Cannelle has always been comfortable pricing work by time. A Basic task could be billed by the minute, the hour, the day, or the week — which covers a large slice of professional services, from hourly consulting to day-rate contracting.
But not everything is time. Sometimes what you sell is a thing: a batch of translated certificates, a set of edited photos, a run of printed brochures, a number of licenses. For that kind of work, "three hours" is the wrong unit — what the client agreed to, and what you want on the invoice, is "twelve items."
So we have added per-item pricing units to the Basic task. You can now price a task by count instead of by time, and mix the two freely across your quotes and projects.
Three count-based units join the familiar time-based ones in the Basic task's pricing. They behave exactly like the time units — you set a rate per unit and a quantity, and Cannelle multiplies them out — but the meaning is a flat count rather than elapsed time.
A neutral, general-purpose count. Reach for it when none of the more specific labels fit — a rate per unit, times however many units the job involves.
One discrete deliverable in a batch: a translated document, a retouched image, a processed record. Price per item and set the quantity to the number in the batch.
A physical or produced piece — a printed copy, a manufactured part, a fabricated element. Handy for work priced by production run rather than by effort.
They sit alongside the existing time units — Minute, Hour, Day, and Week — in the same dropdown. Nothing about the time-based flow changes; you simply have more choices when a job is better measured by count.
// good to know
The label is descriptive, not restrictive. Cannelle treats Unit, Item, and Piece identically under the hood — pick whichever word reads most clearly on the quote and invoice your client will see. If in doubt, Unit is the safe, neutral default.
The unit lives in the pricing of a Basic task, so you choose it wherever you build that task — on a Quote while you are scoping the work, or on a Project once the work is underway. Open the task, go to its price list, and pick the unit from the dropdown next to the rate.
Because the units are part of the task's pricing, they carry through the rest of Cannelle without any extra steps. A per-item task on a quote stays per-item when the quote becomes a project, and it flows straight onto the invoice with the same unit, rate, and quantity. Save a task setup you use often as a template and the unit comes along with everything else.
// on a quote
Quote a deliverable the way your client thinks about it — "40 items at €18" reads more clearly than an hourly estimate, and there is no gap to explain between the estimate and the final bill.
// on a project
Adjust the quantity as the real count lands. If the batch grows from 40 to 46 items, update the number — the rate stays fixed and the total follows automatically.
A quick rule of thumb: if the client is paying for an outcome you can count, price by item; if they are paying for your time, price by time. A few common cases:
A fixed price per certificate, regardless of how long each one takes. Set the unit to Item and the quantity to the number in the batch.
A per-image rate across a shoot of a few hundred photos. Item keeps the quote readable and the invoice honest.
Work billed per produced copy or part. Piece names it exactly, so the client sees what they are paying for.
A flat charge per seat or license. Unit is the neutral fit when the thing being counted is not a physical object.
And you are never locked into one model. A single project can carry a day-rate task for the consulting portion and a per-item task for the deliverables — each priced in the unit that fits, all rolling up into the same quote, project, and invoice.
// pick the word your client will read
The unit shows up on the quote and the invoice, so choose the label that makes the line self-explanatory. "12 pieces" and "12 items" cost the same, but one of them will match the language your client already uses.
// mix time and count in one project
There is no need to force a whole project into a single unit. Price the setup or consulting by the hour and the deliverables by the item — Cannelle totals the mixed lines without complaint.
// bake it into a template
If a per-item setup is something you sell repeatedly, save the project as a template. The unit, rate, and task structure are all preserved, so the next quote is a two-second clone rather than a rebuild.
// try it in the demo
The live demo at demo.cannelle.io lets you add a Basic task to a quote and try the new units yourself. Open any task's pricing and pick Unit, Item, or Piece from the dropdown. How to access the demo →