The moment it happens

Announce paid Zoho Books invoices in Slack

When an invoice is marked paid, the customer and amount land in Slack straight away.

Runs: The moment it happens
Apps: Zoho Books
AI: Not needed
Access: ZohoBooks.invoices.READ

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: give me a link for a Zoho Books workflow webhook. When an invoice is marked paid, post the customer name, invoice number and amount to #sales in Slack.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A freelance agency invoices clients net 30 and a bookkeeper watches Zoho Books for payments. A client pays a $4,800 invoice on the 12th, but nobody on the delivery side knows, so the project manager keeps sending polite reminders and the team holds off starting the next phase. Meanwhile finance learns about payments only when they reconcile the bank feed at the end of the week.

You add a workflow webhook in Zoho Books that points at this automation's trigger link. When an invoice is marked paid, Zoho Books sends the event, and a message goes to Slack right away with the customer, invoice number and amount. No polling happens, since the alert depends on the event arriving.

Useful for agencies, consultancies and any business where payment releases the next step of work. The alert carries the customer, invoice number and amount, so nobody needs to open Books to understand it.

What you get out of it

No more reminders to clients who paid
A client who has already paid should not get another reminder from an account manager who did not know. The same-minute message tells the owner to stand down before an awkward email goes out.
Work starts when cash lands
Teams that start the next milestone on payment can begin when the Slack message appears. Projects stop waiting for a Friday finance update to learn that cash arrived on Tuesday.
Shared awareness in a channel
A visible stream of payments keeps sales, delivery and finance looking at the same picture of the business. Good news in a shared channel also lifts morale during a slow month.
Cash flow checked without opening Books
Owners who ask how collections are going can scroll the channel and read the answer. The numbers come to them, so no report needs opening just to find out what came in this week.
Quicker reconciliation
Invoice numbers and amounts in each message make bank matching a lookup instead of a search. Reconciliation takes minutes at the end of the week, because each payment is already named.
Fewer status questions
People stop messaging finance to ask whether an invoice was paid, because the answer is already in the channel. That gives the finance team back time they used to spend replying.

How it works

What happens, step by step

You add a workflow rule in Zoho Books that notifies ClickRuntime when an invoice's status changes to paid.
When an invoice is marked paid, ClickRuntime receives the customer, invoice number and amount straight away.
It posts them to your Slack channel.

Before it runs live

Connect Zoho Books
Paste your automation's link into the other app's webhook settings

What you get

RunsThe moment it happens

Announce paid Zoho Books invoices in Slackjust nowSucceeded

Slack · #salesPaid: Acme Ltd INV-000192, 4,100.00 USD

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Zoho Books steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

invoice_paid_alert_zoho_books.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_event, credentials, http, notify

ORG_ID = "your-zoho-organization-id"
ZB = "https://www.zohoapis.com/books/v3"

def zoho(path, **params):
    token = credentials.connection("zoho-books", "work")
    resp = http.get(f"{ZB}/{path}", headers={"Authorization": f"Zoho-oauthtoken {token}"},
                    params={"organization_id": ORG_ID, **params})
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json()

@on_event
def handle(event):
    invoice_id = (event.json or {}).get("invoice_id")
    if not invoice_id:
        return {"skipped": "no invoice_id"}
    inv = zoho(f"invoices/{invoice_id}")["invoice"]
    if inv["status"] != "paid":
        return {"skipped": inv["status"]}
    notify.slack(f"Paid: {inv['customer_name']} {inv['invoice_number']}, {inv['total']:,.2f} {inv['currency_code']}", channel="#sales")
    return {"posted": True}

FAQ

Common questions

How do I set up the webhook in Zoho Books?

In Zoho Books, create a workflow rule on the invoice module that fires when payment is recorded, with a webhook action pointing to the trigger link. Zoho's Settings, Automation area is where workflow rules and webhooks live.

Does it alert for partial payments?

That depends on the workflow rule's condition in Zoho Books. If you set the rule to fire on any payment, a partial payment will alert; if on fully paid invoices only, partial payments are skipped. Whether a partial payment alerts depends on the rule you set in Zoho Books.

Can the alert go to a channel by customer?

Yes. The Slack channel can be chosen from the invoice details, for instance sending big-ticket payments to a leadership channel and others to a team one. That takes a small condition in the steps. Routing by customer or size is possible as a variation.

What permissions does it need?

ZohoBooks.invoices.READ. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run for each event the app sends.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Daily