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:
- Upload transaction documents which you can verify and convert to bills in Zoho Books.
- View details of purchase orders, invoices and track payments received.
- Generate a consolidated statement of accounts.
- Add comments to discuss transactions and work jointly.
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:
- Go to Purchases and select Vendors.
- Select the vendor for whom you want 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
2. Hover the cursor over the Portal Status under the Other Details section and click the Gear icon.OR
3. Click Invite to Portal below the vendor’s name.
- In the pop-up, select the vendor or their contact persons for whom you want to provide the portal access.
- Once you click Save, Zoho Books will send an email to your vendors inviting them to the portal.
Sign Up for Vendor Portal
To access the portal, your vendor should:
- Open the email invitation sent to them.
- Click Accept Invitation. They’ll be redirected to the sign up page of the portal.
- Enter the password and click Update.
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
Following functions can be performed in the vendor portal;
- Overview of all the transactions
- View Purchase Orders
- Accept and Decline Purchase Orders (For Vendors)
- Manage Invoices
- Track Payments Received
- Generate Statement of Accounts
- Edit Address
- Send Email
- Change Password
- Logout
Vendor Portal Preferences (Zoho Books Users)
The preferences section will allow you to configure the portal.
- Go to Settings on the top right corner of the page.
- Select Vendor Portal under Preferences.
The custom options available are:
Portal NameThe portal name is unique to your organisation 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 customise it.
Notify me for every activity that takes place in the portalEnabling 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 documentsEnabling 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 portalEnabling this option allows your customers to add/edit their shipping/billing addresses, custom fields and other contact details in case of any changes.
Collect vendor’s organisation details when they sign up for the portal
When a vendor accepts the invite and accesses the portal for the first time, an onboarding screen will be shown to enter and submit their organisation details. You can view the submitted details in Vendors module and approve it. Once approved, vendor can access the portal.
Allow vendors to upload documentsEnabling 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 documentsEnabling 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 only upload documents for purchase orders
Enable this option if you want vendors to only upload invoices for the corresponding purchase orders. Once uploaded, you can verify and convert them into bills in Zoho Books.
Once you enable this option, vendors will no longer be able to upload documents from the Upload Documents tab in the Invoices module of the vendor portal. They can only upload documents from the Details page of the corresponding purchase order.
Allow vendors to accept/reject purchase ordersEnabling this option provides vendors the ability to accept or decline the purchase orders in the Vendor Portal.
Banner MessageThe 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!”
- Click Save after configuring these settings.