Business types — services, e-commerce, digital, SaaS

A consulting deal and an online sale don’t behave the same way, so they shouldn’t look the same in the app. The business type you pick for a space tells Inkome what kind of stream it is — and the whole interface reshapes itself to fit.

The four business types

You choose one of four types when you create a space. Each is built around a different way of making money.

You pick the type during the onboarding wizard, either directly or by drilling into a more specific industry.

How the type reshapes the whole app

The business type isn’t just a label on the space. It changes four things at once:

• The words you see. Labels across the interface switch to match the stream — Deals vs. Products vs. Plans, Collections vs. Sales vs. Revenue, and so on. See Dynamic terminology.
• The forms you fill in. Each type shows only the fields that make sense. A services deal asks for a Client Name and Close Date; an e-commerce product asks for a Platform, Unit Price, and Commission Rate; a SaaS plan asks for a Monthly Price.
• The default stages. Each type comes with a starter set of stages that fit its lifecycle — a sales pipeline for services, an inventory status for e-commerce, a subscription lifecycle for SaaS.
• The dashboard. The widgets change to surface what matters for that stream — pipeline and collections for services, commission analysis and top products for e-commerce, churn analysis for SaaS.

Term mapping per type

This is the core vocabulary each type uses for its two main records — the thing you sell and the money it brings in. (For the full label-by-label list, see the Business-type terminology matrix.)

A few notes from how each type behaves:

• Services is the only type that tracks a Close Date and uses a true sales Pipeline. Its stages run from Discovery through Closed Won / Closed Lost.
• E-commerce and Digital are product-based and look almost identical in vocabulary. The difference is in the details: e-commerce talks about a Platform and Shipping Costs; digital talks about a Store, Downloads, and a Payout Date. Neither tracks a close date — a product is “active” rather than “won”.
• SaaS is built around recurring revenue. Its value figure is MRR (monthly recurring revenue), and its stages run Trial → Active → Past Due → Churned.

Can you change a space’s type later?

Yes. You can change a space’s business type later by editing the space (Settings → Spaces → Edit). Because the type drives the labels and forms, switching it re-skins the whole space — your Deals become Products, your Collections become Sales, and so on — while the underlying records keep their values.

That said, if a stream genuinely becomes a different business — say a consultancy that spins up a separate line of courses — a new space is usually cleaner than reshaping an existing one, so each stream keeps its own pipeline, costs, and dashboard. See when to create a new space vs. reuse one.

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