Instantly Populate Sales Quotes from Zoho CRM

With a tool like Zoho CRM, you can easily manage your entire sales cycle from a single interface, leading to improved efficiencies and closing more deals.  Another way you can improve your sales process is to use WebMerge to automatically populate documents like proposals, contracts, quotes, and more.

In this example, we’re going to show you how to automatically populate sales quotes from data in Zoho CRM then we’ll email the quote directly to our customer for their review.

To get started, we’re going to set up the template for our quote using a Word document.  Inside Word, we’re going to add our repeating information like our logo, contact information, and details of our company.  For the spots that we want to insert our deal/customer info, we’re going to use merge fields that look like {$FirstName}, {$Address}, {$Amount}, etc.

Here’s what our quote template looks like:
 

Once we have our template finished, we need to upload it to WebMerge.  From the Documents page in WebMerge, click the New Document button and enter a name.  On the next step, select Office Document as the document type and then pick the file from your computer.
 

After you upload your quote template, you’ll be taken to the Settings tab where you can modify various options like the type of file that is generated and the name of the file.  For this example, we’re going to use the name of our deal in the file name and we’re going to generate a PDF.
 

Next, we’re going to set up the email delivery for our document so that the quote is automatically emailed directly to our customer.  Under the Deliver tab, we’re going to Edit the default email delivery.  For the To address, we’re going to choose the email merge field for our customer’s email address.  If you don’t have a merge field in your document, you can choose <<Other>> from the drop-down then enter something like {$Email} in the box.

Feel free to edit any of the other email settings.  Here’s what our email delivery looks like:
 

Once we have saved our email delivery, we are done with the setup process in WebMerge and we’re ready to integrate with Zoho CRM.  If you haven’t already, please make sure to install the WebMerge plugin from the Zoho Marketplace.

Inside Zoho, we’re going to go to the WebMerge Mappings module and we’re going to create a New Mapping.  After you give the mapping a name, we’re going to choose the Module we want to use (Potentials), then we’re going to choose the WebMerge Document we want to merge.
 

Next, we’re going to match up the merge fields in our document with the fields from our CRM.  This tells Zoho how to send the data over to WebMerge so that it’s populated in the correct spot on your template.
 

Once you have matched up all of your merge fields, go ahead and save your mapping.  We’re ready for a test!  Open up one of your Potentials and then click the WebMerge button (it might be under the “…” drop-down).  This will generate the quote and email it out!

Here’s what our quote looked like ready for the customer:
 

Congrats, you’re all finished!  You can now instantly generate all kinds of documents from your Zoho CRM data.  Can you think of any other ways you can use WebMerge to simplify your paperwork process?

What makes Zoho Mail so great to disrupt a 22 million user market?

Zoho Mail is a familiar hosting emails interface for businesses. Over time it has gain traction according to google trends based on the searches people around the world do.

While India is an obvious country to show up on the Interest by region it has grown more rapidly in other countries such as Colombia in Latinamerica and is quickly growing the share of use.

At this point, i was intrigued and had to dig deeper to find out how Zoho mail was doing vs the market dominant email hosting for businesses provider Microsoft outlook. Outlook trend does not look good at all in Colombia for Mr softy and Zoho Mail is gaining traction traction traction. So the obvious question now is What makes Zoho Mail so great to disrupt a 22 million user market like Colombia?

What makes Zoho Mail so great?

Ad-Free, Clean, Fast Interface.

There are no ads displayed in Zoho Mail's webmail interface, ever. Not even in our free plans. This means total respect for user privacy as your messages are not scanned for keywords to feed you ads. However, freedom from annoying ads is not the stand out feature in Zoho Mail. It's the wide range of options to organize and categorize your messages. This includes familiar items like folders and labels, flags, automatic filters, as well as one-of-a-kind capabilities, like the thread nesting style conversation view.

Feature Packed for Business & Professional Use

Zoho Mail's webmail interface has been designed to break the notion that only desktop email clients can provide the power features favored by business users. Your users will find the familiar functionality of desktop email blended perfectly with the convenience and flexibility of browser-based access. This means you get the best of both worlds.

Go Beyond Email. Take Your Office Online

Gone are the days of software installations and upgrades. Take your office to the cloud. Zoho Mail comes bundled with Zoho Docs, a comprehensive online office and document management suite that runs from within a web browser. Your users can create, edit and collaborate on word documents, spreadsheets and presentations; online. Along with integrated calendar, tasks, notes and contacts modules, Zoho Mail provides the best tools to improve productivity and efficiency.

Anywhere, Anytime Access

The biggest advantage of email hosted on the cloud is that you get to access your messages on the move. Be it through your mobile, laptop or desktop, as long as there is an internet connection - present almost anywhere, anytime these days - keep your email exchanges and communications flowing.

Extensive Control Panel

Your IT administrators will find it a breeze to set up and manage emailing for your business with the extensive control panel interface. Representing the entire back end of your email hosting account, administrators can easily control individual user mailbox quota and privileges, email policies, group email accounts and other such aspects from within this centralized control center.

Free, Expert Aided Migration Options 

The task of migrating from your existing email solution is simple without laborious setup, loss of time, or loss of productivity. A self-service migration module is a few clicks away in the control panel. Lightweight software tools are available for Exchange server and Outlook PST migrations. Our support experts will coordinate with you throughout the process to ensure your switch is smooth. And to top it all up, we do not charge extra for migration assistance.

Email & CRM Integration 

Businesses of all sizes are doing the smart thing of setting up a CRM application for their sales and marketing teams, enabling them to work more efficiently. At the same time, habits die hard and people still rely on good old email for communicating with clients, prospects, and customers. What do you do? If you made the wise decision of choosing Zoho CRM for your business, you'll be amazed by the contextual gadgets feature in Zoho Mail. It's like having CRM inside your email.

There is no magic to such traction. Explosive growth is an art with very specific steps to follow. If you are interested in learning more about explosive growth? Check out Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth If you are a Zoho Mail user? We would love to hear your feedback and help you with any Zoho questions you may have.

Automatically Populate PDF and Word Documents from Zoho Forms

Using online forms on your website can be a great way to collect information form new leads and customers.  With a tool like Zoho Forms you can easily build mobile-friendly forms that can be embedded directly in your website.

Add WebMerge to the mix and you can automatically take the information being collected through Zoho Forms and populate templates that you have setup in WebMerge.  You can easily generate PDF & Word documents like invoices, proposals, contracts, letters, and more.

In this example, we’re going to show you how to automatically generate a sales proposal with data collected through the Zoho Form on our website.

To get started, we’re going to setup the template for our proposal using a Word document.  In our Word document, we’re going to add our repeated information like our logo, address, and company details.  For the spots that we want to insert our lead’s details, we’re going to use merge fields that look like {$FirstName}, {$LastName}, {$Address}, etc.

Here’s what our proposal template looks like:
 

Once we have our template finished, we need to upload it to WebMerge.  From the Documents page in WebMerge, click the New Document button and enter a name.  On the next step, pick Office Document as the document type then pick the file from your computer.
 

After you’ve uploaded your template to WebMerge, you’ll be taken to the Settings tab where you can modify various options like the type of file that is generated and the name of the file.  For this example, we’re going to generate a PDF and include the name of our lead in the file name.
 

Next, we’re going to setup the delivery of our document so that the proposal is automatically emailed to our lead.  From the Deliver tab, click the Edit button under the default email delivery.  For the To address, we’re going to choose the merge field we have in our document for the lead’s email address.

If you don’t have a merge field for the email address, choose <<Other>> from the dropdown, then enter something like {$Email} in the box.

Feel free to modify any of the other email settings.  You can add merge fields there too.
 

Once you have your email delivery setup and saved, you’re done with the setup process in WebMerge and we’re ready to hook up the document with our Zoho Form. 

Inside Zoho Forms, we’re going to add the WebMerge integration to our form.  Under the Settings page for your form, click on the Document Merge tab, then choose WebMerge.  After you enter your API Key, Zoho will have you pick the document you want to merge
 

Once you pick the document that you want to merge, Zoho will load a list of the merge fields in your template.

For each merge field, you need to pick the corresponding fields from your Zoho Form.  This tells Zoho how to send your data over to WebMerge so that it is populated in the correct spot on your template.
 

Once you have matched up all of your merge fields, you’re done with your integration and you need to Save.  We’re ready for a test!  Go submit a new entry on your form and Zoho will take that information, send it over to WebMerge, and your proposal will be generated.

Here’s what our proposal looked like ready for the lead:
 

Congrats, you’re all finished!  You can now automatically populate all kinds of documents with data from your Zoho Forms entries.  Can you think of any other ways that you can use WebMerge to simplify your paperwork process?

Iron-clad Zoho Creator Dashboards

In today's data-driven world it has never been easier to collect, to aggregate and to present terabytes of information in a well-structured chart or table. However, it's not the amount of data you can process what will drive your business forward, but all the actionable steps that can be drawn from the dashboard metrics.

We spent some time on the www looking for the best dashboards out there and we found a plethora of graphics and software applications eager to feed your aggregated data cravings, but few stand out and are worth considering. 

For example.-  How to build your dashboard metrics by Ash Maurya. You can check his Youtube video below or buy his Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works (Lean (O'Reilly)) book.

You should also consider reading the post What makes a good lead generation dashboard?by Jonathan Taylor and 6 Golden Rules to Successful Dashboard Design by Nick Smith, these are golden gems worth your time. Once you inform yourself with the endless suggestions google has to offer. You will probably come to the conclusion that less is more and a simple yet useful dashboard is always the way forward.

Zoho Creator allows you to be creative and code your own dashboard metrics or if you prefer you can also embed some of the automatically created dashboards Zoho Reports has to offer. Below you can review a few options you can implement in your Zoho Creator application.

Simple Header

Simple header with room for up to 6 metrics to track. The source code for this particular dashboard is available in our Zoho Library. 

Chart Type

More robust dashboard with room for several layers of charts or tables stacks one below the other. The source code to implement this dashboard is also available in our Zoho Library. 

Note: If you purchase access to our Deluge Script Library we will assist you with the script setup in your application. Send us an email with subject line: less=more

20 Epic Ways to Automate Documentation with Zapier

As consumer demands become more unique and varied, in order to keep up with big businesses, small businesses must change their back-end operations. With the accessibility and affordability of automated software solutions, this demand is not only possible, but it also saves time and money for small business owners.

Where do you start? That’s easy! Zapier and WebMerge.

Zapier provides businesses with the ability to sync any application they want. Based on the uniqueness of your operations, you could use Zapier to share new Tweets on Slack, send RSS feeds to Buffer, and more. With Zapier and WebMerge’s powers combined, you can automate your documentation process and eventually… rule the world!

Here are 20 ways you can use Zapier and WebMerge to automate your business:

1. Create and Sign Real Estate Contracts with CudaSign
   Real Estate agents are always on the go.  From meeting with new clients, running around town showing homes, to closings, real estate agents are rarely in the office. Here’s how you can create quick contracts and save some energy.
   
2. Create Contracts and Agreements from Nutshell CRM
   Managing your contacts, leads, and opportunities can be a daunting task, but with choosing the right CRM can be a life saver.  Nutshell is a great CRM and in combination with WebMerge you can save your sales team countless hours.  In this example we’re going to show you how you can create a contract from a lead in Nutshell and automatically send it to your customer.
   
3. Generate Contracts from Opportunities in TrackVia
   Managing your workflow can be a daunting task, but with tools like TrackVia, you can keep track of everything from start to finish – all within a single platform.  From managing a projects to collecting data in the field, TrackVia is a great solution.
   
4. Send a Letter of Engagement from Clio
   Document generation in the legal world is a must-have.  By auto-populating letters, contracts, and other types of legal documents, attorneys and paralegals can save countless hours.  Another way lawyers can save time (and their sanity) is by using a practice management system like Clio.
   
5. Populate a PDF Receipt from a Formidable Order Form
   Formidable is a popular Wordpress form plugin for creating contact forms, order forms, registration forms and many more types of web forms.  But what if you want to take that information collected on the form and populate a Word document or PDF?  Your options are very limited.  Unless you haveWebMerge, of course!
   
6. Send an Order Invoice from Smartsheet
   Smartsheet is a pretty cool tool that allows you to easily collect data from customers and team members, plus offering an easy platform to manage that information.  It’s like Excel, but on steroids.  In this example, we’re going to show you how to send an invoice created with WebMerge directly from Smartsheet as a new order is entered into our sheet.
   
7. Create and Send an NDA from Zoho CRM
   Keeping track of all your customer information can be difficult, but getting data out of your CRM can be an even bigger hassle.  Most often you end up re-typing information into other systems, documents, etc.  With Zoho CRM you can easily capture your leads, plus manage your customers, partners, and opportunities.
   
8. Send Customized Invoices for Magento Orders
   Let’s face it – e-commerce is here to stay and is an important part of any business.  Today there are many services out there that can help you build and maintain an online store front without the need of expensive coding or customization.  One of the most popular services is called Magento and they offer a product that can fit your every need.
   
9. Send Welcome Letters to Hubspot Form Leads
   You’ve jumped into the world of HubSpot marketing and sales tools, collecting all of this data on your website visitors, leads, and customers.  But, you don’t have an easy way to populate documents (letters, contracts, offers, etc) from that customer data.  Until now!  With the help of WebMerge (via Zapier) you can take your HubSpot data and populate documents on the fly.
   
10. Create PDFs and Reports from Knack
    If you’re looking for an easy way to build an online database application without the need for programming, you need to check out Knack.  With Knack you can get rid of those clunky spreadsheets and build easy to use web applications such as a custom CRM, proposal tracker, order management, and more.  Knack allows you to build some pretty powerful apps and we’re going to show you how you can easily generate documents directly from Knack using WebMerge.
    
11. Create Service Contracts from Batchbook
    If you’re looking for a great CRM to help you with organization and productivity, then we suggest you take a close look at Batchbook.  With Batchbook you can track your contacts, manage your deals, maintain your communication with customers, and more.  Let's take it one step further and generate documents from Batchbook using WebMerge.
    
12. Create and Send Contracts from Solve CRM
    In today’s competitive landscape for the CRM space, it’s tough for services to stick out from the rest.  You have to fit the needs of specific verticals or use-cases and do that really well.  In the case of Solve CRM, they have wisely picked a deep integration with Google for Work and all the apps that come along with it.  From Calendar syncing, to Gmail integration, to managing Google Drive files, Solve integrates seamlessly.
    
13. Create and Manage HR Documents from ZOHO Creator
    Managing your HR processes can be a daunting task.  From collecting new employee information, tracking time off, and handling payroll, there is a lot to keep track of and a lot of documentation to go along with it.  No sweat!  There’s a great tool called ZOHO Creator and you can build a customized HR app that allows you to manage all of your HR data across your entire business.  Then, combined with WebMerge you can generate employee contracts, insurance applications, state forms, and more.
    
14. Create Custom Invoices and Letters from Harvest
    Managing projects, finances, timesheets, and deliverables can be a job in itself, but with Harvest you can make life a whole lot easier.  Harvest can track all your expenses throughout a project and make it easy to bill your customers when the project is complete.  Sounds great, right?  Well, we agree, but what if you want to customize the invoices or send letters to your new customers?  Your options are limited.
    
15. Create and Send a Custom Payment Receipt from Freshbooks
    Freshbooks is one of the leading accounting solutions on the market and they do a great job of helping your manage your invoices, time, and expenses.  You can keep track of all of your customers and send invoices in minutes.  But what if you want to create a customized invoice or send a receipt to your customer when you receive payment?  Your options are very limited.
    
16. Send Customized Payment Receipts from PayPal
    PayPal is a great way to get paid for things online without the hassle of gateway fees, setup charges, or merchant accounts.  You can easily integrate PayPal into your shopping cart, website, or registration processes.  However, your options are limited if you want to customize the receipt that a customer receives when they pay your through PayPal.
    
17. Create Customized Invoices from Xero
    Managing your small business has never been easier than with Xero accounting software.  From your billing to payroll to contact management, Xero has got you covered and will save you hours upon hours every month.  Xero has a built in feature to send invoices to your customers and it will show you when they have viewed the invoice, but customization is limited.
    
18. Create Customer Receipts from Stripe Charges
    Let’s face it, Stripe is awesome at making payments easy.  You can integrate with their API in a matter of minutes and collecting money instantly.  The best part is that you don’t have any monthly fees to worry about.  You only pay when you get paid.  The only downside to Stripe is that it is hard to send customized notifications to your customer about their payment.  Unless you’re the developer behind the Stripe integration, your options are limited.
    
19. Email Personalized Receipts for Braintree Payments
    Accepting payments online is a great way to streamline your business and offer your customers an easy way to pay you. With Braintree you can easily integrate your payment process into your website, app, or shopping carts.  With just a few lines of code you can start accepting payments.  Unfortunately, sending customized receipts is not quite that easy.  Your hands are pretty tied if you want to customize the receipt.
    
20. Upload a TypeForm Medical Patient Intake Form to Box
    Have you ever thought filling out forms is a pain in the neck? TypeForm makes the experience of filling out forms fluid and fun. At the doctor’s office, filling out an intake form is often the first experience the patient has upon arriving for his or her appointment. If you have a medical practice, then you might be interested in improving your intake process. With TypeForm, in conjunction with WebMerge, you can merge the form submissions with a template document and automatically file them in your digital document storage system and/or as easily print them out as hard copies.