Manage warehouse items in SamBooks: goods, services, price lists and pricing

Warehouse items is where you record everything you sell or buy: physical items (stock-managed or not), services that never carry stock, and the price lists that decide which price an item or service is offered at to each customer. From here, this data flows straight into quotes, orders, delivery notes and invoices without retyping anything. This guide also covers warehouse movements and warehouses (depots), which live under the separate Warehouse sidebar entry, closely linked to this one.

What it's for

Warehouse items (left menu → Logistics → Warehouse items) is a single hub with three tabs: Items, Services and Price lists. It's where you define WHAT you sell or buy and AT WHAT PRICE, before you ever write a quote or an invoice. Once created, an item or service can be picked from the catalog on any document line (quote, order, delivery note, invoice); a price list, once assigned to a customer or active as a general rule, auto-fills the unit price of that line.

The separate Warehouse sidebar entry (right below, same Logistics group) tracks instead HOW MUCH you have on hand: stock levels, load/unload movements, below-minimum alerts and the company's physical warehouses. The two sections work together — an item that is "stock-managed" in the items register is the one that shows up in Warehouse stock — but they remain two distinct pages with different URLs.

Prerequisites

• No existing data is required: you can create your first item, service or price list as soon as you open the page.
• Creating or editing items, services, price lists, movements and warehouses requires the Manager, Administrative or Logistics role on the company. The Viewer role can see everything but can't save changes.
• To assign a dedicated price list to a customer, the customer must already exist in the Customers register.

Step-by-step

1. Create an item (a physical good)

Go to Warehouse items, stay on the Items tab (the default one) and press New item. In the form, fill in at least the two required fields — Internal code and Name, both marked with an asterisk — then, as needed:

• Type: Finished product, Semi-finished, Raw material, Goods, Packaging or Consumable;
• Unit of measure, VAT rate % (or the advanced VAT code picker), Category, EAN code, Base price (the "default" list price, used when no specific price list applies);
• in the Logistics & warehouse section: customs code (HS), country of origin, net/gross weight per piece, package dimensions and type, whether the package is stackable — SamBooks computes the package's total weight and volume automatically as you type;
• in the Accounting section: Revenue account and Cost account (search an account from the chart of accounts, or press Suggest accounts (AI): an assistant proposes the two most fitting accounts based on the item name — the suggestion stays just that, you review it and press Save to confirm it, it's never applied on its own).

Press Create item: a message confirms "Item created" and the item appears in the list.

2. Turn on stock management: minimum stock and reorder point

In the same form, the Stock-managed switch is on by default for a new item. While it stays on, the item generates warehouse movements (loads, unloads, stock levels) and can show up in the Warehouse's Below minimum tab; if you turn it off, the item exists only as a catalog/price entry, never as stock.

With stock management on, also fill in:

• Minimum stock: the threshold below which the item is flagged as "below minimum";
• Reorder point: the quantity below which, operationally, it's time to reorder.

Both fields can be set on creation or later on edit, and they're the same ones that feed the Warehouse's Below minimum tab (step 12).

3. Edit or deactivate an item

From the Items table, open an existing item to edit it: the dialog opens with two tabs, Details (the same form as step 1, pre-filled) and Activity (the history of who created or changed the item — you or Sam — with date and outcome of each action). Change what you need and press Save changes.

To take it out of active use, open the Delete action: the confirmation dialog warns that the item "will be deactivated" and that "this is reversible" — it's not a permanent deletion, but a deactivation you can undo by reactivating it later.

4. Create a service

Switch to the Services tab and press New service. The form is intentionally leaner than the item one: only Internal code* and Name* are required, then VAT rate %, Base price, Extended description, Notes and — same as for items — the Accounting section with Revenue/Cost account and the same Suggest accounts (AI) button. There are no type, stock or logistics fields: a service (a consulting job, a separately-invoiced transport, an hour of labour…) never carries stock, by design — it never generates a warehouse movement, no matter what you do elsewhere in the app.

Press Create service: confirmation reads "Service created".

5. Edit or deactivate a service

Same pattern as items: open a service from the table to reach its Details/Activity tabs, edit and press Save changes. The Delete action deactivates the service reversibly (same behaviour and confirmation wording as items).

6. Create a price list and add rows

Switch to the Price lists tab and press New price list. Fill in Code*, Name*, the Scope (Sales or Purchase — a price list applies to one direction only), the Valid from* date (required) and optionally Valid to, then press Create price list.

To add a price to the list, open the price list you created and expand its rows: press Add row, pick the Item (today the picker only offers items, not services — to put a service in a price list you need to use CSV import, step 10), set the Price, optionally a Discount % and the Min. qty (for a quantity-tiered price: the row only applies from that quantity upward), and the row's own validity dates if different from the list's. Press Add row to save: repeat for every item you want in that price list.

7. Assign a dedicated price list to a customer

A price list on its own isn't enough to make a specific customer use it: go to Customers, open the customer's record and look for the Price list tab. There you'll find the heading "Assigned sales price list" with the explanation: the assigned price list auto-fills line prices on that customer's quotes, orders and delivery notes. Pick a price list from the dropdown (or None (generic price lists / base price) to remove the assignment) and press Save price list. If the price list you need doesn't exist yet, the same tab offers a Create price list button so you never have to leave the customer record.

8. How SamBooks picks the right price (price resolution)

When you add an item/service line to a quote, order or delivery note and pick the customer, SamBooks pre-fills the unit price following this order:

1. Does the customer have a dedicated price list assigned (step 7)? SamBooks uses only that price list: if the item has no price on that specific list, the price falls back to the item's base price — it never looks at another price list, even a cheaper or more recent one. A customer's negotiated price never "leaks" to other customers.
2. No dedicated price list for this customer? SamBooks searches the active generic price lists of the same scope (sales/purchase), valid on the current date; if more than one has a price for the same item at the same minimum quantity, the one with the most recent start date wins.
3. No applicable price list at all? The item's (or service's) Base price from the catalog is used.

The price field on the document line shows, in small print, where the proposed value came from — "Price list <code>", "Item base price" or "Manually edited price" if you change it yourself — so you know where a number comes from before confirming the line.

9. Edit, deactivate or delete a price list

Open an existing price list to change its header (Code, Name, Scope, validity, Notes) from the Details tab, or check its history from the Activity tab. Delete on a price list deactivates it together with all its rows, reversibly — same pattern as items and services. Deleting a single row from a price list is instead a permanent operation (cannot be undone): only use it once you're sure you no longer need that specific price.

10. Import and export items, services and price lists as CSV

Each of the three tabs (Items, Services, Price lists) has Import and Export buttons at the top. Export downloads a CSV with all the tab's data (Italian format under the hood: semicolon-separated, comma decimals — opens straight in Excel). Import loads a CSV or Excel file to create or update several rows at once — handy to populate the catalog the first time, or for a price list with many rows (it's also the only way, today, to put a service into a price list: just put "servizio" instead of "articolo" in the Row type column). If you re-import a file you already imported before, rows that already exist are flagged as skipped — import never duplicates an item, service or price list row that's already there.

11. Record warehouse movements (the "Warehouse" sidebar entry)

Load/unload movements aren't recorded in Warehouse items but in the separate Warehouse sidebar entry, right below in the Logistics group: open Warehouse, stay on the Stock tab (the default one) and you'll find four buttons at the top:

• Record movement: a generic load or unload, with a Reason picked from the configured direct reasons (e.g. purchase, sale, load, unload, inventory surplus/shortfall) — each already tied to the correct direction, so you never have to guess it. Pick Item, Warehouse, Quantity and — only for inbound reasons — the Unit value (recomputes that item's weighted average cost; on an outbound movement the current average cost is used instead, unchanged).
• Opening stock: sets an item's valued starting stock the first time (Item, Warehouse, Quantity, Unit value, Notes).
• Adjust: aligns the system stock with a real physical count, with an Increase (+) / Decrease (-) switch to say whether you're correcting upward or downward.
• Transfer: moves a quantity of an item from a Source warehouse to a Destination warehouse at its current average cost (source and destination can't match — SamBooks blocks the attempt before it's even sent).

Every dialog validates its required fields before submitting (reason, item, warehouse and a quantity greater than zero), with a message in plain language if something's missing. The movement date is always today's: it can't be changed from the form. To review every recorded movement, in chronological order, press Movements journal: it opens a list with filters by warehouse and movement type, and the columns Date/Type/Reason/Item/Warehouse/Quantity/Unit price/Value.

12. Check stock, below-minimum items and valuation

Still on the Warehouse page: the Stock tab lists, per item and warehouse, the available quantity, the committed one (reserved by confirmed orders) and the ordered one, the weighted average cost and the value; a badge flags an item that's below its minimum stock. The Below minimum tab filters straight down to only the items under threshold, with the missing quantity computed against the reorder point — only items with Stock-managed turned on (step 2) and a minimum stock set show up here. At the top of the page you'll also find the total Warehouse value (at weighted average cost) and the Export CSV (movements journal) and Valuation PDF buttons.

13. Manage several warehouses (depots)

If the company has more than one physical location, switch to the Warehouses tab (still inside the Warehouse page). SamBooks automatically creates a first, main warehouse on first access, so you can start recording movements without configuring anything. From here you can:

• press Import from offices to create a warehouse for every legal/operating office already on file in the company register — the action is repeatable without creating duplicates (a second click won't duplicate warehouses already imported);
• press New warehouse to create one by hand, entering at least code, name and city/province;
• open Edit on an existing warehouse to rename it or update its details;
• delete a warehouse — the action is blocked with an explicit message if the warehouse still has stock: clear it first with a transfer or an unload.

Tips

• The Suggest accounts (AI) button on items and services can take up to 15-20 seconds: it stays in "Analysing…" state until the answer arrives, no need to click it again.
• Turn on Stock-managed only for items you genuinely want to track in the warehouse: a switched-off item never generates movements and never shows up in the below-minimum list, even if you set a minimum stock and reorder point on it.
• A price list assigned as dedicated to a customer is reserved for them: don't use it to "try out" a general price, because as long as it stays assigned it will never act as a fallback for other customers, nor fall back to other price lists for itself.
• To populate the catalog for the first time with dozens or hundreds of items, CSV import is faster than the single-item form: export an empty/sample file first to see the exact expected column order.

Common issues

• "Code already exists": an item's or service's Internal code, or a price list's Code, must be unique within the company; pick a different one or edit the existing record instead of creating a new one.
• "Select a reason" / "Enter a quantity greater than zero": in the movement dialogs, reason, item, warehouse and quantity are all required; the form blocks submission before it even reaches the server, with a plain-language message.
• "Source and destination cannot match": on a Transfer, the two warehouses must be different.
• A warehouse won't delete: if it still has any stock (even a small amount), deletion is blocked until you clear it with a transfer or an unload.
• The expected price doesn't show up on a quote/order: first check whether the customer has a dedicated price list assigned (step 7) — if so, the item needs its own price on that list, otherwise the price falls back to the base price rather than to another generic price list, even a cheaper one.
• Re-importing the same CSV doesn't create duplicates: rows that already exist (same code) are flagged as skipped, not duplicated — you can safely repeat an import.

FAQ

Why are Items and Services two separate tabs instead of one list? Because a service can never carry stock, by design: keeping them separate avoids offering minimum stock, logistics or movements on something that never has a warehouse presence.

Can I sell the same item at a different price to two different customers? Yes: create two price lists (or one price list with two rows for the same item at different minimum quantities) and assign the right one to each customer from their record (step 7).

What's the difference between "Delete" on an item/service/price list and "Delete" on a single price list row? The former is reversible: the record is deactivated, not erased, and you can reactivate it later. The latter is permanent: the price list row is removed and can't be recovered.

Can Sam do all of this for me? Yes: creating, editing and deleting items, services, price lists and price list rows, recording movements and warehouses, checking stock and below-minimum items, and exporting CSVs are all available by talking to Sam from the chat panel too. The manual form and the chat are equivalent paths — use whichever is more convenient at any given moment, even switching between them on the same record.

Related features

• Warehouse (stock, below-minimum, movements, warehouses, journal, valuation): the sibling sidebar entry described in steps 11-13, which tracks the quantities of the items created here.
• Physical inventory: a dedicated sidebar entry for periodic stock counts.
• Customers: where you assign a dedicated price list to a customer (step 7) and where the link between customer record and pre-filled price starts.
• Quotes, Sales orders, Delivery notes and Invoices: the sections where items, services and price lists become document lines, with the price pre-filled by the logic in step 8.