Products
The catalog of what you sell — codes, list prices and SKUs.
Products
A product is anything you sell — software, hardware, services, subscriptions, support packages. The product catalog feeds into quotes and opportunities: when sales builds a quote, they pick products from this catalog rather than typing names manually.
What a product record stores
The detail screen has 3 sections:
| Section | Fields |
|---|---|
| Product Information | Product code (auto), name, description, category, family |
| Pricing | List price, cost, SKU |
| Resources | Product image, datasheet, product manager |
Categories and families
Categorise products two ways:
Category — how the product is delivered:
- Software (default) — installed or downloaded software
- Hardware — physical equipment
- Service — consulting, training, professional services
- Subscription — recurring access
- Support — paid support tiers
Family — how the product fits in your portfolio:
- Enterprise Solutions
- SMB Solutions
- Professional Services
- Cloud Services
Categories and families let you slice reports by product mix — "how much SMB-tier subscription revenue did we book this quarter?"
Pricing fields
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| List Price | Standard published price — what shows up on a quote by default |
| Cost | Your cost — used for margin calculation |
The system warns you if Cost is greater than List Price (which would be a losing sale).
Tax is a quote-level figure, and the catalog carries no rate. A quote's total is subtotal − discount + Tax + Shipping, where Tax is an amount you type on the quote itself, and a quote line item has its own Tax Rate %, defaulted to 0 and set per line. A product record stores nothing about tax.
No inventory, no billing schedule
A product record is a catalog entry and nothing more. HotCRM holds no stock figure — no quantity on hand, no reorder point, and nothing decrements on a closed deal — and no billing schedule or unit of measure: how a subscription is billed lives in the contract and the quote, not on the catalog row. Those fields used to be declared here and were read by nothing, which made the catalog look like an inventory and billing system it never was. Stock belongs to your fulfilment system; see Billing Handoff.
The product image and datasheet
Two attachment fields let you upload:
- Product Image — shown on quote line items and product list views.
- Datasheet — a PDF of up to 20 MB, for people to open from the product record.
Nothing reads the file's contents. There is no Product Information knowledge base — HotCRM ships no separate knowledge libraries at all — and no skill opens an attachment, so a datasheet never reaches an AI-drafted email or proposal. What the assistant can quote about a product is what is typed into the product's own fields. See Knowledge Bases.
Built-in rules
- List price must be greater than zero — you can't sell a free product (use a $0.01 list price with a 100% discount if you really need to).
- Cost cannot exceed list price — warning only, doesn't block save.
- Unit price on opportunity / quote line items must be zero or positive — basic validation.
Sharing — products are public by default
The product catalog is public read-only for the whole organisation. Sales reps can see and use any product; only marketing/product managers can edit.
Standard list views
Products saves two views (src/revenue/views/product.view.ts), and the two tabs above the list — one per view, each labelled with the view's own name — switch between them:
| View | What it shows |
|---|---|
| All Products | The grid: product code (pinned left, and the link into the record), name, category, family, SKU, list price with a column average, cost and Active. Sorted by name and grouped by category, 50 rows a page. |
| Product Catalog | The same products drawn as cards, with the Product Image as the cover and product code, category, family, list price and SKU on the face. |
Neither view filters anything, so every product appears in both, inactive ones included, and switching tabs only redraws them. There is no saved Active Products, By Category or By Family view: grouping by category is a setting on the grid above, not a second saved view, and nothing groups by family at all. To work with active products only, sort or filter the Active column yourself.
Tips for product managers
- ✅ Keep the datasheet up to date — it is the file a rep sends the customer. The assistant never reads it, so anything you want the AI to quote belongs in the product's own fields.
- ✅ Use the Product Image — it dramatically improves the look of customer-facing quotes.
- ✅ Mark old products as inactive, don't delete them — past quotes and contracts still reference them.
Tips for sales reps
- ✅ Use products from the catalog rather than typing line items by hand — the List Price is filled in for you, and on a new line the Sales Price starts there too. Tax is not filled in: enter it on the quote.
- ✅ Open the datasheet yourself before proposing — it usually has the exact specifications you need to paste into the proposal.
Tips for admins
- The category and family picklists can be extended. See Customization › Extending Objects.
- A product can be linked to multiple opportunities and quotes — deactivation doesn't break historical records.