For made-to-measure businesses like plantation shutters, every sale follows a long path: enquiry, measure booking, quote, follow-ups, acceptance, deposit, ordering materials, installation and the final invoice. If a deposit lands in the bank but nobody notices, the job sits idle — and the customer waits.
This case study covers how Codearbro scoped a Zoho CRM and Zoho Books implementation for a boutique plantation shutters company in Perth, Australia, working alongside the client’s digital agency.
Project Snapshot
| Industry | Home improvement — custom plantation shutters |
| Location | Perth, Western Australia |
| Platform | Zoho One: Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho SalesIQ, Zoho Sign, Zoho Forms |
| Users | About 5 (admin, sales, operations) |
| Timeline | 6 working days |
The Challenge
The business already had a Zoho One subscription, but CRM was only partly set up and Zoho Books was not connected to sales. The team faced:
- Leads from the website, ads, social media, phone and referrals with inconsistent source tracking
- No structured pipeline from measure to quote to deposit
- Manual quote and deposit follow-ups that were easy to forget
- Paid jobs that could be missed because payment in Books did not update anything in CRM
- An operations user who needed customer details but should not see job values
Our Solution
Lead Capture & Allocation
Website forms and Zoho SalesIQ chats create CRM leads tagged with their source. Assignment rules allocate each enquiry to the right sales rep, send an instant notification and create a first-contact task.
A Pipeline That Matches the Business
We configured stages that mirror how shutters are actually sold:
Enquiry → Measure Booked → Measure Completed → Quote Prepared → Quote Sent → Follow-up → Quote Accepted → Deposit Required → Deposit Paid → In Production → Final Invoice → Completed
Each stage has the right required fields, layouts and validation, plus automated quote and deposit reminders, email/SMS templates and Zoho Sign for customer acceptance.
Payment-to-Job Automation
This was the most valuable piece. Using the native Zoho CRM–Books integration plus Deluge, when a deposit or payment is recorded in Zoho Books the system:
- Updates the related CRM deal to the next status automatically
- Notifies the responsible staff member
- Creates the next operational task, such as Order Materials
- Lists all paid jobs awaiting action in a dedicated view
- Escalates paid jobs that have not moved forward
We also reviewed the bank feed setup and recommended practical options without custom banking development.
Permissions & Reporting
Admin and sales users get full access, while the operations user sees customer and file information but no financial or job-value data. Dashboards cover enquiries, quotes, conversion rate, follow-ups, deposits, outstanding invoices and completed jobs.
Business Impact
- No paid job slips through the cracks
- Consistent follow-up on every quote and deposit
- Quote, invoice and payment status visible inside CRM
- Clear lead-source reporting to guide marketing spend
- The existing production spreadsheet keeps working, with CRM complementing it
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Zoho CRM update a deal when a payment is received in Zoho Books?
Yes. With the native Zoho Finance integration and a Deluge function, a payment recorded in Zoho Books can update the CRM deal stage, notify staff and create follow-up tasks automatically.
Do you work with Zoho clients in Australia?
Yes. Codearbro works with businesses across Australia, the USA, UK, Middle East and India, and schedules meetings around Australian business hours.
Can I hide deal values from some CRM users?
Yes. Zoho CRM profiles and field-level security let you give operations staff access to customer details while hiding amounts, invoices and other financial fields.
Planning a Similar Project?
Codearbro is a certified Zoho implementation partner helping businesses in India, the USA, UK, Australia and the Middle East automate sales, operations and finance. Book a free 30-minute consultation and get a transparent, fixed-scope estimate within 24 hours.
