Add a Service and set its price
A Service is what you sell — a Stripe Product with a Price. Its price is what a billable Time Entry charges, and a Stripe price can never be edited.
Before you start
A Service is a Stripe Product with a Price. That is not an implementation detail you can ignore, because of one consequence:
A Stripe price cannot be changed after it is created. Repricing a Service means a new Price, not an edited one — and that is what protects every Invoice, subscription and Time Entry already priced against the old one from silently changing.
So the price and the billing cycle are set when you create a Service, and read-only afterwards. The name, the description, the tax category and the image stay editable.
The billing cycle decides what a Service can do:
| Billing | Used for |
|---|---|
| One-time | Labor rates, parts, project work. What a billable Time Entry charges. |
| Monthly | A line on a Client’s Recurring Billing. |
| Yearly | The same, on an annual cycle. |
A Client can hold monthly and yearly Services at once, on a single Recurring Billing.
Steps
- Open Sales › Services and choose New service.
- Name it as the Client should see it on an Invoice.
- Set the price in USD and choose the billing cycle. Both are permanent.
- Choose a tax category. Stripe uses it to price tax correctly where you are registered.
- Add an image if the Service should carry one. It syncs with Stripe both ways.
- Save.
Good to know
The hourly rate on a Time Entry comes from the Service. An entry snapshots the rate when it is logged, so introducing a new price next month does not reprice work already done.
Name a Service for what it is, not what it costs. A Service called “Northwind — $150.00/hr” is one you cannot search for by name, and the rate is already shown beside it in every picker.
A Service you no longer sell is archived, not deleted — the same distinction as a Client. It leaves the pickers and stays on every Invoice it was ever on.