If your business sells both products and services, it’s important to label each item correctly—either as a Product or a Service. This ensures that only products are tracked in your inventory through automated stock management.


Additionally, some items may only be billed once on a specific invoice and won’t be needed again. On Refrens, these are known and treated as "One Time" Items. Meaning, if you mark an item as a "One Time" item while creating a document, that item will not show up in the suggested items list while adding items in future documents. Also, Inventory will not be managed for these One Time items. 

Defining Products, Services, and One Time Items 

While adding line items in any document, you will see a dropdown like below where you can specify if a particular item is a product or service or a one-time item:


Here is a summary of what will be affected when an item is marked as a Product/Service/One Time item:

Item TypeInventory ManagedShow in Suggested Items While Adding Items in Documents
ProductYesYes
ServiceNoYes
One TimeNoNo



Note that a "One Time" item can be either a product, a service, or some additional charge. The only thing that matters here is, that these items will not show up in your suggested items while creating new documents. 

Let’s take a sample invoice from an IT Service Provider:


As you see, while adding the items, it is also specified if the item is a product/ a service/ or a one-time item. Now, let’s see what will be affected due to this:


Item NameItem TypeInventory ManagedShow in Suggested Items While Adding Items in Documents
DesktopProductAs “Desktop” is marked as a product, its Inventory will be managedYes
IT ConsultationServiceAs “IT Consultation” is marked as a service, its inventory will not be managedYes
Data MigrationOne TimeInventory will not be managedNo



Viewing Effects On Your Inventory Dashboard


As you see, All your Product or Service Items will be visible in your inventory dashboard, while One Time items will not be there in your Inventory section. Also, You can see that for service items, the Manage Stock toggle will default be off, while for product items, it will default be on. 

If you are adding items directly to your inventory, you will also have an option to choose if the item is a Product or Service:

You will notice that the "One Time” item type is not available here. This is intentional, as one-time items are meant to be added only when creating documents for single use.

That's it. If you still have questions, do feel free to reach out to us at care@refrens.com OR drop a message on chat support for quick assistance!