--- title: "Products" url: https://flexie.io/resources/finance/products description: "Everything you sell. Physical products with stock, services billed by the hour, day, or job. Products are the building blocks every quote and every invoice is made of." --- # Products Last updated 26 May 2026 ![A Flexie product form, with name, price, unit of measure, and the tax that should apply](https://flexie.io/image/resources/finance-products.png) Everything you sell, whether a physical product with stock or a service billed by the hour, the day, or the job. Products are the building blocks every quote and every invoice is made of. ## Two kinds of product | Kind | What it is | Examples | | -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Physical product** | An item you keep stock of. Flexie tracks how many you've got and how many are available to sell. | A laptop, a bag of coffee, a printer cartridge. | | **Service** | Something you do for a price. No stock, you can sell as many as your team can deliver. | A consultation, an hour of training, a fixed-price installation job. | Both kinds share the same fields. The only difference is whether Flexie tracks stock for it. ## Creating a product Click **New** on the products list. ### The basics | Field | What it does | | ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Name** | The product's display name, shown on quotes and invoices. | | **Description** | Detailed description; appears on the customer-facing documents. | | **Type** | _Inventory_ (physical product with stock) or _Service_. Pick this carefully; it controls the rest of the form. | | **SKU** | Stock-keeping unit. Optional, but useful for matching against barcodes or imports. | | **Category** | Group products under categories (Hardware, Consulting, Subscription). | | **Unit of measure** | What you sell in: _each / piece_, _hour_, _day_, _kg_, _litre_, _box_, anything you need. Used on quote and invoice lines. | | **Price** | The standard selling price. Customers and quotes can override it. | | **Cost** | What it costs _you_ (cost of goods sold). Used for margin reporting and accounting. | ### Tax | Field | What it does | | ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Sales tax** | Which tax to apply when this product appears on a quote or invoice. Pick from your [tax library](https://flexie.io/resources/finance/taxes), or leave blank for a tax-exempt product. | | **Tax calculation** | _Tax-inclusive_ or _Tax-exclusive_, see below. | #### Tax-inclusive vs. tax-exclusive This is a choice you make per product: * **Tax-exclusive**: the **Price** field is the price _before_ tax. Tax gets added at line time. This is what most B2B businesses prefer: list price plus tax. * **Tax-inclusive**: the **Price** field is the price _with_ tax already baked in. The line still shows the tax separately, but the price you display to the customer doesn't change. Common in B2C / retail settings where shoppers expect "the price is the price." Use whichever matches how you display prices to your customers. The total on the invoice is the same either way; the difference is just which number you wrote down as the _Price_. ### Inventory (physical products only) | Field | What it does | | ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Needs fulfilment** | Yes / No, does this product need to be shipped or delivered? When _Yes_, the product flows into your fulfilment / picking lists. | | **Quantity on hand** | How many you currently have in stock. | | **Quantity available** | How many are free to sell (on-hand minus anything reserved). | | **As-of date** | The date the stock count was last set or adjusted. | For services, these inventory fields aren't shown. ### Accounting | Field | What it does | | --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Revenue account** | Where revenue from this product lands in your chart of accounts (e.g. _Service Revenue_, _Hardware Sales_). | | **Expense account** | Where the cost of goods sold for this product is recorded. | | **Inventory asset account** | (Physical products only) Where this product's stock value sits on the balance sheet. | If you leave these blank, sales of this product land in your default revenue account, see [Accounting](https://flexie.io/resources/finance/accounting). Most accounts configure these once per product _category_ rather than per product. ## How a product appears on a quote or invoice When you add a product to a quote or invoice line, Flexie pre-fills the line from the product: * The line's **description** comes from the product's name + the product description (you can override per-line). * The line's **unit price** comes from the product's price (override per-line for one-off discounts). * The line's **tax** comes from the product's sales tax. * The line's **unit** comes from the product's unit of measure. You can then adjust **quantity**, apply a **line-level discount** (a percentage or a fixed amount), and Flexie computes the line total. ## Down payment products Flexie has one special product type, a **Down Payment** product, that's used behind the scenes by the [Convert to Cash](https://flexie.io/resources/finance/convert-to-cash) flow when you bill a deposit. You typically configure one of these during account setup; you don't add it to quotes by hand. If you don't see a down-payment line on the new-invoice form when billing a deposit from a quote, ask your administrator to set up the Down Payment product. ## Categories Group your products with **Categories**: _Hardware_, _Software_, _Consulting_, _Recurring fees_, and so on. Categories also give you a convenient place to set the default revenue / expense / inventory accounts so you don't have to do it on every product. Manage categories from the **Categories** screen, or inline when creating a product. ## Pricing tips * **Set a sensible default price.** It pre-fills the line. Use per-line overrides for negotiated deals, that way the product's list price stays clean. * **Cost matters even when you're not strictly accounting.** Setting a realistic cost is what makes margin reports useful. * **Tax-inclusive prices.** If you sell to consumers in a region where prices are displayed VAT-inclusive (most of Europe, for example), set those products to _Tax-inclusive_. Otherwise the customer sees one price online and another on the invoice. * **Service products with a "per hour" unit** are perfect for time tracking, the line shows _4 hours × £80 = £320_ and reads naturally on the invoice. ## Gotchas * **Changing a product's price doesn't change existing quotes or invoices.** Once it's on a line, the price is captured on the line. Updating the product affects only _new_ lines added from that point on. * **Changing a product's tax doesn't change existing lines either**, same reason. Re-add the product to a quote or invoice if you want the new tax to apply. * **Stock changes don't happen automatically on sale.** The current build doesn't decrement _quantity on hand_ when you finalise an invoice. That's intentional, since not every business wants to treat invoice = stock movement. Use the inventory adjustment screen to record stock movements explicitly. * **Categories aren't auto-applied.** Setting a default revenue account on a category doesn't retroactively update existing products. It's the default for the _next_ product you create in that category. ## Next * [Taxes](https://flexie.io/resources/finance/taxes): the tax rates you'll attach to your products. * [Quotes](https://flexie.io/resources/finance/quotes): using products on a proposal. * [Invoices](https://flexie.io/resources/finance/invoices): using products on a bill.