Create and manage catalog items

Catalog items represent the licenses, tools, and vendor services your MSP purchases and resells. Each catalog item carries a unit cost (what you pay), and ClarityCalc uses that cost alongside your margin targets to calculate pricing across every plan that references it. When a vendor raises their price, you update the catalog item once and see the margin impact everywhere.

For how catalog items relate to bundles, packages, and plans, see Catalog Items vs Bundles vs Packages.

Before you begin

• You have Owner or Analyst permissions.
• Know the unit cost (what you pay per unit per month) for the catalog item you're adding.

Adding a catalog item manually

1. Go to Catalog → Catalog Items.
2. Click Add Catalog Item.
3. Fill in the required fields:
   • Name — the display name used throughout ClarityCalc.
   • Unit Cost — what you pay per unit per month.
   • Unit Type — how this catalog item is measured: Per User, Per Device, Per Mailbox, Flat, or a custom unit type you've defined.
4. Optionally fill in additional fields:
   • Item Code — your internal SKU or reference number.
   • Internal Name — an alternate name for internal use (not shown to clients).
   • Vendor — select or create a vendor.
   • MSRP — the manufacturer's suggested retail price, useful as a reference point when setting margins.
   • Target Margin % — override your organization's default margin for this specific catalog item.
   • Category — a free-text label for organizing your catalog (e.g., "Security", "Productivity", "Backup").
   • Billing Model — Subscription, Perpetual, Consumption, or One-Time. Helps classify the vendor relationship.
   • Description — internal notes about the catalog item (not shown to clients).
   • Client-Facing Description — the text that appears on Statements of Work when this catalog item is visible to the client.
   • Client Visible — whether this catalog item appears on client-facing documents.
5. Click Save.

The catalog item is now in your catalog and can be added to bundles, packages, and plans.

Importing catalog items from an integration

If you've connected a PSA or vendor tool (such as Autotask or Pax8), you can import products directly instead of adding catalog items one at a time.

1. Go to Global Settings → Integrations → your provider (or click Import from integrations on the Catalog Items list page).
2. Click Sync Catalog Items to open the catalog item sync wizard.
3. Configure field mapping (first time only). Choose which external field maps to each ClarityCalc field. Defaults are pre-selected for the most common setup. You can change these at any time.
4. Review catalog items. ClarityCalc fetches your external product catalog and shows each item with a recommended action: Create, Update, Map to Existing, or Skip.
5. Execute. Select the catalog items you want to act on (checkboxes and bulk actions make this fast) and click Execute Import.

For the full integration walkthrough, see Connect integrations and sync data from external tools.

Managing your catalog

Finding catalog items

The catalog item list at Catalog → Catalog Items shows all your catalog items with columns for name, vendor, unit cost, unit type, and category. Use the sort controls to organize by any column. If any catalog items have inactive status, a toggle lets you show or hide them.

Editing a catalog item

Click any catalog item to open its detail page. All fields are editable. Changes to unit cost or margin take effect on new plans; existing plans retain their snapshotted pricing unless you manually update them.

Retiring a catalog item

Rather than deleting a catalog item, set it to inactive. Open the catalog item, uncheck Active, and save. Inactive catalog items:

• Remain on all existing bundles, packages, and plans (nothing breaks).
• Stop appearing in catalog item pickers when you're building new bundles, packages, or plans.
• Show as visually muted in the catalog item list.

Tracking purchased vs. allocated quantity

If you buy a fixed number of licenses from a vendor (for example, 500 Kaseya EDR seats), enter that number in the Purchased Quantity field on the catalog item. ClarityCalc compares this against the total quantity allocated across your active client plans and shows the delta on the catalog item list.

This tells you at a glance how many licenses are going unused. If you're paying for 500 but only 430 are assigned to client plans, those 70 seats are costing you money every month.

Vendor commitment tracking

For catalog items with a vendor contract, enter the Vendor Commitment duration (in months) and Start Date. ClarityCalc computes the expiration date so you can see when commitments are coming up for renewal.

Fields synced from integrations

When a catalog item is imported or updated from an external system, the following fields can be populated automatically (depending on your field mapping configuration):

• Name, Item Code, Internal Name, Vendor, Unit Cost, MSRP, Category, Active status, Description, Client-Facing Description.

The following fields are always set manually in ClarityCalc and are never overwritten by a sync:

• Unit Type, Target Margin %, Client Visible, Custom Unit Type, Billing Model, Vendor Commitment, Purchased Quantity.

This is intentional. Unit Type and Target Margin % are core to how ClarityCalc calculates pricing. Allowing an external sync to change them could silently alter margins across every plan that references the catalog item.