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The Products catalog at /dashboard/commerce/products/ is the source of truth for everything you sell — physical goods, services, retainers, and subscription plans. Every line item on an invoice, estimate, or recurring subscription pulls from this catalog (you can also add ad-hoc line items, but a clean catalog saves time and prevents pricing drift).

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What lives in the catalog

Three categories of items, all stored in crm_products:
  • One-time products and services — Anything you bill once: a setup fee, a deliverable, a piece of hardware, a single consultation.
  • Recurring services — Retainers, monthly maintenance, weekly deliverables. Sold via subscriptions and billed on a schedule.
  • Plans — Tiered offerings (Starter / Pro / Enterprise) flagged with is_plan: true. Plans show in plan-pickers and roll up into MRR/ARR.

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Product fields

1

Name and description

The name appears on invoices and the client portal. The description is what the client reads — write it for them, not for internal sorting. Keep names short; put detail in the description.
2

SKU

Optional internal identifier. Useful for inventory tracking and accounting exports. Doesn’t appear to clients unless you put it in a custom invoice template.
3

Price

Stored in cents to avoid floating-point rounding ($49.00 becomes 4900). Set the default currency at the account level; override per-product if you sell internationally.
4

Taxable flag

If checked, the configured tax rate applies when the product is added to an invoice. Tax-exempt clients (set on the contact) override this — see tax handling in Settings.
5

Recurrence

one_time, monthly, quarterly, annual, or usage. Drives whether the product can be attached to a subscription and how often it bills.
6

Plan flag

Set is_plan: true for tiered subscription plans. Plans get special treatment in plan-picker UIs and in MRR/ARR roll-ups.
7

Usage-based pricing

For metered products: the unit (per seat, per API call, per GB), unit price, and any included quantity. See Subscriptions — usage-based.

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Adding a product

Use this for setup fees, single deliverables, or hardware.
  • Recurrence: One-time
  • Taxable: depends on your jurisdiction and the service type
  • Price: the per-unit price; quantity is set on the invoice line item
Example: “Brand audit and report — $2,500.”
You can mix and match: a $499/month base plan plus a usage-based add-on for overage charges. Both are products; they sit on the same subscription as separate line items.

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Editing and archiving

Products are referenced by historical invoices, so deleting a product would orphan past line items. Instead, use the archive action — the product disappears from new invoice and subscription pickers, but historical records still resolve correctly. If you need to change pricing on an existing product:
  • New invoices and estimates pick up the new price immediately.
  • Existing subscriptions stay on the price they were created with. To change a live subscription, edit the subscription’s line item directly — see Subscriptions — plan changes.
Editing a product’s price doesn’t propagate to active subscriptions. This is intentional — you don’t want a typo to silently re-bill every client. Use subscription edits or migrations to roll out price changes.

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Using products on invoices and estimates

When you draft an invoice or estimate, the line-item picker searches crm_products by name and SKU. Adding a product copies the name, description, price, and tax flag onto the line item. From there you can:
  • Adjust the quantity (defaults to 1)
  • Override the price for this client (a per-line discount)
  • Override the description (helpful for SOW-style invoices where the deliverable is custom)
  • Add a per-line discount (percentage or fixed)
The product itself is unaffected by line-item edits. See Invoices — line items and Estimates — line items.

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Importing a catalog

For a large catalog, import via CSV from the Products page. The columns map to product fields; missing optional fields use defaults. Row-by-row errors are reported so you can fix and retry. The API at /api/crm/products supports POST for programmatic catalog management — useful when your products are derived from another system (a PIM, a project-management tool, or a code-generated SKU list).

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Best practices

  • One product per billable item. Don’t create one product for “Consulting” and price it differently every invoice — make it harder to read your reports. Create separate products like “Strategy Consulting”, “Implementation Consulting”, “Audit & Review.”
  • Use plans (is_plan: true) only for true tiers. A monthly retainer isn’t a plan unless you offer multiple of them as packaged tiers.
  • Set descriptions for the client. “Quarterly business review covering pipeline, retention, and goals” reads better on an invoice than “QBR.”
  • Archive aggressively. Stale products clog the line-item picker. Archive everything you don’t actively sell.

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Common catalog structures

How successful service businesses organize their catalog:
  • Tiered retainers as plans: “Standard / Premium / Enterprise” with is_plan: true
  • One-off services: “Audit”, “Workshop”, “Strategy Session”
  • Add-ons: “Extra hours”, “Rush delivery”, “Premium reporting”

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What’s next?

Send Your First Invoice

Use a product on a real invoice end-to-end.

Set Up Subscriptions

Attach a recurring product to a client.

Invoices Reference

Full invoice lifecycle and field reference.

Subscriptions Reference

Plan changes, proration, and recurring billing.