What Are Service Types?
Service types define the categories of work your business delivers such as Design, Programming, or Project Management, and help you:
Organize and standardize your budgets.
Track time and expenses accurately.
Analyze profitability across services.
Sync invoices with your connected accounting tools.
Adding a service type to each service in a budget is mandatory. You won’t be able to save a service without assigning a service type, so it’s important to set them up thoughtfully.
Setting Up Service Types
To manage your service types, go to Settings > Service Types.
Here you’ll find a default list of service types preloaded into your account. You can:
Edit existing service types.
Add new ones that reflect your business.
Assign people to specific service types (optional).
Enable or disable the Quick add option.
Adding a New Service Type
Click Add service type to create a new classification. Each service type should represent a category of work you offer, not a specific task. For example:
✅ Design (good)
✅ Project Management (good)
❌ Homepage Redesign (too specific)
Assigning People to Service Types (optional)
You can assign individual team members to specific service types to:imit time tracking only to services within assigned service types (when enabled in budgets).
This is optional but useful in larger teams or agencies with defined roles.
Quick Add from Budgets
If the Quick add toggle is enabled in Settings > Service Types, users can:
Create new service types directly from the budget editor.
Automatically add those new service types to the global list in Settings.
This is helpful when working on budgets and needing to create a new category on the fly.
Editing or Deleting Service Types
To edit a service type:
Open Settings > Service Types.
Click the service type you want to rename or update.
Changes are saved automatically.
To delete a service type:
Click the three-dot menu next to it.
Select Delete.
📌 When deleting a service type:
All existing time entries, expenses, invoices, and assignments will be reassigned to another service type you select.
You won’t be able to log new time against the deleted type.
Service Types and Accounting Integrations
If you’ve connected an accounting tool (e.g., Xero, QuickBooks Online, Exact, Fortnox), service types are key to syncing your data correctly.
Each service type can be mapped to a specific item or account code in your accounting tool.
👉 For step-by-step setup, see our articles about different accounting tools you can integrate with Productive.
Service Types and Reports
Once your service types are in place, you can use them to:
Analyze profitability per service category.
Track cost vs. revenue over time.
Identify your most profitable service types.
📌 Try the built-in Profitability by service type report or create a report from scratch using the Financial items data source.
Related Setup Options
When creating or editing a service, you’ll often define additional details that shape how it works:
Service Names and Sections: give each service a clear label and group them in sections.
👉 Learn more here.
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.