Integrate Zoho Books with WhatsApp

Using WhatsApp for customer communication offers an easy way to send messages with a personalized touch. Integrating WhatsApp into Zoho Books keeps your customers informed regarding their invoices, sales orders, payment receipts, customer statements, estimates, retainer invoices, credit notes, and sales receipts.

After enabling WhatsApp, you will have to buy credits to send notifications to your customers. Learn more about WhatsApp Credits.

Prerequisites:

Once you set up this integration, Zoho will become your Business Service Provider (BSP). Ensure that your WhatsApp Business account is not associated with other BSPs.

The phone number you want to use to set up this integration must be valid and owned by you. If it is associated with any other BSPs, WhatsApp Personal or WhatsApp Business accounts, you may lose your existing chats.

You should have a verified Facebook Business Manager account.

Connect to WhatsApp

To send WhatsApp notifications to your customers, you must connect Zoho Books to WhatsApp first. Here’s how:

Insight: If you don’t have a Facebook account, create one by clicking Create New Account.

Insight: If you don’t have one, select Create a WhatsApp Business account and Create a new WhatsApp Business Profile from the dropdown.

Your Zoho Books organisation will be connected with WhatsApp.

You can either buy credits in the next step or also do it once you have created templates for WhatsApp notifications.

Configure Templates

To send notifications through WhatsApp, create a template in Zoho Books and get it approved by the WhatsApp Business team.

Create Templates

To send invoice details through WhatsApp, you’ll have to create a template for it. Here’s how:

Insight: The Template Category could either be Utility or Marketing. Learn more about Template Categorization.

A template will be created, and once approved, you can send invoice notifications to your customers.

Similarly, you can create templates for Sales Orders, Payment Receipts, Customer Statements, Estimates, Retainer Invoices, Credit Notes, and Sales Receipts.      

Template Approval

Once you create a template, it will be sent for approval. It can take up to 24 hours for the WhatsApp team to approve it. The status of the approval will be displayed on the list page.

Template Approval

A template can have the following statuses: 

Status Description
Approved The WhatsApp Business team approved the template and it can be sent to customers.
Rejected The WhatsApp Business team rejected the template. Edit and resumbit the template for approval. Learn why templates get rejected.
Pending Approval The template has been sent to the WhatsApp Business team and is awaiting approval. It could take upto 24 hours for the status to be updated.
Deletion in Progress The WhatsApp Business team is evaluating your request to delete a template.
Deletion Failed The template was not deleted due to network issues. Initiate the delete process once again.
Deleted The WhatsApp Business team has deleted the template. This action cannot be undone.

Other Actions

Clone Template

If you want to create a template similar to an existing template, you can clone it. Here’s how:

The new cloned template will be sent for approval to the WhatsApp Business team and can be used once approved.

Set Template as Default

If you want a template as your default choice, you can set that template as default. To do so:

The default template will be auto-populated in the Template Name field when you try to send WhatsApp notifications.

Delete Template

You can delete a WhatsApp template if you do not require it.

Warning: Deleting a template is permanent and cannot be undone. However, you can create a new template again and send it to the WhatsApp Business team for approval.

To delete a template:

A request will be sent to the WhatsApp Business team to delete the template, which will subsequently be deleted.

Delete Template

Enable WhatsApp

Enable WhatsApp for Sales Transactions

Once you set up templates, enable the modules for which you’d like to send WhatsApp notifications. To do this: 

You’ll be able to send notifications through WhatsApp for the modules that you’ve enabled.

Enable WhatsApp for Customers and Contact Persons

To send notifications to your customers through WhatsApp, you’ll have to enable WhatsApp for them. Here’s how:

Enable WhatsApp for Customers in Bulk

You can enable WhatsApp messaging for contacts in bulk in two ways. You can do it for: 

To enable it for all the primary contacts and contact persons:

To enable it for specific primary contacts and contact persons:

The WhatsApp notification will now be sent to the selected contacts.

Manage WhatsApp Credits

WhatsApp Credits

Once you enable WhatsApp and create templates, you’ll need to buy credits to send notifications through WhatsApp. Learn more about how credits work.

Buy Credits

To buy WhatsApp credits:

You’ll be redirected to the payment gateway where you can pay. Once done, the credits will be added to your organisation. You can also buy credits from the Zoho Store.

Send Notifications through WhatsApp

Send Invoice Notifications

The invoice notification will be sent to the respective contacts.  

To send a WhatsApp notification for existing invoices:

The invoice details will be sent to the respective contact person via WhatsApp. Similarly, you can send notifications for Sales Orders, Estimates, Retainer Invoices, and Sales Receipts.

Send Reminders on WhatsApp

To send reminders on WhatsApp, you should create a template for Payment Reminders. To do this:

Now you will be able to use this template and send payment reminders on WhatsApp.

To send payment reminders on WhatsApp:

The payment reminder notification will be sent to the customer via WhatsApp.

To send payment reminders in bulk:

The payment reminder notifications for the selected overdue invoices will be initiated, and you will be notified once they are sent to the customers.

You can also send automated payment reminder notifications through WhatsApp. Here’s how:

The automated reminders will be sent to the selected customers through WhatsApp.

Note: The Automatic Reminders will be sent to the customers only if WhatsApp Communication Channel is enabled at the customer and transaction level.

Send Payment Receipts

To share existing payment receipts via WhatsApp:

Send Customer Notifications

You can send marketing notifications to your customers regarding promotions, offers or any other informational updates along with the customer statement using this feature.

To send only the customer statement:

The customer statement will be sent to the respective contact person.

Sending Bulk WhatsApp Notifications

Zoho Books allows you to send WhatsApp notifications to multiple customers at a time.

Note: The bulk WhatsApp notifications will only be sent to the contacts selected in the particular transaction level.

To send bulk WhatsApp notifications:

The bulk WhatsApp messages for the selected invoices will be initiated, and you will be notified once they are sent to the customers. Similarly, you can send bulk notifications for Sales Orders, Estimates, Retainer Invoices, and Sales Receipts.

WhatsApp bulk notifications will not be sent if:

View Sent WhatsApp Notifications

You can view the sent WhatsApp notifications at three different levels. Here’s how:

At Transaction Level

The particular notification message will be highlighted, and you can continue chatting with the customer if required.

At Customer Level

You can view all the WhatsApp notifications and their statuses sent to this customer.

View Customer Level

At Organisation Level

You can also click View Report on the WhatsApp configuration page and view all the WhatsApp notifications sent from your organisation.

View organization Level

Get Notified for Incoming WhatsApp Messages

You can get notified in Zoho Books when your customer sends a message on WhatsApp. Here’s how you can enable notifications:

You will now receive notifications in Zoho Books for the incoming WhatsApp messages.

You can view them in the Notifications section at the top of Zoho Books.

Incoming Notifications

Chat with the Customer

To message a customer:

Note: You can only send predefined notification templates until your customer responds.

Insight: You can add an attachment by clicking the + icon. Note that you can only send one attachment at a time, and the supported file formats are JPG, JPEG, PNG (up to 5MB), and PDF (up to 10MB).

The session will end. You can click Chat to continue if your session has not expired.

Continue Chat

Note: The chat session will expire if there’s no activity for 24 hours from the last message. Once it has expired, you must reinitiate the conversation by clicking Initiate Chat and sending a notification template as usual.

Take Over Customer Chat

Users in your organisation with Communication permissions can initiate chats with customers. However, only one user can chat with a customer at a time.

Insight: To enable Communication permissions for contacts, go to Settings > Users & Roles > Roles and edit the role.

You can enter the chat if another user is chatting with a customer and faces a question that fits your expertise. 

To do so, click Take Over, and the chat will be transferred to you. Take Over

You can now continue chatting with the customer. Other users cannot message until they take over the chat.

Note: The customer will not be notified when another user takes over.

Common Chat Window

You can chat with a customer through Zoho Books at the organisation level using the common chat window. Only users with the Manage Integration permission will be able to access chats at the organisation level.

To provide this permission:

To add an unknown number in the chat window as a customer or contact person:

The unknown number will now be a contact person or customer in your organisation.

Note: You can only send custom messages to unknown numbers.

Other Actions

Create Workflow Actions

Users can create workflow actions in Zoho Books to automate various tasks. When integrated with WhatsApp, users can create WhatsApp Alerts to notify the customers.

Scenario: Patricia wants to notify her customers via WhatsApp when changes are made to the invoice’s total. To simplify the process, she creates a workflow action to send a WhatsApp alert when the invoice total is modified.

You can create  a workflow action for WhatsApp and associate it with a workflow rule or vice-versa. To do this,

Once you create an alert, you can add it to a workflow rule.

Mark WhatsApp Inactive

If you want to disable the WhatsApp integration temporarily, you can mark it as inactive. Here’s how:

WhatsApp will be disabled for your organisation. You can enable this anytime by clicking Mark as Active from the Configure dropdown.

Change Default WhatsApp Number

To change the default WhatsApp number, you must first delete the existing WhatsApp channel. To do this,

Once the existing channel is deleted, you can set up a WhatsApp channel with the new phone number.
To do this,

Your default WhatsApp number will be updated.

Change WhatsApp Business Account

You can also change the WhatsApp Business account if you already have an existing account. Here’s how:

Note: Once you change your WhatsApp Business account, you will not be able to use your existing WhatsApp channel and templates. Therefore, you will be required to delete the templates before proceeding.

Warning: Ensure that you delete the templates from Zoho Books and not from Meta to avoid syncing issues.

Once the deletion process is completed, the status of your WhatsApp Business account will be changed to SETUP PENDING. You can also check whether the number of templates for each module has been changed to 0 to confirm that the deletion process has been completed.

The WhatsApp Business Account will be changed.


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