Email remains the standard way of communicating with customers, but it can be a hassle to know whether they've actually seen what you've sent. Email Insights in Zoho Books tracks when a customer opens an invoice, retainer invoice, or quote email sent from your organisation, giving you a genuine read on whether it's been seen rather than just sent.
Enabling Email Insights
- Go to Settings, then Preferences, then Customisation.
- Check the box for Email Insights.
- Save your settings. Email Insights is enabled immediately.
What You Can Track
Once enabled, Email Insights tracks notification emails sent for Invoices, Retainer Invoices, and Quotes, and lets you:
- See exactly when an email was opened, both in the transaction list and on the transaction's own detail page
- Filter your transaction list by Client Viewed, to see everything a customer has actually opened via email
Reading the Status Icons
In the transaction list view, small icons next to each transaction indicate its current status: whether it was simply sent by email, whether the notification email has been opened, or whether the transaction itself was subsequently viewed by the customer.
Verifying It's Working
Send a test invoice to your own personal email address and open it. The status badge on that invoice within Zoho Books should update from Sent to Opened, confirming tracking is active.
Notes worth knowing: If an email has multiple recipients, the transaction is marked as opened the moment any one of them views it, not only when all of them have. Since tracking relies on a small image embedded in the email, plain-text emails and any email where the recipient's client doesn't automatically display images won't register an accurate open, so treat the tracked figure as directional rather than a complete picture of who's genuinely seen it.
Need help? 1 Cloud Consultants can help you set up and interpret Email Insights to track customer engagement with your invoices, retainer invoices, and quotes.
Book a discovery call with 1 Cloud Consultants.