Using item lists to create your invoices can save you time to tag invoices with the right income and expense categories, and makes it easy to invoice your customers.
What is an item pre-set?
An item pre-set will allow you to create an invoice using line items that have the price, unit, and the correct Category and Enterprise associations in Ambrook. This helps to:
Keep track of prices for different customers without surfacing these price differences to customers;
Account for prices of the same product with different units (i.e. a case or per pound);
Save you time categorizing each line item to the right Ambrook Category and Enterprise.
Spending time to set these up initially will save you time down the line.
Variants and Display Names
When you create an Item, there are several additional layers you can create:
Item Name: The top-level item, such as "Head Lettuce." You will nest variants underneath this.
Variant Name: The specific item variant, such as "Head Lettuce - Wholesale," or "Head Lettuce - Shredded." This is internal, so it can be used to help you remember which item is correct for the invoice you're creating.
Display Name: What the customer sees on an invoice.
It's useful to create more variants when you have:
Items that are the same, but have different prices for different customers. For example, Wholesale or CSA might have different prices for the same product.
Items that you sell through different sales channels at the same price. For example, you may track your income per farmers market, which means the items would be identical except the categories you assign to them.
Items that come in multiple units. For example, you might sale carrots by the pound or by the bunch. Creating separate item variants allows you to add quantities to the right unit on your invoices.
How to create items
First, navigate to Invoices and select "Items". You can also navigate to your items by going to Settings -> Items. To create a new Item, you can:
Click "New" in the upper right corner.
Add the top-level Item Name.
Click Next to add a new variant.
Add the Variant Name, and edit the Display Name to match what you want customers to see on the invoice.
Add in the item units and price.
Use the tagger to add a Category and Enterprise to the item.
Click Next to add more variants or to finish editing the item.
Below is a video walkthrough of this process.
Editing Items
There are two ways to edit items. First, you can edit items from the same page where you created the items above. Second, you can edit items as you're creating the invoice.
Editing Items from the Items page
To edit items on the Items page, use the pencil to the right of an item to edit the details. To add a variant, click on the pencil net to the Item Name. This will allow you to add a variant associated with the top-level Item Name
Editing Items while you're creating an invoice
You can also edit items if you realize there's a mistake when creating the invoice. To do this, click on the three dots next to a line item while you're creating the invoice.
This will allow you to edit the items before continuing to create the invoice.