Clean Up The Products & Services; For Your Firm’s Files and For Your Clients’ Files
It’s always good policy to have a QBO list housekeeping routine.
Cleaning up lists is doubly important if you have integrations, particularly inventory, sales and payments apps, that pull and push information to your files. The lists can become bloated and inaccurate, especially if an integration is also pushing in shoddy tax codes.
Products and Services are the key to clean invoicing and sales reporting (you can also track to accounts other than revenue), along with being critical to inventory management and reporting.
This article is about Products and Services and Product Category housekeeping as it relates to sales. You can either do the clean-up manually in QBO (especially if you use RightTool) or export to a CSV file, clean things up and then re-import.
When I am cleaning up P&Ss, the first thing I do is map out where I want them to track to in the COA, and then I build the Categories around the mapping. My categories essentially match the key revenue streams plus an “Other” or Misc” one for the weird little things like payment processing fees and such.
Product Categories in QBO are basically folders for your Products & Services list. They don’t touch the accounting, but they make day-to-day work faster and your reporting cleaner. Here’s why you’d use them:
Better product-mix insights: Many item reports (e.g., Sales by Product/Service Summary/Detail) can group or filter by Category, so you can see which lines are actually selling
Cleaner item management: Filter the Products & Services screen by category to review, bulk-edit, or make items inactive
Smoother imports & app syncs: CSV imports include a Category column, and many e-comm/inventory apps map items by category—less manual cleanup
Targeted pricing rules: If you use Price Rules, you can apply them to an entire Category (e.g., 10% off all “Accessories”)
Team consistency: Categories push staff to pick the right item faster and reduce one-off “misc” product creation
When they’re especially helpful
You have 50+ items or multiple service lines/product lines
You want product-line reporting, but don’t want to turn on Classes/Locations
You run promos/price changes for groups of items at once using price rules
Price rules are set up in Account & Settings.
Turn it on (one-time):
Gear ⚙️ → Account and settings → Sales → Products and services → toggle Price rules on → Save.
Create a rule:
Option A: Sales → Products & services → More (top right) → Price rules → New price rule.
Option B: Gear ⚙️ → All lists → Price rules → New price rule.
From there, you can: name it, set start/end dates, choose customers or customer groups, select items or categories, set a % or fixed discount/markup, and add rounding.
Quick tips:
If you don’t see Price rules, it may not be available on your plan/region, or you might need admin rights
Use Categories to apply one rule to a whole line of services/products in one go
Customer Groups + Price Rules = automatic tiered pricing (VIPs, wholesale, non-profit, etc.)
Category tips:
Categories don’t post to the GL—they’re organizational/reporting only
Don’t duplicate Classes with Categories—use Classes for department/segment reporting; use Categories to group items
Keep the list tight (think 5–15 categories); too many = no benefit
Name them clearly (e.g., for a firm: Onboarding, Cleanup, Monthly Bookkeeping, Payroll, AR Services, Advisory, Training)
So now you have your categories set up, it’s time to clean up the Products and Services. I know I harp on this, but like with all lists, such as Categories and Chart of Accounts, create a naming convention.
You can:
Manually go through and edit the P&Ss
Bulk edit to make inactive and non-inventory
Use RightTool to batch change tax and accounts
Export and clean up the lists and re-import
When exporting and importing, use caution and know whether you are importing them as new or overwriting existing ones.
Why clean up the Products and Services at all?
For starters, it’s a great value-added service!
And good list housekeeping is the sign of reliable data.
Faster invoicing, fewer clicks
Staff find the right item in seconds
Accurate posting
Each item maps to the correct income/COGS/class and the right GST/HST code—no more reclasses at month-end
Consistent pricing
Enables reliable Price Rules, bundles, and fewer one-off overrides
Cleaner reports
Sales by Product/Service (and margins if using inventory) actually reflect reality—great for product-line/advisory insights
Better integrations
POS/e-comm/apps sync to the right items instead of spawning duplicates or “Other charge” chaos
Inventory integrity
Correct types/SKUs/UoM prevent negative stock and COGS distortions
Team consistency
Standard names/descriptions stop the creation of random new items
Simpler tax audits
Proper tax codes at the item level = fewer manual overrides to defend
Smoother closes
Less detective work cleaning “Uncategorized Income” or fixing mis-coded sales
Scalability
Categories and customer groups work properly as you add services or promos
Want a QBO Product and Services cleanup workflow? Grab it here.
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