Units: the measures your catalog uses
By the end of this article you will know where your business’s units of measure live, how to shape the list, and what happens to a product that was saved with a unit you later rename or retire.
The list lives under Catalog → Units. Anyone who can edit services can change it; everyone who can see the catalog can read it.
What you start with
Every business starts with a common set, grouped by what it measures: counts (each, pair, set, kit, bottle, can, tablet, sheet, pack), volumes (fl oz, ml, L, pt, qt, gal), weights (oz, lb, g, kg), lengths (in, ft, mm, cm, m, /32 in for tread depth), pressure (psi, bar, kPa), temperature (°F, °C), %, electrical (V, A) and time (min, h). They are ordinary entries — rename, reorder or deactivate any of them.
If your inventory already had units typed in as free text before this list existed, each one was matched to the set above (so Ounce became oz and ea became each), and any spelling that matched nothing became a unit of its own under Other, so nothing you had lost its unit.
Where a unit is used
- On a product or piece of gear, the unit is what the Quantity counts — see Products you sell or use on a job.
- On a service requirement, it is what the quantity of gear or product the service needs is counted in — see Create a service and price it by vehicle type.
Each of those pickers offers the active units, grouped by category, with the symbol beside the name.
Add a unit
- Click Add unit.
- Type the Symbol — what shows beside a quantity, such as dram or scoop. Symbols are unique within your business, ignoring case.
- Type the Name in English and, with the language button beside the field, in Spanish.
- Pick a Category, or leave Other.
- Click Save. The new unit lands at the end of the list.
Edit, reorder, deactivate, delete
- Edit opens the same dialog with a note: changing the Symbol makes a new version — products and requirements saved with the old symbol keep it, and the new one applies from now on. That is deliberate — a bottle you recorded last month as oz should not start reading as fl oz because you tidied the list today. Changing only the Name or the Category keeps the same unit.
- The Move up and Move down arrows set the order the pickers show.
- Deactivate hides a unit from the pickers without losing history. Turn on Show inactive to see it again, marked Inactive, and use Activate to bring it back. A product that still carries a deactivated unit keeps showing it, and you can still edit that product’s other fields.
- Delete removes a unit for good — but only one that has never been used. If any product or requirement was ever saved with it, Wax Stak refuses, tells you how many, and offers Deactivate instead.
Search and views
The search box matches the symbol or either language’s name. Switch between the table and cards with the view buttons; the count beside them is the number of active units.