Items

User Manuals | Billing | Items

Items in CommitCRM are a catalog of all the services and products you offer and their prices. The Items list in CommitCRM acts as your price list. Note that setting the price for an Item is optional; they can be set ad-hoc when using the Item for adding a Charge. For further details see Using Charges.

There are three types of Items in CommitCRM:

• Product/Parts Items: hardware, software, or any other items you ship to your customer. These items have fixed-prices.
• Labor Items: services you provide to your customers, such as server installation, network installation, on-site technician visits, etc. These Items can be priced according to the employee hourly-rate, a fixed hourly-rate or by a fixed-price for the service.
• Expense Items: used to charge expenses, such as travel and special deliveries. Expense Items can have a fixed-price per unit or a fixed hourly rate.

Pricing Methods for Items

It is possible to use different Pricing methods for Items as follows:

Hourly Rates

• Employee Hourly Rates
  The hourly rate for labor or expenses can be based on the rate set for each employee. When using this method, the employee rate is automatically used for all labor or expense charges added. The hourly rate of each employee should be determined by their skills and role. These rates are set in the New Employee window or on the Employee tab when viewing employee details.

Note that you may use Custom Pricing to set fixed hourly rates for specific employees, all employees, for specific Accounts or Contracts. You can read more about custom pricing in the Custom Pricing section.

Fixed Price Items

• Fixed Labor/Expense Prices (by units, not hourly)
  Use fixed labor rates when charging for labor or expenses on a per-service basis rather than on an hourly basis.

For example, you can have fixed-rates for specific services, such as $50 for printer setup, $60 for PC examination, $1,000 for server installation, etc. In these cases, time does not affect the final charge.

Use the following settings when you want to charge a fixed price for Labor Items: Price Source='Fixed Price' and Price='Per Unit'.

Note that in addition, you can set fixed prices for Items using Custom Pricing, which defines the custom pricing for specific Accounts or Contracts. You can read more about custom pricing in the Custom Pricing section.

• Fixed Hourly Rates (regardless of the employee)
  When you need to charge a fixed hourly rate regardless of which employee has performed the work, you should use labor or expense Items with the following settings: Price Source='Fixed Price' and Price='Per Hour'.
  When adding new charges with these settings, the hourly rate which was set for the Item will be used for the Charge.

Note that you can also use Custom Pricing to set a fixed hourly rate for specific employees for specific Accounts or Contracts. You can read more about custom pricing in the Custom Pricing section.

Items Fields

Field	Description
Code (mandatory)	The Item Code is a unique ID for each Item. It can contain numbers, letters and special characters. The Item Code can be used in order to sort and find the Items (e.g. HP-P4200TN).
Name (mandatory)	Contains a short description of the Item (e.g. "Hp LaserJet Printer 4200 Network Support").
Type	The Item Type is a customizable field which allows you to define a list of possible types. For example Labor Items may include the following types: Consulting, HW Installation, Maintenance etc., while Expense Items may include the following types: Travel, Parking etc. The Item Type list for selection is determined according to the Item group (Labor, Expense or Parts).
Pricing Settings	Pricing settings vary based on the Item Group (i.e. Labor, Expense or Products/Parts), and the pricing method which is selected (fixed-price or employee-rate). Products/Parts: The pricing for Parts is simple and consists of the Price and the Cost. The cost is the price you pay for the Item when you purchase it from your Vendor. Expense: The Price Source field for Expense Items determines if a fixed-price or employee-rate should be used. The Price may be per unit or per hour. For example, you can charge your customer for Parking expenses with a fixed price per parking event or with hourly parking expenses. The Cost is the price you originally paid for the Expense Item. Labor: The Price Source field for Labor Items determines if a fixed-price or employee-rate should be used. If using fixed-price, it can be per unit or per hour.
Suspended	Items can be Active or Suspended. A suspended Item cannot be selected when adding new charges (it is not available in the list of Items for selection). Existing Charges which are using this Item will not be affected. Suspend an Item when you do not want to sell it anymore or when it's temporarily out of stock.
Tax Fields	Using taxes in CommitCRM is optional. By default, the tax option is not activated. To begin using taxes, you first need to set the taxable Accounts and taxable Items. You can read more about taxes in [[Charges#Charging Using Taxes|Charging Using Taxes.

Setting Up Items

You can start working with CommitCRM without setting up any new Items. CommitCRM's default installation includes three pre-defined Items, one for each Item type; (Labor, Expense and Parts). This is designed to make the initial steps with CommitCRM easier.

It is advisable to define your own Items List which will better represent the products and services offered by your business.

Items can be manually defined, or imported from various data sources, including Excel® files, CSV files, QuickBooks®, etc. This way you can import your existing price list into CommitCRM.

Read more about Importing Items from external sources in the Importing Items section.
Read more about setting up the system in the Setup menu.

Deleting Items

Normally if you used an Item you probably do not want to delete it, in order to keep you database complete with all of your history.
Best practice in case you don't want to use an Item anymore is simply to deactivate it by selecting the 'Suspend' checkbox while viewing the Item's details window.

Having said that, if you do want to delete an Item (for example, if it is a test Item that you do not want to affect your database), select the Item in the list, and use right-click > Delete Item option, or the Items > Delete option.

Important Note: Items that are linked to existing Charges cannot be deleted, to keep the data integrity.

In order to delete an item, you should first delete all linked Charges. To find which Charges are linked to this Item:

1. Open the main Charges window from the left side pane.
2. In the top Search panel, change the date filtering to start since the year 2000 (or so) - this way All charges will be included (i.e. not filtered by date).
3. Click the drop-down menu in the Find field (upper left side) and select Charged Item.
4. Select the Item you want to filter the Charges by (in this case the one you want to delete)
5. Click the 'Refresh' button.
6. Done. All Charge records linking to this Item will be displayed and you can delete them one by one.

Only after deleting all the Charges that were created with this Item, the system will let you delete the Item.

Items Custom Pricing

Custom Pricing lets you set special pricing for different Accounts or Contracts. Once you set custom pricing to an Account or Contract, each time you log a Charge for those Accounts or Contracts, CommitCRM automatically pulls up the correct custom price for it. You can also manually adjust the prices while creating a Charge.

When should I use Custom Pricing?
By default the standard employee hourly rates and item prices will be used automatically.
You should use custom pricing only when you want to use a different set of prices or rates for a specific Account or Contract. For example when you want to set a global 10% discount for a customer or when you want to set specific custom hourly rates for employees for a specific Account. You then set up a Custom Pricing for the Account or Contract and define the adjustments.

Once set, the system will automatically use the custom prices or rates instead of the standard ones when Charges are logged under this Account or Contract. When defining a Custom Pricing you can choose between a global custom price level or a per-item price.

You can read more about Custom Pricing in the Custom Pricing section.

See Also

• Billing
• Charges
• Contracts
• Custom Pricing
• Importing Items
• Items FAQ