SMS Notifications

This help document is only applicable to Zoho Inventory - Indian edition.

SMS is one of the fastest ways to keep your customers informed about their invoice payments. In Zoho Inventory, you can configure one of the following options to send SMS:

Free SMS
Buy SMS credits from Zoho Inventory (Recommended)
Integrate with Twilio, a third party SMS service provider

Enable SMS Notifications

To enable SMS Notifications for your organisation:

Go to Settings, then SMS Notifications.
Configure one of the following SMS options:
- Use Free SMS: Get three free SMS messages to test the feature.
- Buy Credits: Purchase a minimum of five SMS credits from Zoho Inventory. Each credit costs ₹75, and you will be able to send 300 messages per credit.
- Twilio: Integrate with Twilio, an external service provider to send SMS to your customers.

By default, SMS notifications will be enabled for all your customers’ primary contact.

Manage SMS Notifications

In Zoho Inventory, you can enable the following SMS notifications for your customers. These notifications are sent manually or automatically based on your settings.

Invoice Details: Sent when you create an invoice.
Payment Thank You: Sent when you record a payment for an invoice. Based on your preferences, a ‘Payment Thank You’ SMS will be sent automatically when you receive online payments.

To configure the above SMS notifications in Zoho Inventory:

Go to Settings, then SMS Notifications.
Click the Toggle on the right to turn on or turn off the notification.
Click on Change Template to change your SMS template. You can choose from ‘Brief’, ‘Short’ and ‘Detailed’.

Note: For now, you won’t be able to edit the SMS text.

Enable SMS for Contact Persons

By default, SMS notifications will be enabled for all your customers’ primary contact. To enable SMS notifications for a customer’s contact persons in Zoho Inventory:

Go to the Customers module on the left sidebar.
Select the customer with the contact person whom you want to enable the SMS notification for.
Go to the Overview tab and click the Gear icon next to the contact person’s name.
Select Enable SMS Notification.

If you want to disable SMS notifications for the contact person, you can do so by repeating the above steps and selecting the Disable SMS Notification option.

Send SMS Notifications

Based on the configured settings, SMS is sent to the respective customers and their contact persons automatically.

You can also notify your customers manually. Here’s how:

Go to the Invoices module in the left sidebar.
Select the invoice that you want to send an SMS for.
Click the Mails/SMS on the top, then select Send SMS. To access this option, you must enable the invoice creation notification under SMS Templates, and make sure that SMS notification is enabled for the customer.
Check the phone numbers to which the SMS has to be sent, then preview the SMS message.
Click Send SMS.

The SMS gets sent and the transaction history and customer activities are updated.

Warning: If your SMS contains special characters, then each SMS will be considered two messages.

You can also send a ‘Thank You’ SMS every time you record an offline payment. Here’s how:

Go to the Invoices module in the left sidebar.
Select the invoice that you want to record the payment for.
Click the Record Payment button on the top.
Check the Notify via SMS option.
Click Record Payment, and the SMS is sent to your customer that very instant.

Note: You cannot send SMS to your customer or their contact persons if their phone numbers are not recorded.

Disable SMS Notifications

When you disable SMS notification for a customer, you’ll no longer be able to notify their primary contact or any of the contact persons.

To disable SMS notifications:

Go to the Customers module on the left sidebar.
Select the customer whom you want to disable the SMS notification for.
Click More, then select the Disable SMS Notification option.

If you want to disable SMS notifications only for the customer’s primary contact:

Go to Customers module in the left sidebar.
Select the customer whose primary contact’s SMS notification you want to disable.
In the Overview tab, click Disable SMS Notification below the primary contact name.