Products and price books

Keep a catalog of what you sell, with SKUs and default prices, and pick products on quote and invoice lines.

The product catalog is the list of things your organization sells: physical products, services, subscriptions and anything else you put a price on. When you build a quote or an invoice, you can pick a product and its name and price fill in for you. You don’t have to retype them, and every document describes the item the same way.

Key concepts#

Product: one catalog entry. It has a SKU, a name, a type and a default price.
SKU: your own short code for the product, such as ADV-RETAINER. A SKU can only be used once in your organization.
Default price: the unit price a line starts with when you pick this product. You can still change the price on any individual line.
Price book: a named price list in one currency that sets a different price for some products, for example a partner price list. See Price books below for what is available today.

Who can use it#

Permissions

finance.readfinance.create

finance.read lets you open Commerce and see the catalog. finance.create lets you add and remove products. People without it see the list but not the form or the Remove buttons. By default, Owners, Admins and Members can add products, and Viewers can only look.

Add a product#

Open the Products tab
Go to CommerceProducts. Products is the last tab on the Commerce page.
Fill in the form below the list
Enter a SKU and a Name, both required. Choose a Type and enter a Price as a normal decimal, such as 49.00.
Select Add product
The product appears at the top of the list. From then on you can pick it on the line items of any new quote or invoice.

Product fields#

Field	Required	What it means
SKU	Yes	Your own product code, up to 100 characters. It must be unique across your organization.
Name	Yes	What the product is called, up to 255 characters. This becomes the line description when you pick the product on a quote or invoice.
Type	No	`product` (the default), `service`, `subscription` or `custom`. The type labels the product in the list. It doesn’t change how prices or totals are worked out.
Price	No	The default unit price. Leave it blank for a price of zero. It can’t be negative, and if you type something that isn’t a number, the form shows Price must be a number.

Each row in the list shows the product name, its SKU, the price (followed by the unit, such as / hour, when the product has one) and a badge with the type. New products are priced in US dollars.

Use a product on a quote or invoice#

Every line in the New quote and New invoice dialogs has a Product picker, which starts as Custom line. When you pick a product:

Description is filled with the product name, but only if you haven’t typed a description already.
Unit price is filled with the product’s default price, but only if the field is still empty.
Both fields stay editable, so one line can differ from the catalog price.

Leave the picker on Custom line for a one-off item that isn’t in the catalog. See Quotes → line items for how line totals are worked out.

Remove a product#

Select Remove next to a product. There is no confirmation step. The product leaves the catalog and the product pickers straight away.

Removing never changes past documents

Quotes, orders and invoices that already use the product keep their line exactly as it was: same description, quantity and price. A removed product can’t be picked on new lines.

A removed product’s SKU stays taken

UnitX still counts a removed product when it checks that SKUs are unique. If you remove a product and add it again with the same SKU, you’ll see A product with sku “…” already exists. Use a new SKU, for example with a version suffix.

Editing a product#

The Products tab has no edit form. To change a price, you can remove the product and add it again under a new SKU. An integration can also update the existing product through the UnitX API, including its name, description, unit, type, default price, currency, tax category and whether it is active or archived. See API overview.

Price books#

A price book is a named price list in one currency. Each product can appear in it once, at its own unit price, optionally with a minimum and maximum quantity. Use one to keep a separate set of prices, such as a reseller or regional price list, next to the catalog defaults.

API only for now

Price books can be created, filled and read through the UnitX API, but the Commerce page has no screen for them. The quote and invoice dialogs always start a line from the product’s default price, never from a price book, so to use a price-book price you type it into Unit price yourself.

Tips#

Pick one SKU pattern and stick to it, such as SVC- for services and SUB- for subscriptions. SKUs can’t be reused, so a clear scheme avoids clashes later.
Add the services you bill by the hour as service products with an hourly price. A quote line then only needs the number of hours.
Keep product names customer-friendly. The name becomes the line description the customer reads on a quote.

Why can’t I see the Add product form?

You have finance.read but not finance.create. Ask an admin to give your role the create permission in Settings → Roles.

I changed a product’s price. Do existing quotes update?

No. A line stores the price it was created with. Only lines you add afterwards pick up the new default price.

Can I sell in a currency other than US dollars?

Products added from the Commerce page are priced in US dollars. Other currencies can only be set through the API.

Still stuck? Search the docs with ⌘K, open Help inside UnitX, or contact support.