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Add an item to your catalog

Your item catalog is your price book. Everything you sell or use — carpet, hardwood, LVP, laminate, tile, vinyl, area rugs, padding, underlayment, trim, install labor, equipment — lives here. Once added, items drop into quotes, invoices, and purchase orders in one click.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”
  1. Click Settings in the left sidebar, then click Products & Services (under Company Management).
  2. Click + Create in the top right.
  3. In the Add Product drawer, fill in the details:
    • Name — keep it short and recognizable. Examples:
      • Carpet: Stainmaster PetProtect — Sand Dune 40oz
      • Hardwood: Bruce Oak 3/4" 5" Saddle
      • LVP: Coretec Pro Plus 7x48 LVP
      • Tile: Daltile Continental Slate 12x12 Tuscan Blue
      • Padding: Carpet Pad 7lb 8mm
    • Description — appears on quotes and invoices when this item is added.
    • Received Qty — starting quantity on hand (default is 0).
    • Unit Cost ($) — what you pay for it, used in profit calculations.
    • Markup (%) — automatically calculates the Unit Price from Unit Cost.
    • Unit Price ($) — what you charge the client.
    • Measurement Unit — how the item is sold (Sq Yd for carpet rolls, Sq Ft for hardwood/LVP/laminate/vinyl, Each or Carton for boxed product, Linear Ft for trim and binding, Hour for labor).
  4. Click Create.

Add Product form with name, description, cost, markup, unit price, and measurement unit fields

What happens next

Section titled “What happens next”
  • The item appears in your catalog and can be picked from the line-item dropdown on any quote, invoice, or purchase order.
  • Stocked products show their current quantity on the items list.
  • If you set Auto-deduct (see Auto-deduct stock on jobs and invoices), stock will drop automatically as you use the item.

Optional settings

Section titled “Optional settings”
  • Exempt From Tax — mark items that aren’t subject to sales tax.
  • QuickBooks sync — match the item to a QuickBooks item for clean accounting (Class Code and Income Account fields).

FAQ

Section titled “FAQ”
What’s the difference between a product, a service, and a material?

In Service Buddy’s catalog, Product and Material are physical items that can be tracked in inventory (carpet, hardwood, LVP, tile, padding, underlayment, transition strips, samples). Service is labor or work charged by time or job (install per square yard or square foot, stair labor, binding labor, tear-out). The type controls whether auto-deduct can apply and how the item shows up on POs.

How should I name flooring SKUs?

Most retailers name by mill or brand + style + key spec. A consistent format makes catalog search fast:

  • Carpet: mill + style + face weight (Stainmaster PetProtect — Sand Dune 40oz, Shaw Anso Lakeside 32oz)
  • Hardwood: brand + species + thickness + width + color (Bruce Oak 3/4" 5" Saddle, Mohawk Hickory 3/8" 5" Natural)
  • LVP / LVT: brand + line + plank size (Coretec Pro Plus 7x48 LVP, Mannington Adura Max 6x48)
  • Laminate: brand + line + thickness + color (Pergo Outlast+ 12mm Vintage Pewter Oak)
  • Tile: brand + collection + size + color (Daltile Continental Slate 12x12 Tuscan Blue)
  • Vinyl sheet: brand + line + width (Armstrong Flexstep 12ft Slate Gray)

Keep names searchable — when you start typing on a quote line, the right one should come up first.

What’s the right Measurement Unit for each flooring type?
  • Carpet (rolled): Square Yard (Sq Yd) in the US, sometimes Square Foot.
  • Hardwood, LVP, laminate, vinyl plank: Square Foot (Sq Ft). Many retailers also stock by Carton or Box and convert at the line item.
  • Tile: Box or Sq Ft — tile usually ships by the box with a known sq ft per box.
  • Padding / underlayment: Square Yard or Square Foot, matching the flooring it sits under.
  • Trim, quarter-round, shoe molding, T-mold: Linear Foot (Linear Ft).
  • Stair labor: Each (per stair).
  • Binding, seaming: Linear Foot.
  • Labor (general): Hour.

Pick one unit per item and stick with it across the catalog so totals don’t get mixed up.

Should I track samples in inventory?

Yes — samples are an underrated cost. Adding samples as products with auto-deduct (or just a quantity you manually decrement) helps you see how many you’ve handed out and which sales associates are using them most.

How do I handle special-order items (custom-bound area rugs, mill-direct hardwood, specialty tile)?

Add them as one-off products if they’re rare, or as configurable templates if you sell a lot of variations. For special orders, many retailers create the item only after the client commits, so the catalog doesn’t fill up with one-time SKUs.

What does Markup do exactly?

Enter Unit Cost and Markup % and Service Buddy auto-fills Unit Price (Cost × (1 + Markup/100)). Or enter Unit Price directly and skip Markup. Use whichever way you think about pricing — by margin or by retail price.

Can I edit an item later?

Yes — open the item in Settings → Products & Services and change any field. Past quotes and invoices that used the item keep the price and details from when they were created — edits only affect new uses.

Section titled “Related tasks”