Housecall Pro invalid or negative price

What this means

Housecall Pro doesn’t require a price on every row (a blank one becomes $0). The trouble starts when a price is filled in but isn’t a plain number — a stray currency symbol, a thousands separator, trailing text, more than one decimal point, or a negative value. Those cells either import as the wrong amount or stop the row.

What a clean price looks like

• A single number: 129 or 129.00.
• No currency symbol, no thousands commas, no text like “each” in the price cell.
• Zero or positive. A negative price is almost always a typo or an export artifact.
• The same for the Cost column, if you use it.

How to fix it, step by step

1. Format the Price (and Cost) columns as plain numbers in your spreadsheet.
2. Strip currency symbols and thousands separators — $1,129.00 should just be 1129.
3. Fix any negative values; if an item genuinely has no price, leave the cell blank (HCP treats it as $0).
4. Re-check the file, then re-import.

Common mistakes

• Leaving currency formatting in the cell so it exports as "$1,129.00" text.
• A comma inside an unquoted price that shifts every following column.
• Putting a unit (“/hr”, “each”) in the price cell instead of the Unit of Measure column.
• A stray minus sign from a spreadsheet formula.

Prevent it next time

Keep price and cost as clean numeric columns. The price book checker normalizes unambiguous numbers for you ($1,129.00 → 1129), flags anything it can’t safely interpret, and points out negative prices — without ever inventing a value. Building fresh? The price book template keeps Price and Cost as separate numeric columns.

FAQ

Is a price required in a Housecall Pro price book?

No. Price is optional — a blank price defaults to $0 in Housecall Pro. But if you supply a price, it must be a clean, non-negative number.

Will ImportFix change my prices?

Only in unambiguous, non-destructive ways — for example turning "$1,129.00" into 1129. It never invents a missing price and never silently flips a negative; those are flagged for you to fix.

See also the full list of import errors.