Price Book

What it is

The Price Book is your priced list of everything you sell — call-out fees, repairs, installs, parts, labour rates, anything. Each entry holds a name, a price, a unit ("each", "hour", "sq ft"), and optionally a photo, a description, your own cost and a tax rate.

Once an item is in the Price Book, anyone building an estimate, an invoice, a job's Items tab or a quick payment can add it with the Add from Price Book button instead of typing the wording and the price again. The page describes itself the same way at the top: "Reusable catalog of your services and products."

You open it from Settings›Quotes & Docs›Estimate Settings, then the Price Book tab along the top of that page. It is the eighth tab, after SMS and before Statuses. The same page also has its own address, /settings/price-book, if a colleague sends you a direct link.

When to use it

• You are setting the business up and want your team quoting the same prices instead of guessing.
• Prices went up and you want every future estimate to use the new numbers.
• You keep retyping the same descriptions onto estimates — put the wording in the item's Description once and it comes along every time.
• You want to know what you actually make on each job. Fill in Your cost (internal) and the Item Profitability report under Reports can show revenue, cost, markup and margin per item.
• You want photos in front of the customer when someone is quoting on site.
• You stopped selling something and want it out of the picker without losing its history.

Do not use it for one-off, never-again pricing. On an estimate you can still press Add Item and type a free-text line — the Price Book is for the things you sell repeatedly.

Before you start

• Your role needs Settings access. The whole page sits behind the Settings permission, in the Admin & Settings group under Settings›Team Roles. Without it you cannot open the page at all.
• Only the owner and admins can change anything. Everyone else who can open the page sees a yellow notice reading "You can view the catalog, but only the organization owner or admins can add, edit, or archive items." The Add item, Import CSV, Browse starter catalog and Manage categories buttons are hidden, and the Actions column reads Read only.
• Your cost is hidden from non-admins. The Cost column and the Your cost (internal) box only appear for the owner and admins. Regular agents never see what you paid.
• Decide your categories first. Categories are what the person quoting filters by, so agree on a short list (Emergency, Hardware, Supplies, Labour…) before you load hundreds of items.
• Know your tax rate. Each item carries its own Taxable by default switch and Default tax %, so have the right percentage to hand.
• Photos need to be small. JPG, PNG or WEBP, under 3 MB each. A phone photo straight off the camera is often bigger than that — shrink it first.

Step-by-step

Open the page

1. Click Settings in the left menu.
2. Under the Quotes & Docs group, open Estimate Settings.
3. Click the Price Book tab across the top of that page.

The first time, the middle of the page reads "Your price book is empty." with "Start with an industry template or add your first item manually." underneath, and three buttons: Browse starter catalog, Import CSV and Add item manually.

Fastest start: an industry starter catalogue

1. Click Browse starter catalog at the top right of the page.
2. The Browse starter catalogs window shows a tile per trade — Locksmith, HVAC, Garage Door, Air Duct, Roofing, Construction and Generic — each with the number of items it contains.
3. Click a tile to read the whole list first: name, category, price, unit and type. Nothing is added yet.
4. If it is not the right trade, click Pick a different industry or the Back button at the top.
5. Happy with it? Click Add all N items. The window tells you plainly that "Prices are US market averages — edit any item after importing" and that existing items with the same name are skipped, so pressing it twice will not create duplicates.
6. Go through the new rows and correct the prices to your own.

Add one item by hand

1. Click Add item at the top right. The window is titled Add item to price book.
2. Photo (optional) — click the square, or drag a picture onto it, or use Add photo. Once one is set the buttons become Change photo and Remove. The photo is what the person quoting sees in the picker.
3. Name * — required. Keep it the way you would say it to a customer, e.g. Lockout Service.
4. Category — pick one from the list, or No category, or Add category... to create one without leaving the form.
5. SKU — optional part or code number. It is searchable later.
6. Type — Service, Product, Labor or Other.
7. Unit — each, hour, day, sq ft, linear ft, mile, lb, or Custom... to type your own word into the little box that appears beside it.
8. Unit price * — what the customer pays for one unit.
9. Your cost (internal) — optional, owner and admins only. Never shown to customers; it is what makes the profitability reporting work.
10. Description — optional. The hint under the box says it plainly: "Shown on estimates and invoices".
11. Taxable by default — leave on if this item is normally taxed, then set Default tax %. Switching it off hides the percentage box.
12. Click Add item at the bottom to save.

Build an item that has options

Use this when one thing you sell comes in several priced flavours and you do not want a separate catalogue entry for each.

1. In the add or edit window, turn on This item has options.
2. The Unit price and Your cost boxes disappear — an item with options carries no single price of its own.
3. Click Add option, then type an Option name (the box suggests e.g. Interior) and its price. Repeat for each choice. The small × button removes a row.
4. Save.

In the catalogue list that item now shows an Options badge with the count, and its Unit Price column reads Options instead of a number. When someone picks it into an estimate they get a tick list — "Pick the options to add. Each becomes its own line under a … section."

Import your existing price list from a spreadsheet

1. Click Import CSV. The window is titled Import price book from CSV.
2. If you are starting from scratch, click Download template first — it saves a small example file called price-book-template.csv with the right headings and three sample rows.
3. Save your spreadsheet as a CSV file, then click the dashed box ("Click to choose a CSV or drop one here") or drag the file onto it. A header row is required.
4. Joby reads the headings and pre-fills the matches for you. Check the mapping table: each row shows your CSV column, a Sample of the values in it, and a Map to drop-down. Choose from Name, Description, Category, SKU / code, Unit price, Cost, Unit, Item type, Taxable, Tax percent and Sort order, or leave a column on - Skip this column -.
5. One column must be mapped to Name, otherwise a red line appears reading "Map one CSV column to Name before importing." and the import button stays switched off.
6. Read the green summary — N ready to import, and an amber N skipped badge if some rows have problems. The first five problem rows are listed by number, e.g. Row 4: Missing name.
7. Click Import N items. Picked the wrong file? Choose another starts over.

Tidy up your categories

1. Click Manage categories at the top of the page. (Choosing Add category... in any category drop-down opens the same window and drops the new name straight back into the box you were filling in.)
2. To create one, type into New category name and click Add.
3. The table lists every category with how many Items use it. The pencil renames it — press Enter or the tick to confirm, Escape or the × to abandon it. Renaming moves every item across with it.
4. The bin removes it. You are asked to confirm first, and the message names the damage: Remove "Hardware" from 12 price book items?
5. Click Close when you are done.

Removing a category never deletes items. As the note in that window says, it only clears the category off the matching items.

Change a batch of items at once

1. Tick the items you want in the left-hand column, or use the tick box in the heading row to take everything on the current page.
2. The grey bar above the table shows N selected.
3. To retype them, choose a type in Set type and click Apply.
4. To recategorise them, choose a category in Set category (or No category to clear it) and click Apply category.
5. Clear drops your ticks. You get a confirmation saying how many items were updated.

There is no bulk price change and no bulk delete here — prices are edited one item at a time, on purpose.

Edit, duplicate, archive and restore

The three buttons at the end of every row do the work:

There is no delete button on this page — archiving is the way to take something out of circulation, and it means old estimates and reports still make sense.

Find an item in a long catalogue

1. Type into the search box in the Filters card. It matches the name, description and SKU ("Search name, description, or SKU...").
2. Narrow further with the Category drop-down and the Type drop-down.
3. Turn on Show archived if what you are after was retired.
4. If nothing matches you get "No items match your filters." — clear the boxes and try again.

How to check it worked

• New item: a confirmation reading "Item added to price book"appears and the row shows up in the table with an Active badge.
• Edited item: you get "Item updated", and the last updated date under the bottom-right of the table moves to today.
• Starter catalogue: the message names the trade and the count, e.g. "Added 42 Locksmith items to your price book." If you already had them all it says "Nothing new to add…" instead.
• Spreadsheet import: the message reads "Imported 87 items", and adds "- 3 skipped (duplicate name)" when some names already existed. The window closes by itself.
• Bulk change: a message reading "Updated 12 items", and the Type or Category column changes on the rows you ticked.
• Archived / restored: "Item archived" or "Item restored", and the row greys out or comes back to full colour.
• Category work: "Category added", "Category renamed" or "Category removed", and the Items count next to it updates.
• The real test: open a new estimate, click Add from Price Book, and check your item is there with the right price, photo and description. That picker is what your team actually uses.

Common mistakes

• Leaving cost blank and then expecting profit figures. Markup and margin need Your cost (internal) filled in. Without it those columns simply show a dash.
• Putting tax in the price. Set the price without tax and use Taxable by default plus Default tax %, or your totals get taxed twice.
• A category name that only differs by capitals or spacing. "Hardware" and "hardware " are treated as the same category, so you cannot keep both. Pick one spelling and stick to it.
• Building 400 items before anyone has quoted with one. Add ten, run a real estimate through them, then carry on. Wrong units and missing descriptions show up immediately that way.
• Assuming the picker shows everything. It loads the first 50 matches and says so at the bottom — "Showing the first 50 matches. Type to search for more." Search or filter by category rather than scrolling.