Services are the foundation of every budget and deal in Productive. Each service represents a type of work your company delivers, such as Design, Development, or Consulting.
By setting up services, you define what you’re offering, how it will be tracked, and how it will be billed.
📌 Next step: Once you understand what services are, learn how to set them up in your budgets: Adding Services to a Budget.
Important: Productive is rolling out a new Services overview, currently in Beta. If your services don’t look like the examples in this article, you might still be using the old services overview. Some fields and layouts described here may not yet appear in your account, but the functionality remains the same.
Why Services Matter
Services aren’t just line items for invoicing. Once set up, they connect key parts of your workflow:
Time tracking: log hours directly against services.
Scheduling: book people in the Resource Planner for services as placeholders for work.
Invoicing: turn services into billable items based on your chosen billing type.
Revenue recognition: billing type (Fixed, Time & Materials, Non-billable) determines how and when revenue is recognized.
Profitability: compare estimated vs. actual work and expenses per service.
Examples of Services
The services shown in the screenshot below illustrate how different billing types and tracking options work:
Design Sprint → billed at a Fixed price with time tracking and bookings enabled.
Invoicing: The client can be billed the agreed fixed amount, regardless of hours logged.
Frontend Development → tracked by the hour as Time and Materials, with time tracking and bookings enabled.
Invoicing: The client is billed for actual hours delivered, multiplied by the hourly rate (price).
Project Management → tracked as Non-billable time, with only time tracking enabled.
Invoicing: No client invoice is generated, but hours are still recorded for internal tracking (producing cost).
These examples show how services can be flexible: they adapt to different types of client work and internal activities.
Service Flexibility
Services in a budget can mix billing types, units, and tracking options to fit your workflow. For example:
One service may be Fixed, another Time and Materials, and a third Non-billable, all within the same budget.
Estimates, units, and tracking options work together to plan resources effectively.
Profitability and Insights
Using services consistently helps you measure profitability in detail:
Track estimated vs. delivered hours or expenses per service.
See which services or departments generate the highest returns.
Improve future estimates by learning from past projects.
📌 In reports, service data helps you analyze performance across clients, projects, and service types, giving you a clear picture of where your agency creates value.
Related Setup Options
When creating or editing a service, you’ll often define additional details that shape how it works:
Adding Services to a Budget: Learn how to add, organize, and configure services directly in your budgets.
👉 Learn more about Adding Services to a Budget.
Service Types help categorize your work into broader profit centers.
👉 Learn more about Service Types.
Billing Types determine whether a service is billed at a fixed price, by time and materials, or tracked as non-billable.
👉 Read about Billing Types.
Units (hours, days, or pieces) define how you measure and track delivery.
👉 See how Units work.
Organizing Services: To keep budgets and projects structured, services can be grouped into sections and given detailed descriptions. This makes them easier to identify in time tracking and reporting.
👉 More on Service Names, Sections, and Descriptions.