Summary
Each Product acts as a template for a Line Item. Each Product just describes the Subscription/Fee itself - it's not connected to a specific Deal/Company. When you're adding Line Items to a Deal, you can save time by selecting an existing Product - although it's not mandatory to use Products
Product is a special data model, in that:
You won't find it in the Data Explorer and you can't make Pages (Grouped List etc.) for it - instead, Products live in the Product Catalog within the "Settings" Global Tool
You don't create custom fields directly for it, as you create custom fields on the Line Item model instead and then they will be populated for the Product model too
Products can be grouped into Packages, which adds an element of organization and helps with adding Line Items (via Products) to Deals in bulk
Who is this article for?
All Planhat Users
This article is for anyone who would like a little more detail than our revenue overview article
This article refers to new revenue features in Planhat, launching in early 2026, so you may not have access to them yet. Please speak with your Planhat CSM if you would like to discuss the rollout.
Introduction
In early 2026, we are introducing a new series of data models for revenue, further enhancing Planhat's offering as an operational revenue platform, where you can manage your sales/subscriptions both pre-sales (opportunities) and post-sales (licenses and fees). In this specific article, we focus on the Product model, and the associated "Product Catalog".
📌 Definition: "data model" or "model"
In Planhat, data is organized in various "data models" (also called simply "models") - similar to the "objects" you may be familiar with in other tools
For example:
The Company model is used for organizations that you deal with (customers or prospects)
The End User model is for external people - your customers, prospects or other contacts
And there are many other models for other purposes
Each model has its own characteristics designed for its use case, such as system (default/standard) fields
The individual instances of data inside those models are called records - e.g. Company records could be Dell, Nestlé or Nissan
Let's begin with a quick summary of the Product model:
🔑 Product - key points
Each Product acts as a template for a Line Item. Each Product just describes the Subscription/Fee itself - it's not connected to a specific Deal/Company in the way a Line Item is. When you're adding Line Items to a Deal, you can save time by selecting an existing Product - although it's not mandatory to use Products
Product is a special data model, in that:
You won't find it in the Data Explorer and you can't make Grouped List etc. Pages for it - instead, Products live in the Product Catalog within the "Settings" Global Tool for admins
You don't create custom fields directly for it, as you create custom fields on the Line Item model instead and then they will be populated for the Product model too
Products can be grouped into Packages, which adds an element of organization and helps with adding Line Items (via Products) to Deals in bulk
You can also color-categorize Products
In this article, we'll go through these points in further depth.
If you're an existing Planhat customer and are familiar with our previous revenue data structure, here's a summary of the changes.
📌 Product - comparison with legacy revenue setup
Previously, there was a more basic Product Catalog within the "Settings" Global Tool, where you named "Recurring Products" and "Non-recurring Products" that could be selected in Licenses and Sales respectively
This has now been replaced with a new data model: Product, as described in this article
What are Products?
Products act as templates for Line Items (a bit like the Workflow Template v. Workflow models). For example, if you offer three types of licenses - Data Professional, Data Advanced and Data Enterprise - you would create each of these as Products in Planhat. Then, when you are adding Line Items to a specific Deal (e.g. a new Deal for Jiminny), you can select the relevant Products (either individually or in bulk) to automatically fill in details of the Line Items.
Although it's not mandatory to refer to Products when creating Line Items (meaning you can add a completely custom Line Item if desired), using Products whenever possible makes the process even quicker and easier by pre-filling details for you. As well as efficiency, it also enables consistency/reproducibility/standardization -ensuring the same, correct details are entered each time a particular item is quoted or sold.
For details of how to add Line Items to Deals via Products, see here.
The screenshot below is an example of a Product (showing as a Preview - the panel on the right-hand side) showing within the Product Catalog within the "Settings" Global Tool.
Click the image to view it enlarged
Packages
Products can (optionally) be categorized into Packages. "Packages" don't refer to another data model; instead, "Package" is a customizable system (standard/default) field of type "multipick list", with different Package names as field value options.
For example:
For each individual Product, you can then specify which Package(s) it belongs to by using the checkboxes in the field, as shown in the Product Catalog screenshot below.
Click the image to view it enlarged
You can then select from these Packages when adding Line Items in bulk to a Deal.
Viewing Products
Products are a special type of data model. Rather than seeing them in Data Explorer and Pages like other data models, you view and edit them in a specific part of the "Settings" Global Tool called "Product Catalog", in the "Revenue" category.
Click the image to view it enlarged
🚀 Tip
Even though this is a part of the "Settings" Global Tool, you can still customize the columns shown, via the slider icon. You can read more about this general concept here.
How to create a new Product
You can either create Products from scratch directly in Planhat, or you can import/sync Products into Planhat if you already have a list of them elsewhere.
To create a new Product from scratch in Planhat:
Navigate to the Product Catalog (in the "Revenue" category within the "Settings" Global Tool), and click the "+ Add product" button in the top right
Fill in the details on the Create Form
🚀 Tip: As with other data models, you can customize which fields are shown in the Product Create Form - to learn about how to do this, see here
Click "Create Product"
Click the image to view it enlarged
To import Products via spreadsheet, within the Product Catalog, you can click on the ellipsis symbol (3 dots) next to the "+ Add product" button, and then click "Import Products", as shown in the screenshot below. (Alternatively, you can use the general spreadsheet import tool in Federated Search, selecting "Products" from the dropdown menu.)
You'll see a form as shown below. Click "Download template" to download a spreadsheet (with specific columns) where you can enter your Product details, and then you can click on "Choose a file..." (shown in the screenshot below) to select your completed spreadsheet to upload.
You can alternatively sync Products into Planhat via applicable Planhat integrations with Salesforce and HubSpot. For more details on this, see our separate article.
System fields
Let's take a look at some system (standard/default) fields on the Product model.
Name - the name of the Product, e.g. "Automation Advanced"
Type - this is a list field (showing as a dropdown menu) where you choose between:
"Subscription" - for recurring revenue; this is equivalent to the legacy "License" model
"Fee" - for non-recurring revenue; this is equivalent to the legacy "Sale" model
Currency - the standard currency of the Product, e.g. "USD" (United States Dollars)
Fixed Period - a Boolean field (toggle switch) defining whether a Product set to "Subscription" is for a fixed period (e.g. a 12-month license) or not (i.e. is an open-ended license). (Note that this field is not applicable if the "Type" is set to "Fee")
Auto Renewal - a Boolean field (toggle switch) defining whether the Product will auto-renew or not
Length (months) - for Products with "Type" equal to Subscription and "Fixed Period" equal to True, here you can define the length of the contract in months, e.g. 12, 24 or 6
Packages - this is a "multipick list" type field, where you can select (from a dropdown menu) one or more "packages" that the Product belongs to; for example, "CRM" or "CS Advanced" (as we discussed here)
Color - in this field you can assign a specific color for the Product. This helps to categorize/visualize different groups of Products in charts
Custom fields for Products
As well as being located in Settings, another way in which Products are slightly unusual compared to other data models is that in the "Data Model" Global Tool, you will not be able to create new custom fields within the "Product" tab, but you can still customize the Create Form and the Preview (concise Profile) Template. If you want to add new custom fields to the Product model, you actually add them to the Line Item model, and then those will be automatically added to the Product model as well.
Click the image to view it enlarged
Further reading
If you'd like to learn more about the other revenue data models, check out the articles below:
You can also go through a tutorial on the Product model and the Product Catalog here.