Intended use of packaging units with products

Packaging units is a common register for product sales units, such as a piece, liter, box, or pallet. Each row in the register has a permanent numeric register ID and a name in all store data languages. The product refers to this ID in the Packaging unit field.

The packaging unit alone does not determine the packaging quantity, order increment, or minimum order. These are separate specifications for the product. The formation of the unit price in an online store requires the product's Packaging Size and Quantity Increment information in addition to the packaging unit.

Packaging units: clearly display the product's sales unit in the online store

On the Packaging Units page, you maintain the units used in the catalog and their translations.

• Open the page at /products/package-units .
• ID , Name , Translations , Products and Activities .
• Name uses the administrator's active language, Translations shows the names of the different data languages, and Products tells you how many products the unit is associated with.
• The list is browsed by pagination, and the page size can be changed.

The registry separates the technical identifier from the name visible to the user.

• For example, ID 7 can mean litra in Finnish and litre in English.
• An ID is stored for the product, not free unit text.
• Therefore, the same unit can be used consistently across multiple products and appear under a different name in different languages.
• The registry ID cannot be changed after creation, but language-specific names can be updated.
• Plan your IDs before creating them and keep a common list of them so you don't try to use a positive integer that's already reserved.

The packaging unit name can be found in the online store's price information from the register line corresponding to the product's language. However, the register line alone does not guarantee which theme views the information will be displayed in. Check the product card, product page, and shopping cart in the online store theme you are using before widespread implementation.

Plan units before creation

Before creating the units, design them according to what the customer needs to understand about the price.

• Create one register line for one meaning. For example, use separate lines for units such as kpl , l , m , pkt , laatikko , and lava , if they correspond to the actual sales units of the business.
• Don't make two lines just for spelling reasons, but add the different language forms as translations of the same ID.

Choose translations that work next to the price. The packaging unit name can be up to 32 characters long, and a name is required for each active data language. A short unit, such as kpl , is often the clearest, but a full word may be better if the abbreviation would be unclear to the customer. Use a consistent style within the same store.

Keep the Packaging Unit , Packaging Size , and product quantity settings separate. If a five-liter container has a packaging size 5 , the packaging unit indicates that the unit is a liter. It does not in itself force you to buy five pieces and does not determine the allowed order quantity. The online store pricing service only generates the packaging and unit price when the required product information meets the calculation conditions.

Create a new packaging unit

Creating a new packaging unit is done using the New Packaging Unit form. Select New Packaging Unit from the list, enter a Register ID , and fill in a Name for each language shown. The Register ID must be a positive integer. The system will not evaluate the next ID for you, so check the list to make sure the same ID is not already in use.

Fill in all language tabs before saving. An empty name, an unknown language, multiple occurrences of the same language, or a name longer than 32 characters will prevent creation. Finally, select Save Packaging Unit . A successful save will open the new unit edit page. If the ID already exists, the UI will display an error about the duplicate ID and will not replace the old unit.

Only create an entity with an agreed-upon meaning. The registry does not check whether two different IDs have the same name or mean the same thing. Overlapping meanings make it difficult to perform mass updates of product information, review the online store presentation, and clean up the registry later.

Edit names and translations

When editing a packaging unit, you can update language-specific names, but not the register ID. Open the unit list with the Edit function and change the name on the desired language tab. The change is saved automatically after typing; leaving the field starts saving immediately. There is no separate save button in edit mode.

The edit sends the names of all active data languages as a single entity. Each name must still be entered and must be no more than 32 characters. If the save fails, correct the field error that appears before you leave the page. Do not assume that the change has been saved based on the text changing alone if the page displays an error message.

The name change retains the same ID and thus the product associations.

• The new name will appear in the management registry search and product reference information with the next download.
• The online store's pricing service retrieves the language-specific name using the same ID, but the theme's cache and rendering method can affect when or where the change is visible to the customer.
• Check the change in the available store languages.

Attach the packaging unit to the product

The product's packaging unit is selected in the Packaging Unit field of the product editor. Select the correct unit from the register and, if necessary, also specify the Packaging Size and other quantity-related fields. An unknown old register ID is displayed in the format Unknown Packaging Unit ID #N . Such a value must be corrected by selecting a valid register value before saving the product.

When the same change affects multiple products, the product mass function can be used to set or clear the packing unit for selected products. Before mass changing, make sure that the packing sizes and quantity steps of the selected products fit into the same unit. Changing the packing unit does not automatically change these other numbers.

Check at least one example product for each use case. A five-liter container, a twelve-piece box, and a product sold by the meter all require a different combination of packaging unit, packaging size, and quantity settings. This will help you avoid a situation where the unit name is correct but the price basis calculated or displayed to the customer is misleading.

Check the impact on online shopping

The e-commerce impact of the packaging unit is related to the product price information. The language-specific packaging unit name of the product is retrieved from the registry and can be attached to the unit price. When the product quantity step is greater than 1 , the packaging size is greater than 1 , and the packaging unit is set, the pricing service can format the packaging price and calculate the unit price based on the packaging size and quantity step.

There is no general default value for the packing unit that this registry would guarantee for a product. If the product field is empty, do not assume that the online store will automatically display kappaleet . Also, the presence of a packing unit in the registry does not associate it with products. Each product needs its own reference or a managed mass update.

The e-commerce theme determines the final display location. Check the customer view at least on the product page and in the shopping cart, as well as in the list or grouping views that the store uses.

• At the same time, ensure the correct language, the basis for calculating the price, and that the old cache does not show the previous name.
• If the unit is not displayed, first check the three related pieces of information for the product: packaging unit, packaging size, and quantity step.

Remove the packaging unit safely

Only safely remove a packaging unit when no products are using it. The Products column in the list shows the usage count, and the Delete button on the edit page is disabled if the count is greater than zero. The server rechecks product associations during deletion, so a simultaneous new association will prevent deletion.

To delete a unit, open its edit page, select Delete , and then Confirm Delete . If the unit is in use, the error will indicate the number of products associated with it. First, move the products to another packaging unit or clear their selection in a controlled manner, and then try again. Deleting will delete all language rows for the unit.

The depreciation usage rate is based on the current Packaging Unit reference of the products. It is not a general impact analysis of orders, reports, external integrations, or e-commerce caches.

• If the unit ID is used elsewhere as a business agreement, resolve these dependencies before deleting.
• The safest way to replace an existing unit is to create a replacement row, move the products, check the online store, and only then delete the old one.

Good to know

It is good to know about packaging units that the register ID is a positive integer and remains unchanged after creation. Language-specific names are mandatory, maximum 32 characters and automatically saved in edit mode.

The Products count in the list helps you find the units in use, but it doesn't show a list of individual products or all possible external dependencies.

The packaging unit indicates the name of the unit; the packaging size indicates the number of basic units in the package. The quantity step and other order limits are separate product data. A change to one field does not automatically correct the others.

Before implementation, check translations in all data languages, one product per unit type, and the price presentation of the e-commerce theme in use. Do not use the default text " kappaleet " without a separate definition for the product or theme. If the registry shows an unknown ID or two units that mean the same thing, fix the product associations before cleaning the registry.