The catalogue

The catalogue is your price list. Every quote line can come from it, so you type a laptop or a managed service once and add it to quotes in a couple of keystrokes. Quotes copy what they need from the catalogue at the time, so changing a price later never alters a quote already written or sent.

Open Sales and billing > Catalogue. Its second tab, Distributor prices, searches what your distributors charge; see Suppliers and distributors.

The line under the title counts products, services and bundles, and reminds you that cost and margin are for staff only.

The list#

Each row shows the SKU, Name, Category, Type, Billing, Cost, Price (with its unit, such as /user or /device) and Margin. Bundles carry a Bundle of badge with how many items they hold.

• Filter by Category, Type, Billing, Currency, Supplier, Kind (item or bundle), Priced and State (active or archived).
• Saved views include active items, recurring items, bundles, thin margins and archived.
• Select rows to archive or restore them in bulk.

Add an item#

1. Press New item.
2. Enter the Name and, ideally, a SKU. The SKU is how CSV imports recognise the item later.
3. Add a Description. It is shown under the item on quotes, so write it for the customer, for example "Wi-Fi 6 ceiling access point."
4. Set the Category (your own grouping, such as Hardware or Backup), the Type (Hardware, Software, Licence, Service or Labour) and the Unit (Each, Per user, Per device, Per hour or Per site).
5. Choose the Billing: One-off, Monthly, Quarterly or Annually. For a recurring licence, also choose the Commitment term its price is for (Monthly, Annual or Three years, as Microsoft's NCE terms are), apart from how often it is billed.
6. Enter the Cost (staff only) and the Price before VAT. The Margin is worked out for you; type a margin instead and the price is set from it.
7. Choose the VAT rate, and add the Supplier, Xero item code and Xero account code if you use them. An empty account code falls back to the export settings.
8. Press Add to the catalogue.

Click any row to edit it, then press Save item.

Prices per commitment term and billing#

A licence is often sold more than one way: month to month, on an annual commitment billed monthly, annual paid upfront, or for three years. One catalogue item holds a price for each, so the product keeps one SKU, one mapping and one line on reports.

1. Open the item. Its own Cost and Price are for the Commitment term and Billing you chose above.
2. Under Other terms and billing, press Add a price for each other way you sell it, with its Commitment term, Billing, Cost and Price. For example, Microsoft Entra ID P2 on an annual commitment billed monthly as the item's own price, with monthly at a fifth more and annual paid upfront as other prices.
3. Press Save item.

Quotes, contracts and licence billing then use the price for the term and billing they are on:

• Quotes: an item with more than one price has a Term and billing picker on its line in the quote builder, each choice showing its price. A customer's percentage price applies to every term; a fixed customer price is for the item's own term and billing only.
• Contracts: a recurring line from the catalogue offers the item's terms and billings, an accepted quote's lines keep theirs, and the line shows its term as a badge.
• Licence billing: each subscription is priced at its own term and billing, and a contract line on another term is reported as differing. See Billing licences into contracts.

An item with no price for a term falls back to the same term billed another way (a twelfth of the yearly price, for example), then to its own price converted by months. Items with one price behave exactly as they always have. The CSV export and import carry the term and the other prices.

Adding a product from a distributor feed that has several rates (some distributors list every rate of a product) asks which Term and billing the item is priced on, and by default adds the others as the item's other prices, each at your markup. Their costs then follow the feed term by term. See Suppliers and distributors.

Bundles#

A bundle sells several items as one line, such as "Managed desktop": support, backup and EDR for one computer at one monthly price. On a quote it is one line with its contents listed underneath, and once accepted it is one contract line and one invoice line.

1. Press New bundle (or turn on A bundle of other items on an item).
2. Fill in the name, SKU, description, category, type, unit and billing as for an item.
3. Under In the bundle, use Add an item... to add each item and its quantity.
4. Choose Priced as the sum (the price follows the contents) or A fixed price (type your own).
5. The Cost is always the sum of the contents, so the margin stays honest.
6. Press Add to the catalogue.

Note: Every item in a bundle must be billed the same way as the bundle (all monthly, for example), so the bundle can go on a quote as one line and on a contract as one charge.

Archive or delete#

Archive items you no longer sell: they leave the catalogue picker but stay on the quotes that used them. An item inside a bundle cannot be deleted until it is taken out of the bundle; archive it instead. Deleting an item never changes a quote, because quotes keep their own copy of each line.

Import and export CSV#

Press CSV for Export as CSV and Import a CSV.

• Export writes every column, which makes it the easiest template for an import.
• Import takes the same columns. Each row updates the item with the same SKU (or, without a SKU, the same name), or adds a new one.
• Bundles come across too: a bundle row names its contents, and they are linked once every row is in, so a bundle can name items further down the file.
• The whole file is checked first and applied all or nothing. If anything is wrong, you get a list of problems by row and nothing changes.

Tip: To update prices in bulk, export, change the price column in a spreadsheet and import the file again.