Items are the building blocks of every invoice — each line on an invoice references an item (a product, service, or fee) with a name, description, price, and taxable flag. Biller Genie keeps your items in sync with your accounting software so the same item catalog drives invoicing in both places. This article covers how items work in Biller Genie: how they sync, when to create one locally, and the small set of fields you can edit.
Items sync bidirectionally with your accounting software
When Biller Genie is connected to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero, your items round-trip in both directions:
- From your accounting software into Biller Genie — every item in your QBO/QBD/Xero item list is pulled into Biller Genie on the first sync and kept up-to-date thereafter.
- From Biller Genie back to your accounting software — items you create in Biller Genie are pushed back so they show up in QBO/QBD/Xero too.
The result: you can manage your item catalog in either system — whichever is more convenient — and both stay in sync.
Where items live in Biller Genie
Open Items from the main menu. The grid lists every item with columns for Name, Description, Price, Taxable, and Active status. Click an item name to edit it; click Add New Item in the upper right to create one.
Creating a new item in Biller Genie
- Click Add New Item.
- Fill in the fields:
- Name — the item name (must be unique within your account).
- Description — appears on the invoice line for this item.
- Unit Price — default price (can be overridden on individual invoices).
- Is Taxable — whether the item is subject to sales tax. The actual tax rate comes from your accounting software's tax configuration.
- Is Active — toggle off to hide the item from the item picker on new invoices (without deleting it).
- Click Save. The item appears immediately in Biller Genie and pushes to your accounting software on the next sync.
If you try to create an item with the same name as an existing one, Biller Genie blocks the save and shows a "duplicate item name" error.
Editing an item
Click the item name in the grid. The fields are the same as Create — change what you need and save. Edits sync back to your accounting software on the next cycle. Existing invoices that use the item are NOT retroactively updated — the line item on those invoices keeps its original price and description.
There is no items bulk import
Biller Genie does not have a CSV import tool for items. If you need to load a large item list, the best path is to import the items into your accounting software (QBO and QBD have native import tools; Xero does too), and let the Biller Genie sync pull them in afterward. The Biller Genie merchant portal does support exporting your existing items to CSV (Items grid > Export), which is useful for review or migration.
Important: if you're using Biller Genie's Invoice Import tool to bulk-load invoices, the invoices reference items by ID — meaning you need your items already present in Biller Genie (either synced from your AS or created manually) before you import invoices that use them. See Importing Invoices to Biller Genie.
Deactivating an item instead of deleting
Like with customers, Biller Genie doesn't expose a hard delete for items in the merchant portal — and deleting an item in your accounting software is also generally a bad idea once the item has been used on invoices (your accounting software will either block the delete or merge it into Inventory Adjustments). The right pattern is to toggle Is Active to off. The item disappears from the item picker on new invoices but stays in the catalog and on historical invoices.
Item catalog best practices
- Keep names short and descriptive. "Hourly Consulting" is better than "Generic Service" — both for your team picking from the dropdown and for the customer reading the invoice.
- Use Description for what the customer needs to know. The Description appears on the printed invoice; the Name is mostly for your internal picker.
- Set Is Taxable correctly per item. If your accounting software has automated sales tax, the taxable flag drives whether tax applies to that line. Wrong here = wrong tax everywhere.
- Don't create an item for every customer-specific job. Use the Description field on the invoice line for one-off customizations instead. Keep your item catalog small (under ~100 items) for usability.
- Deactivate, don't delete. Once an item has been used on an invoice, deactivating preserves the audit trail.