Ask Zoho Books questions in plain words

The answer is in Zoho Books somewhere: three reports, two filters and an export away. In this recipe you ask the question the way you would ask your bookkeeper, and the agent reads it out of Books for you, with the figures and the dates it used.

What you need

• Zoho Books set up in XataWorks. Bring your Zoho apps into XataWorks does it in a few minutes.

1. Open Books and ask

Start a chat with the Zoho assistant, or any chat with Zoho Books open beside it, and ask in your own words:

How did we do last quarter compared with the quarter before?

Who owes us the most right now, and how much of it is overdue?

What did we spend on software this year, and with which vendors?

What’s in the bank across all our accounts today?

The agent uses Books’ own profit and loss, balance sheet, invoices, bills, expenses, contacts and bank accounts. It reads, and reading never asks.

2. Follow up

The chat keeps the thread, so the next question can be short: “Which of those vendors went up the most?”, “Show me the three biggest invoices behind that”. With no details, “what’s on this one?” reads the invoice, bill or contact you have open in Books.

3. Keep the answer

When an answer is worth keeping or sending, ask for it as a report, with key figures, a chart and a table, and export it as a PDF or a spreadsheet. For one that arrives every month, see A monthly finance pack from Zoho Books.

Where this recipe stops

• Books’ numbers, not a second set. The answers come from Zoho Books’ own reports and records, for the organisation you have open. With more than one organisation, say which.
• Long lists come in pages. Books hands over up to 200 records at a time, and the agent reads page after page when a question needs more. For totals, it uses the totals Books works out itself.
• Zoho counts the calls. Every question uses some of your organisation’s daily Zoho allowance.

Read more

• Page tools: how the agent works in a site you have open.
• Reports: turning an answer into a document.