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Use the product catalog

Save products once, group them into lists and add ready-to-edit lines to invoices and quotes.

Billing5 min read
Table of contents+

The product catalog saves the services and items you bill regularly. A product keeps its description, price and default VAT rate; a product list groups several products with their usual quantities.

1. Create a product

  1. Open Product catalogProducts in the sidebar.
  2. Click New product.
  3. Enter the Name. Add a Description if you want a second line of detail to appear on the document.
  4. Set the Unit price excluding VAT, the Currency and the default VAT rate.
  5. Optionally add a Unit (hour, piece, day…) and a Reference to make the product easier to find. These two fields are not printed on documents.
  6. Click Save. The product is now available from invoice and quote line items.

The catalog values are defaults. You can still change the description, quantity, price or VAT rate after inserting the product into a document.

2. Create a product list

  1. First create every product that the list should contain.
  2. Open Product catalogProduct lists and click New list.
  3. Give the list a short, recognizable name, such as Onboarding package.
  4. Click Add a product and select an existing catalog product. Repeat for each different product you need.
  5. Set the quantity of each product, by typing it or with the plus and minus buttons. To change the order, drag a row by its handle on the left (you need at least two products). The cross on the right removes a product from the list.
  6. Review the line totals and the displayed list total, then click Save.

A product can appear only once in a list. Increase its quantity when the same item is needed several times. Removing a product from a list does not delete it from the catalog.

A list keeps a link to its products: if you change the price of a product, the list shows and inserts the new price. If the list mixes several currencies, Pack total is an estimate in CHF, preceded by the ≈ sign.

3. Add one product to an invoice or quote

  1. Open an invoice or a quote for editing (More actionsEdit), or create a new one.
  2. In the line-items section, click Add a product.
  3. Search by product name or reference, then select the product.
  4. Bill Alps adds one line with quantity 1 and copies the product name, description, unit price and VAT rate.
  5. Adjust the inserted line if this document needs a different quantity, description, price or VAT rate, then save the invoice or quote.

4. Add a product list to an invoice or quote

  1. Open the invoice or quote and go to its line-items section.
  2. Click Insert a list.
  3. Search for the list and select it.
  4. Bill Alps inserts every product as a separate line, in the saved order and with the stored quantities.
  5. Review or edit any of the new lines, then save the document.

The Add a product and Insert a list buttons also appear in the recurring invoice form.

5. Edit or delete a product or a list

Click a product or a list in the table to open it, edit the fields, then click Save. The Delete button, at the bottom of the form, asks for confirmation and cannot be undone. A deleted product disappears from the lists that use it, but documents already issued do not change. Deleting a list does not delete its products.

To fill in lines from a table or a screenshot, move on to the guide Fill invoice lines with AI.