Set up a Service
Services are your products that are sold on a QTY basis and can be tied to project work. Some examples of services could be offering to run promotion programs, events for marketing, or development fees.
Note
Services do not need a rate card and don't have inventory management. You can associate a service with a publication, but the association isn't required.
Before you create your individual services, you should set up service categories. service categories help group your services together and control some service behaviors. Go to the Settings > Products > Product Categories to add or edit a category.
With your categories set up, go the Settings > Products > Service Products to create your new services.
On the Service Products search page, you can view details about your existing service products, create new products, and perform bulk updates. To bulk update your existing products, use the checkboxes to select the items you wish to update, then click 'Update Selected Services'. The available bulk actions include changing the assignment and notification users, updating the product price, and disabling products.
Click the +Add Service button in the upper right corner of the page to create a new service product. The following are all of the potential fields that can be set on your products.
Name - The name will show up on templates, reports, and in drop-downs.
Category - Assigning one of your categories.
Is this service subscription-based? - You can set up a product as a ‘subscription’ by changing this setting to yes. When a service is set up as subscription-based, they can be sold on regular orders, and will automatically recur based on durations that you set. These items behave like subscriptions but are regular line items that show up on reports and can be commissionable.
Note
For more information about Product Subscriptions, check out our ‘Service Based Subscription Products’ help center page.
Delivery Solution - By default service products are not set up as delivery solutions. If you change this to yes, the product will work slightly differently than other service products. Delivery solution services can have offset dates set, and you can generate material email reminders for these items.
If set to yes, the Default Publication field will be required, as well as the Default GL Class if you have GL Classes configured in your system.
Material Offset (Days) - This field is only visible if ‘Delivery Solution’ is set to Yes and allows you to determine the number of days prior to the Event (Start) Date of the line item to set the material due date.
Reminder Offset (Days) - Only visible if ‘Delivery Solution’ is set to Yes, this field allows you to choose whether or not automated material reminders will be sent for the product. If left blank, no automated reminders will be sent, but manual reminders can be sent from the Service Production Report. If you do enter a value here, the system will automatically send a material reminder email for the line item the specified number of days prior to its material due date. For example, if the item’s material due date is 10/15, and you set ‘5’ in the Reminder Offset (Days) field, an automated reminder will be sent on 10/10.
Price - The default gross price. You can discount the price during the order process. If you set Allow user-defined pricing to yes, you can make up the gross price during the order process.
Cost Basis – The cost basis determines your product margins. The product’s margin is calculated by taking the net amount of the item and subtracting the value set in the product’s cost basis field. If you have a cost basis on a product with sub-tasks, we recommend managing the cost basis on each sub-task, rather than the product as a whole.
Commission Group - You can create commission groups to create different commission percentages from the user default amounts. For example, if your team normally gets 5% on services, but you want to give a 7% commission for a service, you should create a commission group.
Billing Group - The billing group allows you to group your services on the contract based on you plan to bill them. For example, if you will bill some services one time vs monthly, you can set up billing groups to communicate the billing process to your customers.
Classification - You can use classifications to help group your services and as a filter.
Assignment & Notification - Ad the user who you want to get notification and assigned to the service when the service get created.
Additional Notification - Add any user who you want to get an email when the service gets created.
Change Notifications - Any users will get notified, along with the ticket owner, of changes made to tickets, e.g, a quantity change. You must enable the Item Notification Configuration to receive these alerts.
Tip
If you want to get more granular with the Assignment & Notification, Additional Notification, and Change Notification fields, you can use the Service Ticket Assignments & Notifications page. This allows you to specify different assignment and notification users per publication for each service product. For more information about this, please reference the Service Ticket Assignments and Notifications help center document.
Notify Email Addresses – If you need to send a notification that tickets have been created for the service to anyone outside of the system, you can enter multiple email addresses in this field.
If you want to customize the email that gets sent to external emails, review the ‘External Ticket Notification Content’ system email template.
Available Publications – An optional field, this multi-select allows you to choose which publications can be associated with these services on order entry. If no publications are chosen here, then users can choose from any publication in your system on the line item. If publications are selected, then users can only choose from those publications when adding the line item.
Default Publication - The service will automatically be associated with the publication during order entry. A user can change the publication if they need go.
Finance Info - The finance info will display in your general ledger sequence.
Partial Invoicing - Partial invoicing allows you to bill part of a service over times. For example, if you sell a service that is billed 50% up front and 50% on completion, mark the service for partial invoicing. You can split the item in two parts so you only have open AR for half the item before billing the remainder of the work.
Pro-Rated Revenue Recognition - The system will recognize the revenue from the event date to the due date. If the event date is 10/1 and the due date is 12/1, the revenue will get recognized over a two month period.
Itemize Quantity – When you enter a service, you must enter a quantity. If you itemize Qty, the system will break out the Qty into individual items instead of grouping the Qty into one item; this is useful if each Qty needs to be delivered separately.
Itemized Item Parameterization – If the Itemize Quantity field is set to ‘yes’, you’ll see this additional field, which defines how itemized quantity line items will be named and dates set. Service dates will be updated based upon the specified time period, while names will be updated to reflect the naming structure.
Example: If using the ‘Name -- Month Year; Increment Period Monthly’ option, if a quantity of 3 of that product is added to an order with a start date on 8/1/2022, the line items on the order will show up labeled ‘Aug 2022’, ‘Sept 2022’, and ‘Oct 2022’. The dates for the second two products will be advanced by one month, so the start dates would be 8/1/2022, 9/1/2022, and 10/1/2022 respectively.
Mandatory with Contracts – If contracts are selected in this field, then the item will be automatically added to orders when the template is selected. Services with contracts set cannot be manually added to orders.
SKU – You can enter any alphanumeric value in this optional field. Currently, this value is only stored on the product, it is not used for any inventory tracking.
Can be on Order? - The service will be available during the order process.
Tax Exempt? - If using taxes, taxes won't apply to the service item cost.
Require Pre-Pay? - A customer will have to pay for the service when they approve it in client center.
In Client Center? - A customer can create a ticket in client center and choose this service. This is helpful for support tickets.
Support Item? - If the service is used for customer support.
Require Event Date? - A user must enter a service date during order entry,
Updated 7/11/2024