Connect your app to Zoho Books

Connect your app to Zoho Books, an accounting platform, to read and manage customers, invoices, estimates, bills, expenses, and projects.

Zoho Books is accounting software for managing customers, invoices, estimates, expenses, bills, projects, and bookkeeping workflows. The Zoho Books connector lets your Lovable app read and manage accounting records through your own Zoho Books account.

Zoho Books is available as an app + chat connector: one shared connection that works in the chat while you build and in your published apps.

With Zoho Books, your app can:

• List organizations and use organization IDs for accounting API calls
• Create and manage customers, vendors, invoices, estimates, and sales orders
• Read bills, expenses, purchase orders, and projects for dashboards and reports
• Build approval, reporting, and bookkeeping workflows through the connector gateway

It’s a good fit for finance dashboards, customer billing portals, expense workflows, and internal accounting tools that need live Zoho Books data.

Common use cases and example apps

Example app	Example prompt	Description
Invoice operations dashboard	Use Zoho Books and build a dashboard that shows invoices by customer, due date, and payment status.	Track invoice status from Zoho Books in one focused view. The app reads invoices from the connected organization, groups them by status, and helps finance teams follow up on overdue payments.
Customer billing portal	Use Zoho Books and build a customer portal where customers can view their invoices, estimates, and payment history.	Give customers a self-service view of billing records. The app fetches customer, invoice, and estimate data from Zoho Books and displays the records tied to each account.
Expense approval tool	Use Zoho Books and build an expense approval app where managers can review expenses by project and vendor.	Review Zoho Books expenses in a structured approval flow. The app reads expense records, lets managers filter by project or vendor, and records approval decisions in your app.
Accounts payable tracker	Use Zoho Books and build a tracker for bills and purchase orders that flags upcoming due dates.	Help operations teams stay ahead of vendor payments. The app reads bills and purchase orders from Zoho Books and highlights records that need review or payment.
Project finance dashboard	Use Zoho Books and build a project dashboard that shows expenses, invoices, and profitability by project.	Connect project work to financial outcomes. The app reads project, expense, and invoice data so teams can monitor budgets and margins without exporting spreadsheets.

How to connect Zoho Books

Workspace admins and owners can connect Zoho Books. You can create multiple Zoho Books connections using different Zoho accounts, regions, OAuth apps, or organization IDs, which is useful for separating production and sandbox environments or managing multiple legal entities.

When the connection is created, Zoho Books becomes available across all projects in the workspace. Anyone building in a project can ask Lovable in chat to link their project to it.

Prerequisites

Before connecting Zoho Books, make sure you have:

• A Zoho Books account
• Access to the Zoho API Console for your Zoho Books data center to create a Server-based Application
• The data center where your Zoho Books account is hosted, such as United States, Europe, India, Australia, Japan, Canada, China, or Saudi Arabia
• The Zoho Books organization ID you want to use, if you want to pin the connection to one organization
• Lovable workspace owner or admin role

All API requests made through this connector count against your Zoho Books API limits and your Zoho Books plan. Billing and quota are handled directly by Zoho Books, not Lovable.

Step 1: Create a Zoho API console application

Zoho Books uses OAuth to authorize third-party access. Create a Server-based Application in the Zoho API Console for the same data center as your Zoho Books account to get the Client ID and Client Secret for Lovable.

Zoho Books data center	API Console URL
United States (books.zoho.com)	api-console.zoho.com
Europe (books.zoho.eu)	api-console.zoho.eu
India (books.zoho.in)	api-console.zoho.in
Australia (books.zoho.com.au)	api-console.zoho.com.au
Japan (books.zoho.jp)	api-console.zoho.jp
Canada (books.zohocloud.ca)	api-console.zohocloud.ca
China (books.zoho.com.cn)	api-console.zoho.com.cn
Saudi Arabia (books.zoho.sa)	api-console.zoho.sa

1. Open the Zoho API Console

   Sign in to the Zoho API Console URL that matches your Zoho Books data center.

2. Create a Server-based Application

   Click Add Client or Get started, then choose Server-based Applications.

3. Enter application details

   Fill in the application details:

   • Client Name: for example, Lovable Integration
   • Homepage URL: your app or company website URL
   • Authorized Redirect URIs: add https://api.lovable.dev/workspaces/connectors/standard/oauth/callback
4. Copy your credentials

   Save the application, then copy the generated Client ID and Client Secret. You need both values in Lovable.

Your Client Secret functions like a password. Keep it secure and never share it publicly. You need it in the next step.

See Zoho’s API console documentation for more detail.

Step 2: Connect Zoho Books to Lovable

1. Open Zoho Books in Connectors

   Go to Connectors and select Zoho Books.

2. Add a connection

   Click Add connection.

3. Enter your connection details

   Fill in the connection fields:

   • Display name: name the connection, for example Zoho Books Prod. This name is only used inside Lovable to identify the connection.
   • Data center: choose the region where your Zoho Books account is hosted. Check your Zoho Books URL, for example books.zoho.eu means Europe.
   • Client ID: the Client ID from your Zoho API console application.
   • Client secret: the Client Secret from your Zoho API console application.
   • Organization ID (optional): enter a numeric Zoho Books organization ID if you want the connection metadata to include it. If you leave this empty, your app can fetch organizations after connecting.
4. Review scopes (optional)

   Expand Advanced settings to review the Zoho Books permissions Lovable requests. Default scopes are selected for common accounting workflows.

   Settings: read is required because the connector verifies the connection and lists organizations through Zoho Books settings APIs. You can remove optional scopes if your app does not need that accounting area.

   Scope	What it allows	Default
   Settings: read (ZohoBooks.settings.READ)	List organizations and read settings data such as users, taxes, currencies, and items	Required
   Contacts: full access (ZohoBooks.contacts.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete customers and vendors	On
   Invoices: full access (ZohoBooks.invoices.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete invoices	On
   Estimates: full access (ZohoBooks.estimates.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete estimates and quotes	On
   Sales orders: full access (ZohoBooks.salesorders.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete sales orders	On
   Purchase orders: full access (ZohoBooks.purchaseorders.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete purchase orders	On
   Bills: full access (ZohoBooks.bills.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete bills	On
   Expenses: full access (ZohoBooks.expenses.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete expenses	On
   Projects: full access (ZohoBooks.projects.ALL)	Create, read, update, and delete projects and project tasks	On

   For full scope documentation, see Zoho Books OAuth scopes.

5. Choose who can access this connection

   Under Who can access this connection, decide who in your workspace can use the connection:

   • Only you (default): only the person creating the connection can use it and its associated data.
   • Invite specific people: only you and explicitly added workspace members can use the connection and its associated data.
   • Invite entire workspace: click Invite entire workspace to make the connection available to everyone in your Lovable workspace.

   See Connection-level access for more information.

6. Connect to Zoho Books and authorize

   Click Connect. The Zoho Books authorization window opens, so make sure your browser doesn’t block pop-ups. If it does, Lovable redirects you instead.

   Sign in to Zoho Books if prompted, review the requested permissions, and click Accept or Allow.

   Lovable redirects you back with a confirmation.

When connected, anyone building in a project can ask Lovable in chat to link their project to Zoho Books (based on configured connection-level access). Your Lovable apps can then read and manage Zoho Books records through your connected Zoho account.

Working with organizations

Most Zoho Books resource endpoints require an organization_id query parameter. If you enter Organization ID when creating the connection, Lovable includes that value in the connection metadata so the app can reuse it.

If you leave Organization ID empty, ask Lovable to fetch organizations first through the connector, then pass the returned organization ID on calls for records such as contacts, invoices, bills, expenses, and projects.

Limitations

The Zoho Books connector cannot:

• Support per-end-user Zoho Books login. Each connection represents a single Zoho account shared across all projects linked to it.
• Receive Zoho Books webhook events through the connector.
• Bypass Zoho Books API limits, rate limits, or plan restrictions.
• Remove the need for organization_id on Zoho Books resource calls. Apps need to use the configured organization ID or fetch it from /organizations.

If Zoho Books authorization is revoked from the Zoho side, or if the Zoho API console application is deleted or changed, you’ll need to reconnect the integration in Lovable before API calls can succeed again.

Manage your connection

Connections are managed from Connectors: select , then open the connection.

• Unlink projects to remove access from specific projects while keeping the connection available for others. See Unlink projects from a connection for the steps.
• Delete the connection to remove it from the workspace entirely. Deleting is permanent. It removes the credentials from all linked projects, and app features that use stop working until a new connection is added. See Delete a connection for the steps and who can delete.