Registering products and services

The question that settles the whole form

Before you look at any field, answer one thing about the item: does it leave the shelf when you sell it?

Water, beer, chocolate and soap do. A boat trip, a late checkout and an airport transfer do not — you can sell the same boat trip ten times in one day and nothing runs out.

That answer is the "Track stock for this item" checkbox, and it is the only field in the catalogue that fails silently. If you forget to tick it on a beer, nothing goes wrong at the time: the item is saved, it shows up in the lists, and it simply never appears in Stock and never has a balance. You find out on the day you go to count how many cans are left and cannot find the product there.

What you are going to do

You are going to build a single catalogue of what you sell and what you provide, and mark item by item which of them have stock to track.

Step by step

1. Open the catalogue — go to Settings → Products and Services. The first time, the list is empty and invites you to create your first item.

2. Click "New item" — the form opens. Only the name is required: you can save with just a name and come back later to fill in the rest.

3. Choose the kind — Product for a physical thing, Service for something you provide. The kind is a label and nothing more: on its own it neither switches stock tracking on nor off.

4. Answer the stock question — tick "Track stock for this item" if the item leaves the shelf when you sell it. Only after ticking it does the Minimum stock field appear, which is the level below which you want to be warned.

5. Fill in cost and price, if you know them — Cost is what it costs to replace, Sale price is what you charge. The Margin appears calculated beside them, in currency and as a percentage, and is not editable: while either value is missing it reads "enter cost and price".

6. Connect the item to your finances, if you want — the Revenue account and Cost account fields point at your finance categories and are optional. Worth knowing now: it is the Cost account that decides which category the expense lands in when you later register a purchase of this item in Stock.

7. Save — the item appears in the list with the status Active, together with cost, price and margin.

Practical tip

A service can track stock too, and sometimes it should. A welcome kit that you assemble and hand over is a "service" in your head and a "product" on the shelf — if the units run out, tick the box. The system deduces nothing from the kind or from the name, on purpose: you decide, item by item.

If you forget to tick it, you can fix it

There is no damage. Open the item in Settings → Products and Services, click edit and tick the box. From then on it appears in Stock with a zero balance — the past is not reconstructed, because there were no movements to reconstruct.

If you had already bought that item before ticking the box, record the quantity you have today through the Adjustments and losses tab in Stock. That is the normal route for a first inventory count.

Common mistakes

Registering everything as a Product out of habit and then being surprised that the boat trip shows up in stock control. The kind does not do that: the tracking checkbox does.

Looking for the Margin to edit it. It is a calculation, not a field — change the cost or the price.

Not finding an item in the list after deactivating it. Switch the status filter to Active and inactive.

Leaving Cost account empty on everything and then being surprised that every purchase expense lands in the same category.