Moving from Zoho Books

If your books live in Zoho Books, you can bring your bank and credit card transactions into Pennyweight. You export your data from Zoho Books, your AI reads it and sends the rows to Pennyweight, one account at a time. New to importing? Start with how importing works.

Export from Zoho Books

These steps are per Zoho Books' help center, and its menus can change.

• From a module. Open the module's list page, click the More icon at the top right and select Export. Choose the status and date range, pick an export template for the fields you want, and choose CSV, XLS or XLSX. You can set a password to protect the file. A module export holds only the first 25,000 rows.
• Everything at once. Click Settings at the top right, then Data Backup under Developer Space, then Backup Your Data. Only an admin can create a backup. You choose CSV or XLS, and Zoho emails a download link that can take about 30 minutes to arrive. The link expires 30 days after the backup, and you must be signed in to Zoho to use it. The backup is one compressed file with files from the various Zoho Books modules, holding all your records and transactions.
• Your account list. In the Chart of Accounts, click the More icon and select Export Chart of Accounts, as CSV, XLS or XLSX. It helps you match each Zoho Books account to a Pennyweight account.

After you start a backup, Zoho makes you wait 15 days before the next one, per Zoho Books' help center.

How to do it

1. Share the export with your AI. From a backup, ask it which file holds your bank and credit card transactions.
2. Tell it which Zoho Books accounts are your bank and card accounts, and which Pennyweight account each one goes into. Ask it to leave every other account out.
3. Ask your AI to use the account on the other side of each line as the category, if the export shows it.
4. If an account doesn't exist in Pennyweight yet, ask your AI to add it. A new manual account needs an opening balance before its first import: the balance just before the first row. For a card, give what you owed as a positive number. See add a manual account.
5. Your AI shows a preview for each account: new rows, likely duplicates and rows that need a look, and the account's balance after the import. Nothing is saved yet. See reading an import preview.
6. Say yes to import, then repeat for the next account. When you're done, check the result with after you import.

What you'll see

Your AI reads the export, converts the dates to YYYY-MM-DD and signs each amount from the account's side. It shows one preview for Everyday Checking and one for Rewards Card, with the new rows, their categories and each account's balance after the import. After you say yes, it reports how many rows were saved in each account and any it skipped.

What carries over

Each row brings its date, amount, payee, category text, currency and notes. Invoices, bills and Zoho's transaction rules stay behind. See the full list of what doesn't move.

Good to know

• Your AI does the reading. Pennyweight has no Zoho Books importer. It can also read a CSV uploaded straight to it, but that route reads CSV files only, puts the whole file into one account, and converts dates not written as YYYY-MM-DD only when your AI names their order. When your AI reads the export, it picks out each account's rows and converts the dates itself.
• One account per import. Each import goes into a single account. If an export mixes accounts, your AI picks out the lines for one bank or card account at a time and imports each set on its own.
• Signs. Pennyweight wants amounts signed from the account's side: money out is negative, money in is positive. On a card, a charge is negative and a payment is positive. Your AI converts them before it sends the rows, and the balance in the preview shows whether it got the direction right.
• Totals and blank lines are left out. Every row needs a date, an amount and a payee. A line with no date would stop the whole batch, so your AI drops those lines first.
• Transfers appear twice. A payment from checking to your card shows up in both accounts. Import each side into its own account, then check that the pair is linked. An import links a pair on its own only when a row is categorized as a transfer and its other side matches it with clear evidence. Ask your AI to find and link the rest. See link transfers.
• Categories come over unless a rule matches. Each row keeps its category text from Zoho Books. Your active Pennyweight rules run when the import is saved, and a matching rule's category replaces the one from Zoho Books. The preview shows how many rows your rules would change. To keep every Zoho Books category as it is, ask your AI to import with rules turned off.
• Rules don't move. Pennyweight doesn't import rules from other apps, so recreate the Zoho Books rules you rely on. Rules you add after the import change rows already saved only when your AI applies them. See rebuild your rules after moving.
• Large exports. A module export stops at 25,000 rows, so for years of history use the backup. For many accounts or a long date range, ask your AI to plan the import first. See import years of history across many accounts.