When setting up a budget in Productive, services are the building blocks that define what kind of work you’ll deliver, how it will be tracked, and how it will be billed.

From here, you can configure everything: from service names and types to billing rules, estimates, and caps.

This article gives you an overview of what’s possible. Each section includes a short summary and a link to a detailed setup guide.

📌 Note: The screenshots in this article show the saved budget view. For step-by-step setup instructions (editor/setup view), follow the linked articles in each section.

Services represent the types of work you deliver (e.g. Design, Development, Consulting). They connect budgeting, scheduling, time tracking, and invoicing in one workflow.

👉 Learn more in What Are Services?

Service names specify what you’re billing for, while sections help you group related services for a clearer budget structure.
​

👉 Learn more in Service Names, Sections, and Descriptions.

Service types categorize your services (e.g. Programming, Design, or Project Management) for profitability tracking, reporting, and integrations.

👉 Learn more in Service Types.

Choose between Fixed, Time and Materials, or Non-billable. Your choice impacts invoicing, scheduling, and profitability analysis.

👉 Learn more in Billing Types.

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.

Selecting Piece is more suitable for expense tracking or situations where you don't need to book people or track time against the service.

👉 Learn more in Tracking Units: Hours, Days, or Pieces.

Control whether time tracking, expense tracking, and booking are enabled for each service, depending on the billing type and unit.

👉 Learn more in Managing Tracking Options.
​

Add estimates (in hours) to guide resourcing.

👉 Learn more in Setting Service Estimates.

Set service quantities and prices, then adjust with discounts or markups if needed.

👉 Learn more in Quantity, Price, Discounts, and Markups.

For Time and Materials services, you can define a maximum billable amount (Fixed cap), regardless of the hours logged.

👉 Learn more in Guaranteed Maximum Price.

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.
​

Once you are done adjusting the services within the budget, select "Save changes" in the upper-right corner.
​

When a service needs to be reallocated—whether to adjust invoicing, refine a budget, or group work under a different deal or budget—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.