the preferences section, all the documents that the vendor uploads in the vendor portal will be automatically autoscanned in the Documents tab in Zoho Books.

As the documents get autoscanned, you will be able to observe the following status of the documents:

Scan in progress: The document or receipt is currently being scanned.

Processed: The document or receipt has been scanned and data is captured.

Failed: The autoscan has failed. This may result due to illegible data, images which cannot be interpreted or when the language is not supported.

Once the documents uploaded by your vendor has been autoscanned in Zoho Books, you can convert the scanned documents to a bill manually in the Documents tab.

Autoscan Bills

Warning: The number of documents you can autoscan will reduce when a vendor uploads a document in the portal.

Other Actions (For Vendors)

Edit Address

The address you have stored in Zoho Books will be visible to your vendors. In case they have changed their address, they can edit them in their portal. To do this:

Edit Address

Insight: Only the person saved as the primary contact by you in Zoho Books will be able to update the address.

Send Email

Your vendor will be able to contact you directly from the portal by sending an email. Here’s how:

Send Email

Change Password

If your vendor’s password is too old or vulnerable, they can an change it easily from the portal. Here’s how:

Change Password

Logout

To logout of the portal:

Vendor Portal Preferences (Zoho Books Users)

The preferences section will allow you to configure the portal.

The custom options available are:

Portal Name
The portal name is unique to your organization and it is used in the URL of the Client and Vendor Portal. This is auto-generated by default. However, you can edit the portal name, and click Save if you want to customize it.

Notify me for every activity that takes place in the portal
Enabling this option notifies you via emails and in-app notifications whenever your vendor uploads documents, adds comments or updates any details.

Notify my vendor when I comment or reject the documents
Enabling this option notifies your vendor via an email whenever you add a comment or reject the documents they had uploaded.

Allow vendors to update their contact details in the portal
Enabling this option allows your customers to add/edit their shipping/billing addresses, custom fields and other contact details in case of any changes.

Allow vendors to upload documents
Enabling this option allows vendors to upload PDFs or images of transactions that support your purchase. You can view the document and accept it to create a bill in Zoho Books.

Autoscan uploaded documents
Enabling this option will capture the important data from the documents that are uploaded by the vendor and will be used to create bills easily.

Allow vendors to accept/reject purchase orders
Enabling this option provides vendors the ability to accept or decline the purchase orders in the Vendor Portal.

Banner Message
The banner message will be displayed in the Home screen of the vendor portal. For example, you can say “Welcome to Zylker. Have a nice day!”

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