The catalogue is the single definition of each thing you sell. Everything downstream - quotes, invoices, reports - reads it.
Creating An Item
Name and SKU. The SKU is the identifier you use elsewhere; keep it stable, because it is the field people match on when importing or reconciling.
Delivery model - ship, scheduled service, or digital. This decides which behaviours apply, so set it correctly at creation rather than changing it later.
Unit price and currency. Priced per hub where you trade in more than one.
Unit cost. What it costs you. Optional, and worth filling in - without it, margin cannot be reported, and margin is usually the number someone eventually asks for.
Tax category. How tax applies. This carries through to the invoice, so getting it wrong is a compliance problem rather than a cosmetic one.
Billing frequency, for anything recurring.
Category, brand, vendor, tags. Grouping for reporting and for finding things.
Description, in short and long forms, plus images and attachments - which is what makes a quote look like a document rather than a spreadsheet.
Status and active. Retire an item by making it inactive rather than deleting it: historic deals and invoices reference it, and deleting breaks the record they point at.
Cost And Margin
Filling in unit cost is the difference between knowing revenue and knowing whether it was worth selling. It takes a minute per item at setup and cannot be reconstructed later, because a cost is a fact about a moment.
When a line is quoted, the cost is captured with it — so a later price change does not rewrite the margin on a deal already done.
Tax Categories
Set deliberately. Tax on an invoice is derived from the product's category and the hub issuing it, so an item mis-categorised produces wrong tax on every invoice carrying it — quietly, and for as long as nobody checks.
If you trade across jurisdictions, this is the field to have reviewed by whoever handles your tax filings.
How A Line Item Works
Adding a product to a deal creates a line item carrying quantity, unit price, discount (as a percentage or an amount), tax, and its own description.
The line stores its own values rather than pointing at the catalogue for them. That is deliberate: changing a price tomorrow must not silently rewrite a quote you sent last week.
Lines can also carry a payment plan, a serial number, and scheduling or recurring detail where the item needs it.
Importing
Bring a catalogue in through Apps and Import rather than typing it. Get the SKUs, prices, currencies and tax categories right in the file first — a catalogue imported wrongly is corrected item by item afterwards. See Importing Spreadsheets in the Operations section.
Common Questions
Can prices differ per hub? Items carry a hub, so a multi-entity organisation can price per entity.
How do we handle a discount? On the line item, as a percentage or an amount. Keeping it on the line means the catalogue price stays the reference.
Can we change a price? Yes. Existing deals keep the price they were quoted at.
What about bundles? Line items can carry bundle detail. For anything complex, model the bundle as its own item with its own price.
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