Service, Labour or Product? Set Up Your MSP Catalog So Quotes and Your PSA Stay Clean
Most messy quotes start in the catalog. If the same managed firewall exists three times under three names, or a Microsoft 365 licence is set up as labour, every quote and every PSA record inherits the problem. A clean catalog comes down to three decisions: what type each item is, which system owns it, and how it is grouped.
Product, Service or Labour
One question comes up on almost every onboarding call: what is the difference between a service and labour? Your PSA treats the three types differently on contracts and invoices, so it is worth being strict.
| Type | Typical examples | How it is billed |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Laptops, firewalls, docking stations, perpetual licences | Once, at delivery |
| Service | Managed workplace per user, backup per device, Microsoft 365 subscriptions | Recurring, per month or per year |
| Labour | Installation, project hours, onsite visits | Per hour |
Software is the type people argue about. Our rule of thumb: if the client pays for it every month or year, set it up as a recurring service; if they buy it once, it is a product.
Decide Which System Owns Each Type
Every item lives in two places once your quoting tool and PSA are connected, so one side has to win. How that works depends on the PSA.
- Autotask: services and labour always come from Autotask. Hardware is best managed in Salesbuildr with your distributor feeds, and new Salesbuildr products are created in Autotask. Give every Salesbuildr category an Autotask billing code first, or products in it can't be created there.
- ConnectWise PSA: you set the data source per product type. Hardware is usually Salesbuildr-sourced because of the distributor feeds; services are usually ConnectWise-sourced. A product type that mixes hardware and services can't get one clean source, so split it. Keep the manufacturer part number in the MPN field so distributor prices match.
- HaloPSA: every item needs a category, or it won't sync. Halo asset groups marked as items map to Salesbuildr product types per group. Remapping a group to Labour turns every item in that group into labour, so check the group before you remap it.
The per-PSA details are on the Autotask, ConnectWise and HaloPSA pages.
Recurring Is Set in Your PSA
"How do we configure whether an item is recurring?" is another onboarding regular. The answer lives in the PSA. Autotask keeps recurring services in their own table, which Salesbuildr imports. ConnectWise reads the billing frequency from either Billing Frequency or Unit of Measure; choose one field and use it everywhere. In Halo, set the billing frequency (monthly or annual) correctly on the item. If a service quotes as one-off when it shouldn't, look there first.
Design Categories Before You Go Live
Categories drive how items map to your PSA, which billing codes they use and how quotes group lines. Changing the structure after go-live means re-mapping, and in ConnectWise a category that is disabled or deleted breaks every sync that uses it. Spend an hour on the structure up front:
- Group by what the client buys (Workplace, Security, Connectivity, Cloud), not by distributor.
- Keep categories for hardware, services and labour apart, so a category never needs two data sources.
- Name services the way a client would, and put the technical detail in the description.
Standardise What You Sell
Once the items are clean, standardise the offers built from them. Bundles package hardware, software, services and labour into one line on the quote while every component stays visible to your PSA. If you used Autotask Service Bundles, note that they don't sync; rebuild them as Salesbuildr bundles. Pricing books hold the fixed prices you agreed with a specific client and take priority over catalog prices, which stops "what did we charge them last time?" from becoming a guessing game.
Start Small
You don't need a perfect catalog on day one. Take the items you quoted most in the last year, fix their type, category and recurring setting, and build your first bundles from them. Leave the long tail for later. Portfolio management shows how the catalog ties into quoting once it is in place.