Your items catalog and packages

Most venues price the same things over and over: the same room hire, the same per-head menus, the same bar packages. The items catalog is where you set those up once, so building an event's charges, a quote, or an invoice becomes a matter of clicking, not typing. Set your prices and tax here, and every document you raise picks them up.

This article covers the three building blocks (categories, items, and packages), how tax flows through them, adding a photo, what an item can offer a client on a quote, and how they show up when you're pricing an event.

Where it is

Open Items in the sidebar (it sits under Invoices). The page has three tabs: Items, Categories, and Packages. It opens on Items. The first time, set up your categories first, then your items, then your packages, because items sit inside categories and packages are bundles of items.

Items

An item is a saved, priced line. Give it a name, a unit price, a category, and optionally a longer description that becomes the line's detail on the document. A few extra controls matter:

Per head. Tick this for anything charged per guest. When the item lands on an event's charges, its quantity follows the event's pax automatically.
Guests included in the price. Appears once Per head is ticked. Set it when another price already covers the first guests: an "Additional guests" item at $250 with 50 included bills only guests 51 onwards, so a booking for 73 bills 23. Leave it blank to charge every guest.
Starting quantity. How many a new line starts with. Leave it blank and the line starts at 1. Set it to 3 on "Coverage, per hour" and every line built from that item opens at 3 hours. A per-head item ignores it and follows the guest count instead.
Tax. Leave it on Use category default to inherit the category's rate, or override it on the item when one product is taxed differently.
Uses stock. On the Hospitality plan, the stock one of this item takes from your Inventory, like 10 chairs and 1 tablecloth for a table setting. Accepting a quote with the item on it, or adding the item to a booking's charges, reserves that stock on the booking.

Type numbers as digits, with a dot for decimals (2.5, not 2,5). If a price, quantity or guest count can't be read, 1pm says so and leaves the form as you typed it, with nothing saved, so a slip never wipes a figure you had already set.

The list has an instant search and category filter, so a big menu stays manageable. Both stay as you set them while you edit or remove items, so you can work through one category without finding your place again. Removing an item leaves any event lines already built from it untouched, so you can retire last season's pricing without disturbing past events.

Adding a photo

An item can carry one photo: the plated dish a caterer is quoting, the backdrop a photo booth offers, the room set for a gala. Clients see it beside the line on the quote you send them, and can tap it to see it large.

Click Edit on the item, then Add a photo and choose an image. It uploads straight away, so there is nothing else to save. The photo can be a JPEG, PNG or WebP of up to 20 MB, so a photo straight off a phone is fine: 1pm shrinks it before uploading, and makes a smaller copy for lists and the client's quote so the page stays quick to load. Replace photo swaps it for another, and Remove photo takes it off the item. A small copy of the photo shows at the start of the item's row in the list and in the Add from items picker, so you can tell at a glance which items have one.

A package takes a photo the same way, from its Edit button. On a quote it sits above the package's name, which helps most when the client is choosing between packages.

The photo is copied onto the line when you add the item to a quote, an invoice or an event's charges, the same way the price is. Replacing or removing the item's photo later leaves those documents as they are, so a client looking at a quote you sent last week still sees the photo it was sent with.

What an item offers a client on a quote

If you have Let clients adjust a quote switched on (Account, then Tax & invoicing), an item can also carry the choices a client gets when it lands on a quote. You set them once on the item instead of rebuilding them on every quote. With that setting off the panel does not appear, since nothing would act on it.

Open an item for editing, or start a new one, and click Client options. There are four things to set:

Client can change the quantity. Give the range: from, to, and the step it moves in. "Coverage, 6 to 10 hours, in steps of 0.25" gives the client a stepper bounded by those figures. A per-head item does not offer this, because its quantity follows the guest count on the quote.
Client can add or remove this item. The optional extra, like a second shooter or a late bar extension. Include it in the quote to start with decides which way round it reads. Ticked, the line is in the quote and in the total and the client can take it out. Unticked, it is shown with its price as an extra and joins the total only if the client picks it.
This item's quantity is how many hours the booking runs. For a line that is a block of time, like coverage or a session, so the quote says when it starts and finishes, and the finish time moves when the client changes the quantity. You can mark several items this way and put more than one on a quote, one per session. The start time for each session is set on the quote line, since it changes from job to job. A per-head item, or one the client can add or remove, does not offer this.
Note shown to the client. One line printed under the item name on the client's quote, up to 300 characters. "Most weddings this size book 8 hours" is the shape of it.

Where an item carries any of these, the catalog list says so on its row: Client can change the quantity, Client can add or Client can remove, and Sets the booking times.

These settings are a template, not a live link. They are copied onto the line at the moment you add the item to a quote, the same way the price is, so editing the item later never reaches back into a quote already built from it, and a quote you have sent keeps what it was sent with. They apply to quotes only: an invoice, a client confirmation and an event's charges are the record of what was agreed, so the item lands on those as a plain line.

Letting a client adjust a quote covers what the client sees, and what you get back when they accept.

Packages

A package is a named bundle of items: a classic wedding package, a bar package, a day delegate rate. Create the package with a name and an optional note, then add items to it from your catalog. After you add an item the picker stays open, so you can keep choosing until the package is built. Click the arrow beside a package's name, or the name itself, to open or close its list of items.

The package shows how many items it holds and a From price: what the package adds to a document before the client changes anything. Each item counts at its starting quantity. Items in a set count only if they are picked to start. Any other item saved as an optional extra that starts out of the quote is left out. Per-head items depend on the guest count, so they are not in the figure: the package reads "From $900.00 plus per-head items", or "Priced per head" when everything in it is per head.

The payoff comes when you're pricing: add a package to an event's charges or an invoice and every item in it drops in at once, grouped under the package name, each as its own line with its own price and tax. You get the convenience of a bundle and the transparency of itemised lines in one click.

On a quote, a package can also be something the client chooses. Make it optional, so the client adds or removes the whole package, or put several packages in a set so the client picks one of them (Silver, Gold or Platinum). See packages the client picks.

Items the client picks from, inside a package

A package can hold a set of items the client picks from: a photo booth package with eight backdrops the client picks one of, or a set menu with five mains the client picks two of. Set it up once here and every quote the package is added to arrives with the choice already built.

This shows when Let clients adjust a quote is switched on (Account, then Tax & invoicing). On the Packages tab, click the arrow beside the package's name (or the name itself) to open its list of items. Under each item is a list that starts on Always in the package:

On the first item of the choice, choose Client picks from a new set.
On each of the other items, choose the same set from the list. It reads "Client picks from: Choose one" until you give it a heading.
In the box that appears under the items, type the heading the client sees ("Choose your backdrop") and set Client picks to how many they choose. Tick Can pick fewer if fewer is fine.
Tick Picked to start on the items the quote should open with. You can tick as many as the client may pick: on a set where the client picks one, ticking another item moves the tick to it, and on a set where the client picks two, a third tick is refused until you untick one. Lowering Client picks unticks the items past the new number, keeping the first ones in the package's order.

A set needs at least two items to be a choice, and it can hold up to 40. While a set has one item, that item is treated like any other in the package and is added only if it is picked to start.

Items in a set usually cost nothing, with the charge on an item that is always in the package ($900 of photo booth hire, then $0 backdrops). An item in a set can carry its own price too, for an upgrade the client pays extra for.

When you add the package to a quote, the set is copied onto the quote as it stands, and you can still change it on that quote. Changing the set on the package later leaves quotes you have already built alone. Adding the package to an invoice or an event's charges adds only the items picked to start, because there the choice has already been made. An optional extra that starts out of the quote is left off those documents too, so what lands matches the package's From price. If every item in a package sits in a set and none is picked to start, there is nothing to add, and 1pm tells you so. See items the client picks from a set for what the client sees.

With Let clients adjust a quote switched off, no quote offers a choice either, so a quote gets the same items as an invoice: the ones picked to start. The sets and their Picked to start ticks still show on the package so you can see and change which items are added. An item saved as an optional extra that starts out of the quote is marked Left off quotes and invoices in the package; switch the setting back on to change it.

A package can also quote a lead for you. Choose it under Send a quote package on a reply template, and every time that template is sent, whether by you or by Auto Reply, 1pm raises a quote from the package and links it in the email. See replying to leads for how that works.

How they show up when you price

On an event's charges, an invoice, or a quote, the Add from items picker lists your catalog: packages first, then items grouped by category, with a search box across the top. Click an item to add one line; click a package to add the whole group. Each item shows its price (and a "/ head" tag where it applies), and each package shows its item count and From price, so you can see what you're adding before you click. There's a Manage link in the picker that brings you back here.

A note on limits and tidying up

Categories, items, and packages each have a generous per-account limit (60 categories, 1,000 items and 200 packages, with up to 100 items in a package). When you reach one, the add form on that tab is replaced by a note saying so. Everything is removed by archiving rather than hard deletion, which is what lets old documents keep rendering correctly: a price you change or an item you retire today never rewrites an invoice you sent last year.

Pricing an event covers using these items to build an event's charges.
Quotes and invoices covers turning that pricing into a quote or an invoice, and setting your tax rates.
Letting a client adjust a quote covers the client's side of the options you save on an item.