Zoho Books

Zoho Books

This connector works with one Zoho Books organization through the Zoho Books API v3 (https://www.zohoapis.<region>/books/v3): organizations, contacts (customers and vendors), items, invoices, estimates, customer payments, bills, expenses, the chart of accounts with account transactions, bank accounts and bank transactions, and taxes. It runs as the Zoho user who authorized it, within that user's role.

Data center first. Zoho keeps each account in one data center, and the sign-in server and API host must be that data center's:

The address bar when you use Zoho Books tells you the region. Signing in at the wrong one fails with invalid_client or an empty organization list.

Setup (about 10 minutes)

1. Open the Zoho API Console at https://api-console.zoho.com, signed in with your Zoho account → Add Client → Server-based Applications.
2. Name it (for example "AnythingMCP"), homepage URL your company site, and Authorized Redirect URI https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/api/mcp-oauth/callback on AnythingMCP Cloud, or <your AnythingMCP URL>/api/mcp-oauth/callback when you host AnythingMCP yourself. Create it and copy the Client ID and Client Secret into ZOHO_BOOKS_CLIENT_ID and ZOHO_BOOKS_CLIENT_SECRET. If your Books organization lives in another data center than the one the console opened in, enable that data center on the client's Settings tab (Multi-DC) and use the client secret shown there for it.
3. Set ZOHO_BOOKS_ACCOUNTS_URL and ZOHO_BOOKS_API_URL from the table.
4. Find the organization ID: in Zoho Books click the organization name (top right) → Manage Organizations; the ID is shown next to each organization. Paste it into ZOHO_BOOKS_ORGANIZATION_ID.
5. Install, then click Authorize with Provider on the connector page and approve the requested access. Run zoho_books_list_organizations and check that the organization ID is listed.

Scopes: ZohoBooks.settings.ALL,ZohoBooks.contacts.ALL,ZohoBooks.invoices.ALL,ZohoBooks.estimates.ALL,ZohoBooks.customerpayments.ALL,ZohoBooks.bills.ALL,ZohoBooks.expenses.ALL,ZohoBooks.accountants.READ,ZohoBooks.banking.READ. Items, taxes and organization settings fall under ZohoBooks.settings, the chart of accounts under ZohoBooks.accountants. For a read-only setup, change every .ALL to .READ in the connector's OAuth settings, authorize again and switch off the create, update, email, status and delete tools.

Tokens: access tokens last one hour and are renewed automatically with the stored refresh token, which does not expire unless revoked. Zoho keeps at most 20 refresh tokens per user and client: authorizing the same client a 21st time (in AnythingMCP or elsewhere) silently revokes the oldest one.

Writes are real: confirm first. zoho_books_email_invoice emails the customer from your organization, zoho_books_mark_invoice_sent and zoho_books_void_invoice change the books (void keeps the invoice but zeroes it), and zoho_books_create_customer_payment, zoho_books_create_bill and zoho_books_create_expense post to the ledger. Say what will be booked or sent and wait for the user's yes. The delete tools (contacts, invoices, estimates, customer payments, bills, expenses) are installed switched off.

Ids and lists: every record has a numeric string id (contact_id, invoice_id, ...). List tools return up to 200 records per page and page_context.has_more_page; filter with search_text, status, filter_by and dates (YYYY-MM-DD). Look up customer_id with zoho_books_list_contacts (contact_type: customer), item_id with zoho_books_list_items, account_id (expense, income, bank and cash accounts) with zoho_books_list_chart_of_accounts, and tax_id with zoho_books_list_taxes.

Invoices: zoho_books_create_invoice creates a draft numbered by the organization's auto-numbering; send: true emails it at once. Then zoho_books_mark_invoice_sent (no email) or zoho_books_email_invoice. A customer payment is recorded with zoho_books_create_customer_payment and applied to invoices via invoices: [{"invoice_id", "amount_applied"}]. To correct a sent invoice, void it with zoho_books_void_invoice: it stays on record, which is what bookkeeping rules such as Germany's GoBD expect. Zoho refuses to delete a sent invoice (code 4529, "cancel the invoice"); zoho_books_mark_invoice_draft turns a void invoice back into an editable draft.

Reports: Zoho does not document a reports API for Books. For totals, use zoho_books_list_chart_of_accounts with showbalance: true, zoho_books_list_account_transactions for one account, or the list tools with date filters.

Limits: 100 requests per minute per organization, and per day 1,000 (Free), 2,000 (Standard), 5,000 (Professional) or 10,000 (Premium and above); over the limit Zoho answers 429.

Common errors (code and message in the body)

• 401 code 57 "You are not authorized to perform this operation" or invalid_oauthtoken: the sign-in is missing a scope or was revoked, or the API host is not your data center; authorize again.
• 400 or 404 naming the organization: ZOHO_BOOKS_ORGANIZATION_ID is wrong or not visible to this user; compare with zoho_books_list_organizations.
• 400 with a field message (a duplicate name, an invalid value, a missing required field): the message names the field.
• 400 code 4529 "An invoice that has been sent cannot be deleted": void it instead (see Invoices). 400 code 3000 on deleting a contact: invoices or payments still refer to it; mark it inactive.
• 429 code 44 (per minute) or 45 (per day): limit reached.

Out of scope here: sales orders, purchase orders, credit notes, vendor payments, journals, projects, recurring invoices, attachments and PDFs.