Products, Services & Bundles

Build a catalog of everything you sell so invoices come together in a click. Cover services, stocked products, drop-ship items, bundles, and discount lines — all from a single editor.

Why catalog items?

An "item" is a reusable definition of something you sell. Each item holds a default price, an income account, a description, and (for stocked goods) a quantity on hand and a COGS account. Once an item exists, choosing it on an invoice line auto-fills the rest. Build the catalog once; type a lot less afterward.

The Five Item Types

Type	Best for	Stock tracked?
Service	Labor, consulting, billable hours	No
Inventory	Physical goods you keep in stock	Yes
Non-Inventory	Drop-ship, special-order, re-sold items	No
Group	Bundles that explode into multiple lines when used	Children may
Discount	Promotional reductions — flat or percentage	No

Choose the type when first creating the item. The type is locked after save — make a new item if you need to switch.

Categories & Multiple Trades

Plenty of small operators run two trades under one roof — an event company booking both weddings and corporate functions, a contractor doing both remodels and service calls. Categories keep those catalogs from turning into one long alphabetical jumble.

Open Products & Services → Manage Categories and add one category per trade. File each item under the category it belongs to and the catalog reorganizes itself into collapsible sections, with an Uncategorized section at the bottom for anything you haven't sorted yet.

What makes a category worth the two minutes of setup is the defaults it carries:

Category default	What it saves you
Income account	New items in the category start with the right revenue account already selected — no more hunting for "Wedding Income" on every item you add
Expense account	Same idea on the purchasing side, for items that show up on bills
Class	Add an item from the category to an invoice and the invoice is tagged with that class automatically, so Profit & Loss by Class separates your trades without anyone remembering to tag anything

Say your event company files "Ceremony Coordination" and "Day-Of Styling" under Weddings, and "AV Package" and "Breakout Catering" under Corporate Events. Build an invoice for a wedding, and the moment you pick Ceremony Coordination the invoice picks up the Weddings class. Run Profit & Loss by Class at month end and the two sides of the business are already split.

Defaults never fight you: a category only fills a field you left blank. An income account you picked by hand stays put, even if you later move the item to a different category. Same on invoices — if a class is already set, adding items won't change it.

Deleting a category never deletes the items inside it. They simply move to Uncategorized, and the confirmation tells you how many are about to move.

Nesting Items

Need a tidier item list and rolled-up reports? Nest items up to three layers:

HVAC Services
- HVAC Services > Diagnostic Call
- HVAC Services > System Tune-Up
- HVAC Services > Emergency Service

Pick a parent item when creating the child. The Sales by Item report aggregates children under the parent automatically.

Discount Items

A discount item is just a line that subtracts from the subtotal. Two flavors:

Flat amount — fixed dollar reduction
Percentage — calculated against the running subtotal above

Switch a discount item to percentage by toggling Percentage discount in the editor. Override the rate per-invoice without editing the catalog item.

Group / Bundle Items

Group items are saved bundles. Pick one on an invoice line and BizBooks Pro replaces it with its components — each as its own editable line, multiplied by the quantity you set on the group.

Example: a "Quarterly Wellness Visit" group containing three components

Intake exam — 1 × $40
Bloodwork — 1 × $85
Follow-up call — 1 × $25

Add the group to an invoice with qty=4 and you get twelve editable lines totaling $600.

Customer view vs internal view: A group item has a Print on invoice toggle. Choose "Bundle name only" for a single tidy line on the customer's PDF, or "Expand components" if they need the breakdown.

Editor Walkthrough

Reach the editor at Lists → Items → + New Item. Fields you'll see:

Type (locked after save)
Name & SKU
Parent item for nesting
Description — pre-populates the invoice-line description
Sales price
Income account
Cost & COGS account — for stocked goods
Quantity on hand — auto-maintained for inventory
Tax code

Group and discount items expose additional sections — the bundle component list, or the percentage toggle.

Putting Items on Invoices

Start a new invoice or estimate
Pick an item from the Item dropdown on any line
Description, price, account, and tax fill in from the item
Tweak quantity or unit price if needed
Group items expand into multiple lines on selection
Discount lines apply to the subtotal above

For stocked goods: Selling an inventory item drops its on-hand count and posts COGS. To build finished goods from raw materials, head over to Bill of Materials.