A miscellaneous product is a general charge your association sells through Finance & Billing, rather than through Membership, Events, or another application. Common examples include replacement certificates, room hire fees, and processing charges. If you currently invoice a service, such as consulting work, only in outside accounting software, you can make it sellable in Rhythm as a miscellaneous product. You can also set it up as a membership add-on if that better matches how your association bills for it.
Prerequisites
- You need the miscellaneous products permission in Setup.
- The business unit must already exist, along with anything you plan to select on the product, such as G/L accounts in its financial setup, an installment plan, a file cabinet, or another product to bundle.
- If you plan to use this product as an event’s cancellation fee, create the miscellaneous product first. The event’s cancellation fee setting can only use miscellaneous products that already exist.
Where to Find It
Go to Finance & Billing › Setup › Miscellaneous Products to view the miscellaneous products in your Rhythm account. Select Create Miscellaneous Product to add a new product, or open a row to edit an existing one.
The Settings
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Unit | The business units in your Rhythm account | The business unit you are working in | Sets the product’s accounting home, which you cannot change after you create the product |
| ID | Letters, digits, and the characters your Rhythm account allows | The business unit’s identifier and a dash, added for you | Must start with the business unit’s identifier |
| Name | Any text | Empty; required | Shows the product label to staff and, unless hidden, to members |
| Price and Member Price | An amount | None; price is required | Sets the base-currency price and the price shown to members |
| Status | Active, inactive | Active | Records whether the product should still be sold; see below |
| Bundled Products | On/off, with a list of items and quantities | Off | Sells several products together as one line |
| Special Prices | On/off, with an ordered list of eligibility criteria and prices, or a formula | Off | Charges a different price to buyers who match criteria you define |
| Bulk Pricing | On/off, with quantity-range discount rules | Off | Discounts the product by a percentage or flat amount at higher quantities |
| Foreign Currency Prices | Calculated, set price, or not offered, per currency your business unit accepts | — | Appears only when your business unit has multiple currencies turned on |
| Custom Pricing Function | A pricing function registered in Integrations | None | Uses your registered pricing logic instead of the settings above |
| Cancellation Fee, Restocking Fee | An amount, per currency | None | Keeps the fee automatically when an order for the product is cancelled or returned |
| Hide this product from users in the portal / offer only between two dates | On/off; a date range | Off | Records the intended Portal visibility; see below |
Bundles, Special Prices, and Bulk Pricing
A bundle can include products from any application your Rhythm account uses, and each item has its own quantity. Rhythm will not save the bundle if the bundled items total more than the product’s own price, or if their member prices total more than the product’s member price. A bundle also cannot include merchandise tracked by individual stock-keeping units (SKU), because the bundle cannot identify which specific variant to ship.
Bundling does not change the total the customer pays. Each bundled product is added to the order at its own specified price, and Rhythm reduces the bundle’s own line amount by the same amount. The customer’s total still equals the bundle product’s price.
Warning
Watch member pricing closely when you bundle. If a bundled item’s standard price and member price do not follow the same relationship as the bundle’s own standard and member prices — for example, a bundled item priced normally but free for members, inside a bundle priced the same for everyone — some purchasers can end up with a zero-priced order, while others get a negative effective amount on that line. That distortion carries through to invoice, accounts receivable, and deferred-revenue reporting, so check both the standard and member price on every bundled item against the bundle’s own prices before you save.
Rhythm does not store a bundle’s split across its individual products on the payment or invoice record, so both records still show the bundle’s full total. The product-by-product breakdown appears later in subledger entries. If you use payment- or invoice-level reporting to see each bundled product separately, including its own accounts-receivable account, use subledger entries instead. You can also avoid bundling components you need to report on that way, because an inline bundle can leave you with only one visible product and one A/R account in a payment query, even when separate line items previously showed one per component.
Special prices let you charge different amounts to different groups of buyers. The editor keeps the rules in the order you list them, but that order does not define which rule wins when more than one rule could apply to the same buyer. You can test the rules from the product editor against a sample buyer before you publish. A special price can also use a formula instead of a fixed amount, following the formula syntax shown on the form. When a special price uses a formula, Rhythm calculates the price from that formula and ignores the fixed price field above it. When you save, Rhythm checks that it can read the formula as an expression, but it does not check that every variable in the formula will exist when an order is placed.
Tip
When more than one special price could apply to the same buyer, this configuration does not define which one wins. If you use special prices for distinct groups, keep their eligibility criteria from overlapping.
Marking a Product Inactive
Changing a product’s status to inactive does not, by itself, stop the product from being ordered, bundled into another product, or posted. The application selling the product and the Portal determine whether it is still offered, so do not rely on inactive status as your only way to stop sales.
Similarly, turning on Hide this product from users in the portal, or setting a date window, only records your intent. No Portal page was found that reads that setting, so confirm in your own Portal that the product is actually hidden before you assume it is.
Card Processing Fees
If a miscellaneous product appears on an invoice and its name suggests a card processing fee, that is expected. When your Rhythm account passes card processing costs on to payers, Rhythm records the fee as an invoice line that names a miscellaneous product. That lets the fee be invoiced and posted through that product’s own financial setup, like any other charge. Give that product a financial configuration so batch posting does not stop for it; see the related article on product financial setup below.
Renaming this product does not change what the payer sees at checkout or on the invoice. The surcharge is always labeled Credit Card Processing Fee there, regardless of the name you give the underlying miscellaneous product.
Convenience fees work the same way. They are tied to a specific miscellaneous product, typically named Convenience Fee, under Finance & Billing › Setup › Miscellaneous Products. The G/L account on that product’s financial setup controls which account convenience fees post to, so change it there if convenience fees need to land somewhere else.
For an event’s processing fee, the miscellaneous product’s own price does not have to match the amount charged. The charged amount comes from the event’s processing-fee transaction, not from this product’s price. If the processing fee is meant to be the only fee charged for that event, you can leave this product’s price at $0. In that case, the product’s job is only to give the fee a home in your finance history, not to set the amount.
Warning
Miscellaneous products do not currently have their own option to add a credit card processing fee the way some other product types do. If you need to pass card processing costs on to payers for a miscellaneous product, handle that elsewhere instead of through this product’s own settings.
Dependencies and Precedence
- A miscellaneous product cannot move to another business unit once you create it through the ordinary create-or-edit editor. If Rhythm refuses the change, create a new product in the other business unit instead.
- A product's identifier must start with its business unit's identifier and a dash, and Rhythm checks it again on every edit.
- Deleting a product deletes its financial configuration with it, and Rhythm refuses the deletion while any other product’s bundle still names it.
- Deferral needs its own setting. A charge for this product creates a revenue recognition schedule only when you turn on deferral for the product, with its deferral settings filled in, in its financial setup. Without that setting, charges post as ordinary revenue with no schedule.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Editing a product’s price, bundle, or pricing rules affects orders placed after you save. Anything already ordered or invoiced keeps its own recorded amount. There is no undo after you save, so reopen the product and change the setting back if needed.
Why You Cannot Always Delete a Product
You cannot delete a miscellaneous product while another product’s bundle still names it. Beyond that, Rhythm does not check whether invoices, orders, or payments already name the product before deleting it. This has allowed products still tied to billing records, such as a chapter dues product still referenced by dues invoices, to be deleted when they should have been protected. Treat deletion as permanent, and mark a product inactive instead of deleting it if it has ever been sold or invoiced.
Permissions
Creating, editing, and deleting a miscellaneous product all require the miscellaneous products permission in Setup.
Validation and Errors
| Message contains | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "A product ID should start with the business unit id…" | The identifier does not start with the product’s business unit | Keep the form’s prefix, or correct it by hand |
| The save is refused after turning on Bundled Products | No item was added to the bundle, or the bundle’s items total more than the product’s price | Add at least one item, and check the bundled prices against the product’s own price |
| "Unable to parse special pricing formula" | A special price’s formula is not a valid expression | Correct the formula, or remove it if the special price switch is off |
| The save is refused when changing the business unit | Miscellaneous products cannot move between business units | Create a new product in the target business unit instead |
| Delete fails with a general error | Another product’s bundle still names this product | Remove it from that bundle first, or leave this product in place |