Line item details can be found in your settings, under the billing section. This area in the settings allows you to customize your Price Book, especially if you have technicians that update the job scope on the field, a well designed Price Book streamlines that process.
Line item title: The value in the title is base on where it is visible throughout your account and workflow. The title is viewed within the Job and Project view, as well as invoices and estimates.
Line item description: The description of the line item can be used as customer facing information, or internal information. Whether your customer can view the description is based on the checkbox just under the description(show customer). In addition, a description can be a requirement when added, and/or fixed, so field technicians cannot edit once the line item has been added. Each functionality is managed by checkboxes under the description. (Note: added functions for the description can only be added within the settings>Billing)
Cost & Retail: Among the many features available, the ability to track cost and retail provides valuable data within your Project and Jobs. The cost is how much the line item is costing your business, and retail is how much you are charging the customer. Reporting is then available to determine cost vs. retail based on a time frame, customer, service location, among other available filters.
Cost: Internal information, and never customer facing by design. Visible for your technician.
Retail: External information, and the amounts visible on invoices and estimates. Whether your field technicians can view on mobile app is based on set permissions and billing method.(bill later or charge on site)
Markup: The percentage difference between cost and retail will be your markup. Ultimately, this is another form of data to determine how profitable your services are within the job scope.
Default Markup: Settings allows for a default markup for newly created line items. For example, a field technician needs to add a new line item, but their permissions are based on visibility to only the cost amount. They would be able to create a line item at a given cost, add description or additional details, generate an invoice, and the customer would see the retail amount with the added markup, all while field technician does not have to calculate the markup percentage or get clearance on a particular amount.
Line Item Group: Groups are strictly for internal use, and never customer facing. The main purpose of groups is to categorize your line items in a different manner than by job types. Within line item details, you have a drop down available to add each line item to a different group.
Creating a new Group: In order to create a new group, you would need to type the name of the group in the blank space, rather than select an existing group. Once the line item is saved, a new group will be created and added to your list of groups.
Delete a Group: Simply remove all line items from the group, and the group will automatically get deleted.
Product or Service Type: The product or service type is extremely important if you are connected to Quickbooks. As you go through a QB sync, the available options will align with your product or service types on Quickbooks. Should you have taxes due based on selling parts, it would be critical to label the line item as parts, to then get totals by tax season, and pay sales tax on the appropriate amount. If not connected to accounting software, this is still valuable to track for business purposes, and it builds great habits should you decide to connect to accounting software in the future.
Limit by Job Type: The last part of the line item details is the option to limit that line item to a particular Job Type(s). Should you not limit the line item to a job type, it would be available for all job types. However, selecting a specific Job Type(s) would make the line items visible only when that particular job type is selected. Especially on the field, this dynamic allows you to organize your line items in a way that limits human error, and expedites your workflow, which ultimately leads to an increase in customer satisfaction and retention. If you have over 1000 line items, it would be incredibly inconvenient to search for the valid line item with each job. However, limiting to a Job Type suddenly allows you to only select from a fraction of a available line items, and each line item is directly relevant to Job Type.