Labor categories and catalog
Save the work and items you bill regularly under Settings, Price Book. Labor categories hold hourly rates, while catalog items hold prices for things such as a service call, a part, or a package. You can reuse them when preparing estimates and invoices instead of entering the same details again.
What a labor category is
A labor category is a kind of work: Design, Development, Carpentry, Admin. Each has a Name, an optional Description that shows on estimate and invoice lines, a Rate per hour, and a Billable checkbox. Every active project uses every category. There’s no per-project menu of tasks to maintain.
The category is the one unit that estimates, the time grid, and invoices share. You quote 40 hours of Carpentry, the crew logs Carpentry on My Time, and the invoice line reads Carpentry. The same rate follows the whole way through.
To change a category, press the pencil on its row under Settings, Price Book. The row turns into a form; Save puts it back. A new rate re-prices the category’s time that hasn’t been invoiced and isn’t locked. Submitted, approved, and invoiced time keeps the rate it was saved with, and a project with its own rate isn’t affected.
Deleting a category is the trash icon in the table. A category used on time, an estimate, or an invoice can’t be deleted. It’s archived instead: it goes grey and stops appearing in pickers.
Where the rate goes
On an estimate, adding a category from the catalog drawer starts a Labor line at the category’s rate with a quantity of 1. Change the quantity to the hours you’re quoting. The line remembers which category it came from.
On a time entry, the rate is stamped when the entry saves: the project’s rate if the project has one, otherwise the category’s rate from Settings. This applies on hourly projects. Time on fixed-fee and not-billable projects, and time in a category with Billable turned off, is recorded at $0. Submitted, approved, and invoiced entries keep their recorded rates. Changing a project’s rate can refresh unlocked, uninvoiced entries. A category with no rate on a project that bills by the hour would bill at $0, and the project page warns you before that reaches an invoice.
On an invoice, the Unbilled work panel groups logged time by labor category by default: one line per category and rate. Entries in the same category with different rates get separate lines. You can switch Group lines to by person, one line, or one line per entry. You can also add a category from the drawer by hand, the same as on an estimate. See Invoices.
The project rate override
A project that bills by the hour has an optional Project rate on its form. When it’s set, every hour on that project bills at that rate, whatever the category says. Leave it blank and each hour uses its category’s rate. There’s no per-category override on a project. Leave this field blank to use the individual labor category rates.
Catalog items
A catalog item is a reusable non-labor line: a service call fee, a part, a mileage charge, a package. It has a Name and a Unit price, and a state of Active or Inactive. There’s no type field; a catalog item always makes an Item line.
The pencil on a row changes its name, description, price, or Active state. A new price applies to lines added from then on; lines already on estimates and invoices keep theirs. Inactive items stay in the table and off the drawer. The trash icon removes one for good.
The Add from catalog drawer
The line items card on both estimate and invoice forms has an Add from catalog button. It opens a drawer titled Line item catalog with a search box and two sections:
- Labor categories: each shows its name, description, and rate per hour. Only categories with a rate appear. Picking one adds a Labor line with the description and rate filled in and a quantity of 1.
- Catalog Products: each shows its name and unit price. Picking one adds an Item line at quantity 1.
Everything the drawer drops in is a plain editable row. Change the description, the quantity, or the price and the catalog is untouched. Raise a rate in Settings next month and the estimates you already sent keep the price they were quoted at.
Add line item below the drawer button adds a blank row when neither list has what you need.