This video opens the third block of the onboarding series and introduces the product catalog – the foundation for everything you offer in a standardized, repeatable way.
A product in Leadtime is the opposite of individual project work: it has a fixed name, description, and defined price. Leadtime distinguishes three product types (physical products, software products, standardized services) and three pricing models: fixed price for one-time payments, subscription price for recurring payments (monthly, quarterly, yearly), and price per unit for usage-based billing.
Products can be made flexible with variants (e.g., Standard, Advanced, High Performance) and options (e.g., Setup Workshop, Premium Support) – structured upselling without needing separate products for every combination. Product categories keep a growing catalog organized and support multilingual documents.
In daily work, products are used in three places: directly in projects (for hybrid offers combining project work with ongoing services), on tickets (for quick add-on services from support), and as free subscriptions (for customer-specific recurring payments outside the catalog). All due products automatically appear in the invoice review and are displayed alongside time entries on a single invoice.
Welcome to the third block of the video series. In the first two blocks, you set up Leadtime, organized your daily operations, and learned how to manage your business with Insights and dashboards.
Now it's about standardization. And the first step is the product catalog. This is where you define services you offer again and again, with fixed prices, variants, and options. Define once, sell repeatedly.
So far, you've mainly worked with projects. Projects are individual. Every customer gets something different, the effort is estimated, and billing is based on tracked hours.
A product is the opposite. A product is standardized and repeatable. It has a fixed name, a fixed description, and a fixed price. You define it once and sell it as many times as you want.
Typical examples: a hosting package, a SaaS license, a standardized workshop, a mini web presence at a fixed price, an annual maintenance flat rate.
Leadtime distinguishes three product types: physical products like hardware or devices, software products like licenses or installation packages, and standardized services like trainings or consulting offers with a defined scope.
The product catalog is the foundation for everything your company offers in a standardized way. And the more you standardize, the less you have to recalculate, renegotiate, and re-explain every time.
I open Our Company, then Product Catalog. Here I see all existing products. To create a new one, I click Add Product.
A dialog opens. First, the basic information.
Name: the name of the product, for example Managed Hosting. Category: I assign it to a product category, in this case Services. Logo: optionally, I can upload an image to visually distinguish the product. And Description: a short explanation of what the product includes.
Now the most important part: the pricing model. Leadtime supports three models.
Fixed price: a one-time payment. For example, a workshop for 2,000 euros. The customer pays once, the service is delivered once.
Subscription price: a recurring payment. For example, a hosting package for 100 euros per month. You set the frequency: monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Leadtime automatically generates the matching invoice items.
Price per unit: variable billing. For example, 15 euros per user per month. When invoicing, you enter the current quantity, and Leadtime calculates the total amount.
These three models cover practically every business model, from one-time sales to classic subscriptions to usage-based billing.
I save the product. It now appears in the catalog.
Often you offer a product at different performance levels. Instead of creating three separate products, you use variants.
I open my hosting product and add variants.
Standard: 4 cores, 32 GB RAM, 100 euros per month. Advanced: 8 cores, 64 GB RAM, 200 euros per month. High Performance: 16 cores, 128 GB RAM, 400 euros per month.
Each variant has its own prices and its own description. But they all belong to the same product. When you add the product to a quote or a project, you simply select the right variant.
This keeps your catalog clean and makes it easy for the customer to choose the level that fits.
Besides variants, there are options. Options are add-on services that the customer can optionally book on top.
I add two options to my hosting product.
Setup Workshop: a one-time fee of 500 euros. The customer gets a guided setup included. Premium Support: 100 euros per month on top. The customer gets faster response times.
Options are added to the base price. If a customer orders the Advanced hosting with Premium Support, that's 200 plus 100 euros per month.
This is structured upselling. You don't need to create separate products for every combination. Instead, you define one product with variants and options, and the customer puts together their own package.
Before your catalog grows, it's worth setting up the categories. I go to Administration, Workspace Settings, Product Settings.
Here I see the existing categories. I can add new ones, for example Hardware, Software, Services, Subscriptions. Each category gets an icon and a description.
If you work with multilingual documents, you can add translations for the category names in the Translations tab. These are automatically used in quotes and invoices.
Categories help you keep track as your catalog grows. And they help your team find the right product quickly.
The product catalog is the foundation. But the real power shows when you use products in your daily work. And there are three places for that.
First: products in projects. You can add products directly to a project, for example a hosting package as an add-on alongside the actual project work. One-time products are billed with the project. Products with subscription prices automatically create recurring invoice items. This is how you build hybrid offers: project work plus ongoing services.
Second: products on tickets. When a customer submits a support request and there's a matching product, you can attach it directly to the ticket. It's fast, doesn't require a separate project, and the product automatically flows into the next invoice. You can also create an express offer for it, but I'll show you that in detail in the next video.
Third: free subscriptions. Sometimes you need a customer-specific subscription that isn't in the catalog. In that case, you can manually create recurring payments in the project settings under Subscription Billing, either as a fixed-price subscription or a variable subscription with a price per unit. This is the flexible alternative to the catalog.
Finally, the full circle: what happens when a product is due?
All due products automatically appear in the invoice review, the area you know from the billing video.
Fixed-price products appear as soon as the project reaches the billing status. You see the product name and the net amount.
Subscription products appear at the defined interval: monthly, quarterly, or yearly. The service period is filled in automatically.
Variable subscriptions also appear at the interval, but here you need to manually enter the current quantity. Leadtime then calculates the total from the unit price times the quantity.
After reviewing, you create the invoice as usual. Products and time entries appear together on one invoice.
The product catalog is the foundation for everything that's sold in a standardized way. Define once, keep it flexible with variants and options, and reuse it in projects, tickets, and subscriptions.
The more you standardize, the less effort you spend on calculation, quoting, and billing. That's the scaling effect that standardization unlocks.
In the next video, we'll look at express offers: how you send products directly from a ticket as an offer to the customer. Fast, straightforward, and without a separate project.
