Please advice that in service businss we need to double-create the item types in items (like break inspection) and activity types in Activity, and there is no way to avoid double-management of those.
It look we need to define service types in two places:
Items — for selling services in Sales Orders / Invoices
Activity Types — for logging time in Timesheets
But this double-entry (e.g., “Brake Inspection” in both) feels redundant. Let’s cover:
The Problem:
You want to sell and track the same service (like “Brake Inspection”)
But ERPNext treats:
Items → for pricing and sales
Activity Types → for time logging
There’s no automatic link between them
Option that we see: Manually Keep Naming Consistent (Baseline)
Use the same names for Items and Activity Types:
Item: Brake Inspection
Activity Type: Brake Inspection
And yes — this requires manual duplication and is error-prone.
Please confirm that there is no other way of doing it more elegantly
Im not really familiar with ERPNext doctypes but,
if your issue is ‘There’s no automatic link between them‘ then create one with a server script.
Your server script should trigger on submit, it would check if an item exists with a similar name to the activity, if not, create a new one.
You can enhance the UX with a client script to automatically populate the item link field with the correct item in the Create Invoice from Timesheet dialog
@Dennisd it sounds like you are running an automotive repair service business.
While ERPNext can work out of the box for some services, some specialties may require custom apps or customization.
If task_type in Timesheets were directly tied to an Item, some use cases would suffer usability with this constraint. Many implementations use timesheets purely for payroll purposes.
This topic is very interesting. I’m especially intrigued by your assumption that these components should be linked. I’m working on an automotive repair app based loosely on servicems.
I think your idea may be an interesting feature to addd to my app.
Currently ERPNext only includes support for associating Timesheet Details as a single Item to be added to an invoice.
A custom app to associate a task_type to an Item, plus the ability to add such details to an Invoice would worth considering for some applications.
Servicems adds custom doctypes for thinks like service templates that can be added to a Repair Order then convert to a Sales Invoice.
@volkswagner thanks for the input, we look to use existing ERPnext functionality, and the above is how it is working in ERPnext. The logic is that services are items, but the timesheets are based on activity-type (app/activity-type) logic in ERP next. So this is not the idea but logical way to have consistency. The only point is that if there is other way of doing it using existing one.
As for servicems/servicems/service_management/doctype at main · aakvatech/servicems · GitHub
it is creating a lot of unnecessary new doctypes (like checklists), also its not perfect fit in US car body shop workflows. Overall the key workflows might be
It looks like we agree on the idea of the checklists. Those won’t be included in my app
I don’t plan on using the manufacturing components. We will use service templates that will include a list of parts and an associated labor component. This will offer flexibility allowing a list of parts that can be easily modified in the repair order. I have a feeling using BOMs might be too restrictive in practical use in your scenario.
Items — for selling services in Sales Orders / Invoices
The Problem: