Services
A service is a saved definition of something you sell. Set it up once — the wording, the price, the revenue account it books to, the VAT it carries — and from then on billing it is picking it from a list. The description, unit and price drop onto the invoice line, the revenue lands in the right account, and the tax is calculated without anyone deciding anything.
That last part is the real reason the catalogue is worth your time. Tax on a sales invoice isn’t chosen by whoever types the invoice; it comes from what’s ticked on the service and on the customer. Get the catalogue right once and every invoice is right afterwards. Get it wrong and the invoices go out with no VAT on them, with nothing on screen to warn you.
You’ll find it under Services in the menu: Add Service to create one, Search Services to find one later. Creating and editing needs the service permission; the search screen has its own.
Set your accounts and taxes up first
A service is mostly a set of pointers to accounts, so the accounts have to exist before it can point at them. In Chart of Accounts, under Include in drop-down menus, the ticks that matter here are:
| The service needs… | Tick on the account |
|---|---|
| a revenue account to offer in Income | AR → Lineitem and Non-tracking Items → Income |
| a cost account to offer in Expense | AP → Lineitem and Non-tracking Items → Expense |
| a tax rate to offer at all | Non-tracking Items → Tax |
Both ticks are required, not either one. An account missing one of them simply doesn’t appear in the dropdown — which is what’s usually behind “the account exists, why can’t I select it?”.
Then set the rate on the Taxes page. An account with a Tax tick shows up there; a rate with no tax account behind it can’t exist.
Adding a service
Services → Add Service. The form has three tabs; almost everything that matters is on the first, Mandatory Field.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Number | Your reference for the service. Leave it blank — it shows Auto — and the next number is assigned for you. Numbers must be unique; reusing one is refused. |
| Description | Required. This becomes the invoice line text, so write it the way you want the customer to read it. You can still edit it per invoice. |
| Unit | Hours, days, pieces — whatever you bill in. Maximum 5 characters — nothing hints at the limit until the moment you exceed it. Std. or h rather than Stunden. |
| Sell Price | The default price per unit. It fills the invoice line and stays editable there, so it’s a starting point rather than a rule. |
| Income | Required. The revenue account this service credits when you sell it. This is the one field to get right the first time — see below. |
| Expense | Pre-filled with your default cost account — every service must carry one. Change it if the cost belongs elsewhere; clearing it makes the save fail. |
| Notes | Copied into the invoice line’s Item Notes and printed on the customer’s invoice under that line. This is customer-facing text — don’t put internal remarks here. |
Below those, one checkbox per tax rate, each labelled with its account’s own description from your chart — so what you see here depends on your dataset. Tick every rate this service can ever be charged at. This is half of how VAT gets onto an invoice; the other half is on the customer.
Post saves it. Post as New takes what’s on screen and saves it as a second, separate service — handy for a near-identical variant.
Why VAT is missing from an invoice
This is the single most common surprise in the catalogue, so it’s worth understanding rather than working around.
A tax rate is charged only when the same account is ticked in two places: on the service, and on the customer. neoo takes the rates ticked on the service, keeps only those also ticked on the customer, and charges what’s left. If that leaves nothing, the invoice is simply issued without VAT — no warning, no message, nothing red on the screen. The invoice looks finished, because as far as the system is concerned it is.
So when VAT is missing, check in this order:
- Is the rate ticked on the service? Open it under Search Services and look at the tax checkboxes.
- Is the same rate ticked on the customer? Open the customer and check the VAT tab, under VAT Rates. There’s a Select all if the customer should carry everything.
- Does the rate even reach the service form? This is the one that wastes an afternoon. A tax account needs Non-tracking Items → Tax to be offered on a service, and AR → Tax to be offered on a customer. They are different ticks on the same account. An account with only AR → Tax appears on every customer and on no service — so it can never be charged, and the service form gives no clue it exists. If a rate you expect isn’t in the service’s checkbox list at all, this is why.
- Has the rate expired? Rates can carry a Valid To date, and the rate applied is the one valid on the invoice date. A rate that ended before the invoice date contributes nothing — again silently. See tax rate validity periods.
One more thing worth knowing before you go looking for a bug: new customers don’t inherit tax ticks from anywhere. A customer created in a hurry, with the VAT tab untouched, will be invoiced without VAT no matter how the service is set up.
The quickest way to prove where the problem is: put the same service on an invoice for a customer you know is taxed correctly. If the VAT appears, the fault is on the customer; if it doesn’t, it’s on the service or on the chart account behind the rate.
Income and expense accounts
Income is where the money lands. Sell a service on an invoice and its Income account is credited with the line total — so this is the field that decides what your income statement looks like. Splitting your revenue across a few accounts (consulting, support, licences) costs nothing here and is what makes the Income Statement readable later. If you’d rather split by engagement or team than by account, that’s what Projects & Departments are for.
Expense is filled in for you and can’t be removed — every service carries a cost account. You’ll rarely need to touch it; if it matters where the cost is booked, change it here.
The Expense dropdown offers slightly more accounts than it will accept. If a save fails complaining about the expense account, the account is missing its Non-tracking Items → Expense tick — tick it in the chart, or pick a different account.
Billing a service
On a Sales Invoice, each line’s Item is a service. Typing searches your catalogue by number and description; picking one fills in the description, unit, price and item notes, all of which stay editable on the line. Nothing you change on the invoice changes the catalogue.
Two shortcuts sit on the Line Items card:
- New service creates a catalogue entry without leaving the invoice — useful the first time you bill something new. It’s saved properly and available everywhere afterwards.
- The pencil on a line opens that service for editing.
Both need the service permission. Note that editing a service changes it for future invoices only — invoices already posted keep the wording and price they were posted with, which is what you want.
Finding a service later
Services → Search Services lists your catalogue. The search box at the top matches across number, description, unit and notes; Filters opens the rest.
Item Status filters the list: Active (the default), Obsolete, and Orphaned. Orphaned lists services that have never been used on an invoice or order. Obsolete is a flag nothing in neoo sets, so it only surfaces services brought over from an older system with that mark — and such a service still appears in the invoice item picker. To retire a service you no longer sell, rename it so its status is obvious — a DO NOT USE prefix does the job — and history is safe either way, because editing a service never touches invoices already posted. Include in Report controls which columns the table shows.
One quirk to save you a puzzle: Clear unticks every column, including the ones the table started with, leaving an empty table. Re-tick what you want, or leave the page and come back.
The other two tabs
Additional Details and Pricing hold optional reference fields — origin, tariff codes, list price, last cost. None of them affect a sales invoice: the line price comes from Sell Price, and the accounts and tax come from the first tab. Fill them in if they’re useful to you as a record; leave them alone otherwise. Nothing on those tabs will change what your customer is billed.