If your catalog came over from another system, your labor is probably written in that system's shorthand: an item coded AMP whose only words are "install 2 channel amp", and forty more like it. This screen is where you translate the whole list into plain English in one sitting.

Go to Inventory, Rename Catalog Items.

**What you see**

One row per labor item, with four things

  • Its code, which is what the item is filed under. Click it to open the product.
  • How many times it has been used. The list is sorted by this, so the ones worth your time are at the top and the ones nobody has ever put on an invoice are at the bottom.
  • What a line reads as today, so you can see exactly what a customer would see.
  • A box to type what the job actually is.

The heading tells you how many items are still named after their code, which is the count you are working down.

**Filling it in**

Type a real name: "Amplifier Installation, 2-Channel", "Remote Start Install", "Diagnostic Hour". Fill in the ones worth fixing and leave the rest. Only the boxes you filled in are saved, so you can do a few today and more next week.

Press Save names when you are done. One save covers the whole screen.

**What changes and what does not**

Every labor line added from then on uses your wording. Nothing already on an invoice changes: past invoices, prices, codes and reports all stay exactly as they are. This is only about the words that appear on lines added from now on.

Your codes are never touched. The item stays filed under AMP, and AMP is still what prints in the Part # column, because that is your part number.

**Products as well**

The screen opens on labor because that is where the problem usually is: for products, a vendor price sheet can supply proper names a whole brand at a time, and nobody publishes a price sheet for the labor in your bay. If you do have oddly named products, click "Show every product too" to list them alongside.

To rename a single item instead, open it from Inventory, Products and use the Product Name box on its edit page. It is the same thing, one at a time.

**Permissions**

The screen needs the Create & edit products permission, which owners have by default. Anyone without it will not see it in the menu.