What are Services?
In Productive, services are the foundation of every budget and sales deal. Each service represents a specific type of work you’ll deliver, such as Design, Development, or Consulting, and helps define what you're offering, how you’ll track it, and how it will be billed.
Services are more than line items for invoicing. They're used to:
Track time and expenses
Schedule work in the Resource Planner
Analyze profitability
You can bill services at a fixed price, based on time and materials, or mark them as non-billable. Once configured, they connect your budgeting, scheduling, time and expense tracking, and invoicing in a single workflow.
We'll walk through all the key components of service setup below.
Adding Services to a Budget
While in the Budget editor, select "+ New item" to start adding services to your budget.
You can manually add the service or copy a predefined service set from a rate card.
Once you add a service from a rate card, you can customize it without affecting the original rate card.
There are a couple of ways to add services to your newly created budget. Check out the examples below!
If you disabled Open Hours and Expenses in the Budget settings, click on "+ Add services" to access the Budget editor and add the services you wish to include in your budget.
This will also be your starting point when adding a new deal!
If you enabled Open Hours and Expenses, you'll initially see two service line items in your budget: "Open Hours" and "Open Expenses".
These act as temporary services so you can start logging time and scheduling work right away, even before defining exact services.
It's recommended to edit these promptly as they lack service types and rates, impacting later profit and resource analysis.
To edit or replace them with more precise services, select "Edit" in the upper right corner to access the Budget editor.
If you prefer setting up your budgets and adding services using the Simple Budget Editor, follow this link!
Service Names vs. Service Sections
Each service line item you add to the budget includes a service name—this is what you’re billing for (e.g., Cover Design, Development, or Consulting).
You can also organize services into sections with custom labels by clicking "Add Section" at the bottom. These section names help structure your budget and make it easier to read.
Service sections appear in several places in Productive:
In time tracking views (Day and Timesheet) under My Time
In the service picker when manually logging time, where you’ll see the full structure:
Client → Project → Budget → Section → Service NameIn Pinned Services, Scheduled Services, and Recently Tracked suggestions
Sections are optional, but they help both your team understand how services are grouped.
Service Types
Service types play a key part in determining your budget and services. They are the foundation of your financial structure once configured in the settings.
In other words, these types represent your profit centers, covering the full range of services you provide as an agency.
When added to deals and budgets, they provide clarity on what you're offering to your clients and guide your team's time-tracking efforts.
In reports, service types help provide insights into which areas of your business produce the highest returns over time, while in integrations, they help you synchronize your invoices with any external accounting tool you've linked to your account.
After customizing your service types in the settings, select them from the drop-down menu in the Budget editor.
The distinction between the service name and service type is based on functionality. The service name provides flexibility, allowing you to label services as you see fit, as well as versatility by assigning different names to each service.
On the other hand, the service type functions as a categorization tool, allowing you to organize services in a systematic manner for efficient tracking and company-wide analysis.
Tip: If you have not defined your service types yet, just start typing the name of the service type you want to add and select "Create Service Type".
Note that adding service types this way must be enabled in Settings > Service types > Quick add.
Billing Types
After defining the service types important for monitoring profitability, the next step involves configuring the billing type associated with each service.
Within the budget editor, you'll find the "Billing Type" column, offering three distinct options: Fixed, Time and Materials, and Non-billable. Click the column to select 
.
These billing types let you track time and expenses, schedule people, and invoice based on your agreement with the client.
Fixed Billing Type
This option ensures that services are billed at a predetermined fixed rate, regardless of the actual hours worked.
It allows for accurate time tracking and estimation, enabling you to analyze profitability trends over time and efficiently schedule resources in the Resourcing module.
Whether you log fewer or more hours than estimated, the invoiced amount remains consistent with the fixed rate you've set!
Time and Materials Billing Type
With this option, you can add rates and services, but invoicing can occur only after hours, days, or expenses have been logged against the service.
This approach enables progressive invoicing as work on the budget unfolds, facilitating efficient invoicing in stages.
Non-billable Billing Type
As the name suggests, this option is reserved for tracking work or expenses that won't be invoiced to the client.
It's useful for tracking preparatory or administrative tasks associated with client projects, providing valuable insights to optimize resource allocation in the future.
📌 To help you choose the right billing type, here are some examples and clarifications:
Billing Type | Description | Example |
Fixed | Services billed at a predetermined fixed rate, regardless of hours worked. You can still log time and invoice progressively. | E.g., Billing a design sprint at a flat €5,000, while tracking hours for internal analysis. |
Time and Materials | Billing based on the actual hours, days, or expenses logged against the service. Invoicing happens progressively as work is done. | E.g., Charging €80/hour for development hours tracked by your team. |
Non-billable | Work or expenses tracked but not invoiced to the client. Useful for internal or administrative tasks. | E.g., Tracking project management time that isn’t billed to the client. |
📌 Revenue from Fixed billing services can be recognized in different ways depending on your settings. Learn more about Fixed Price Revenue Recognition Models.
Unit
In the Unit field, you can select how you want to charge and monitor the service: by hour, day, or piece.
Opting for Hours or Days enables time tracking and resource scheduling in the Resource Planner for the services.
📌 Note that you can define how many hours there are within a "Day" (person-day) in Settings > General > Work Time.
On the other hand, selecting Piece is more suitable for expense tracking or situations where you don't need to book people or track time against the service.
Tracking Options
The tracking options available depend on the combination of the previously set billing type and unit.
You can enable or disable expense and time tracking, as well as the option to book people for the selected service in Resourcing.
For example, if you select "Time and Materials" as the billing type, paired with "Hour" as the tracking unit, you'll be able to switch off or on time tracking and booking options.
Similarly, if you choose "Piece" as the tracking unit, you'll only be able to log expenses there.
To ensure all necessary options are enabled, hover over the time-tracking, expense-tracking, and booking icons and make sure they are violet (enabled) if you want them on.
Estimate
The Estimate column lets you input an approximation of hours, days, or pieces (matching the billing units), helping set budget totals and monitor progress against these estimates as the project progresses.
It's crucial to note that the estimated hours/days directly impact the Resource Planner, influencing your resource allocation based on precise service and budget specifications.
📌 Pro tip: When setting up your service in hours or days, for the Time and Materials billing type services, the estimates are automatically adjusted based on the quantity entered.
However, for Fixed billing type services, you can input a separate estimate of hours, allowing flexibility to sell the service at a fixed price while planning to invest fewer (or more) hours than initially projected.
Quantity and Price
When working with Fixed or Time and Materials billing types, you can specify the quantity (hours, person-days, or pieces) you intend to sell to the client, along with the corresponding price per hour/day/piece established for the service.
Non-billable services, not intended for client invoicing, do not affect the budget total. Therefore, inputting quantity and price values is not applicable for such services.
Tracking time or logging expenses against non-billable services incurs costs, which are reflected in the Profitability section of the budget.
Discount
If you want to add a discount to your services, you can add it by clicking on the Show discount option in the three-dot menu located to the right of the service section name.
Once you click on it, a new Discount column will be visible and you will be able to set up a different discount for every billable service.
The total amount changes accordingly once the discount is added to the service.
Markup
If you want to add a markup to your services, you can add it by clicking on the Show markup option in the three-dot menu located to the right of the service section name.
Once you click on it, a new Markup column will be visible and you will be able to set up a different markup for every billable service.
The total amount changes accordingly once the markup is added to the service.
Guaranteed Maximum Price
For services that are defined as Time and Materials, you can define a fixed cap which will then determine the maximum price that can be charged to the client, regardless of the hours put in.
To set it up, first, select Time and Materials as the billing type and define the price and quantity. From the three-dot menu to the right of the service section name, select "Show fixed cap".
Then, click on the padlock (🔒) icon to set a fixed cap. You'll know the fixed cap has been activated when the padlock turns violet.
📌 Example: You agreed to a cap of €10,000 for a design project billed by time. Even if the team logs €12,000 worth of hours, only €10,000 will be invoiced.
Description
To add a description to your services, select the Show Description option in the three-dot menu located to the right of the service section name.
The description you add there will later be visible in the reports!
Duplicating Services and Sections
To speed up your setup, you can duplicate both individual services and entire service sections.
To duplicate a single service, open the three-dot menu next to the service line item and select Duplicate.
To duplicate a whole service section, open the three-dot menu next to the section name and select Duplicate. This will create a new section below the original, copying all its services, settings, and section name.
Saving Changes
Once you are done adjusting the services within the budget, select "Save changes" in the upper-right corner.
Moving Services Between Deals and Budgets
When a service needs to be reallocated—whether to adjust invoicing, refine a budget, or group work under a different deal—you don’t have to recreate it from scratch.
Instead, you can move it between deals and budgets while keeping all related time entries, expenses, and bookings intact.
This ensures financial accuracy and saves time. Learn more about how to move services between deals and budgets here.
