Page Contents:

Introduction Video

Multiple Units of Measure for Existing Products Video

What is a Unit of Measure?

Benefits of Multiple Units of Measure

Setting up the Product's Units of Measure

Adding or Updating Supplier Pricing

Raising and Receipting a Purchase Order Using Purchasing Units of Measure

Receipting Purchase Orders with Serial or Batch Numbers

Using Purchasing Units of Measure for existing Products

Importing Alternate Units of Measure

Reporting in Multiple Units of Measure

Using Alternate Units of Measure in Doc Designer

FAQs

Introduction Video

Multiple Units of Measure for Existing Products Video

What is a Unit of Measure?

The definition of a Unit of Measure is the unit that a product's stock is held in, is purchased in, assembled in or sold in.

Within Unleashed:

• A product will have a Base Unit of Measure in which all stock is tracked and accounted for.
• We recommend that each product's base unit is the smallest unit of stock you track.  This will also make setting up other units of measure a bit simpler.
• The base unit of measure can remain blank (null), however, once you assign a unit of measure to a product, you cannot clear the unit back to null.  You can create a unit of measure called "None" or "N/A" and assign that unit to the Product as a workaround instead.
• The base unit cannot be changed once transactions exist with that unit, or if the unit is used in defaults or pricing.
• Products can have Alternate Units of Measure assigned to them. The Alternate Units of Measure are only available to use when purchasing a product, and these units will automatically be converted to the base unit upon receipt of a Purchase Order.
• Multiple Units of Measure are not supported in Assemblies, Sales Orders or Stock Adjustments.

Benefits of Multiple Units of Measure

• Reduce the number of products that you have to maintain
• Automatically convert purchased quantities into stock and sellable quantities
• Low stock quantities will trigger alerts in the re-order report, allowing you to easily purchase renewal stock, saving you time and memory

Examples of Units of Measure

Example 1:  Purchasing in bulk and selling in smaller quantities:

You may purchase bottles of water by the pallet or by the case which you sell individually.

In this example, the product will have the following units of measure:

Base Unit = BOTTLE (this is the unit that stock is tracked in)
Alternate Unit for purchasing = CASE (24 bottles in total)
Alternate Unit for purchasing = PALLET (1728 bottles in total)

 

Example 2:  Purchasing in imperial units and selling in metric units:

You may purchase coffee in pounds and sell in grams.

Base Unit = GRAM (this is the unit that stock is tracked in)
Alternate Unit for purchasing = LBS (453.592 grams)

Setting up the Product's Units of Measure

Step 1:  Using the bottled water as an example, create the units of measure in Settings | System | Units of Measure:

Step 2:  Set your Product's Base Unit of Measure to BOTTLE on the Product's Details tab at the bottom of the page (see the Units of Measure section and click on "Add New")

Note:  If a Product does not already have a base unit of measure, the first unit added will assume the role of the base unit of measure with a conversion rate of 1, given this is the stock unit.

Additional units of measure will have conversion rates based on the base unit.

Step 3:  Returning to the water bottle example, add the CASE and PALLET units of measure, and tick "Purchasing" so that this unit of measure will be available when raising Purchase Orders:

Step 4:  Add your dimensions for this unit of measure.

Please Note:  Updating or adding dimensions to a unit of measure will not retrospectively update existing open orders.  If you want to apply the new dimensions to a product line in an open order, delete the line and re-add it.

Also, when you add a unit of measure such as EACH (EA) and you leave the dimensions as 0 you may see an error message as the one below. If you do not wish to specify the product's dimensions, please remove the 0 from all dimensions fields and you should then be able to add the new unit of measure.

Now that all units of measure have been defined and allocated to the product, you are set up for purchasing in your alternate units of measure.

Adding or Updating Supplier Pricing

If you already have Supplier Pricing, it will have defaulted to the Base Unit of Measure for the product.  Add new pricing for the Supplier to take advantage of the new purchasing units of measure you have set up. 

Note:  If you do not trade with the Supplier in the Base Unit, delete that row.

Using the water example again, given the most common unit of purchasing water is by the CASE, we set that up as the default pricing:

Given the Supplier offers discounted pricing for a PALLET and for a quantity of CASEs, those are added to the Supplier Quantity Pricing tab:

Raising and Receipting a Purchase Order Using Purchasing Units of Measure

Once your purchasing units of measure are defined and assigned to the appropriate products and suppliers, they are available for use when creating a Purchase Order.

Starting with zero Stock On Hand, our example product WATER will show the following:

We order and receipt 1 Case of water from our preferred Supplier:

Note:  Given the Supplier is set up with a default unit of measure of CASE, it is the default value when adding the product line.  However, the other purchasing units of measure are also available via a drop down list.

The conversion rate for a CASE of WATER is 24, so receipting 1 CASE of WATER will increase SOH by 24:

Receipting Purchase Orders with Serial or Batch Numbers

Serialized or Batched products are receipted in the Base Unit.  When ordering in a Purchasing Unit of Measure, the conversion rate is used to add your serial or batch numbers to the base stock.

In this example, one container of dining tables was purchased.  The container has 20 dining tables.  Receipting one container will require adding 20 serial numbers:

In this example, one carton of glue was purchased.  The carton contains 100 tubes of glue.  Receipting one carton will require adding your batch details for 100 tubes of glue.

Using Purchasing Units of Measure for existing Products

If you are an existing Unleashed Customer, you may have set up multiple products and/or disassemblies to get around not having multiple units of measure.

We recommend that you ‘collapse’ existing products into a single product, so that you can take advantage of easier re-ordering in your Purchasing Units of Measure via the Reorder Report.

You can ‘collapse’ your related products via Stock Adjustments and marking the now unnecessary product(s) and bill(s) of material as obsolete.

In this example, a product "WATER6P" was set up to purchase 6-packs of water under a different Supplier arrangement.  Multiple Units of Measure will simplify your product catalog and purchasing processes for this scenario.  Transfer the stock out of WATER6P and into WATER by the appropriate stock amounts based on each product's base unit of measure.  5 x 6-packs = 30 bottles, so WATER is increased by 30 BOTTLES and WATER6p reduced by 5 of the 6-packs.  Once the Stock Adjustment is completed, obsolete the product WATER6P. 

Importing Alternate Units of Measure

Using the new "Alternate Units of Measure" Template in the Products | Import/Export menu, you can import your Product and Purchasing Unit of Measure associations.

Import Rules: 

• The Product must exist and have a Base Unit of Measure assigned
• The Alternate Units of Measure must exist in the Units of Measure list in your System Settings before using them in an import as alternate units with conversion rates

Reporting in Multiple Units of Measure

The Purchasing Unit of Measure and Purchase Order Quantity have been added to the Hidden Columns on Purchasing related enquiries (access Hidden Columns by clicking on "Show Toolbar" above the report grid). 

Drag and drop these columns onto your grid and save your layout if you want to see the quantity and unit of measure your products were purchased in, alongside the Base Unit of Measure quantity which is indicative of your stock levels.

The example below (Purchase Enquiry) shows one case and one pallet of WATER purchased/on order with the base unit qty showing the change to the stock level:

The Reorder Report is based on the Product's Base Unit of Measure since this is the unit the stock is held in.  Using WATER as the example, the minimum quantity is set to 5000 of the Base Unit, BOTTLE:

The Reorder Report will calculate a Suggested Replenishment of 1490 (5000 - 3510) BOTTLE:

Generating a Purchase Order for WATER defaults the Supplier to the default Supplier that we set up.  Notice that the Purchase Quantity is 1490 - you can edit this before creating the Purchase Order or create it as is and edit it afterwards before placing the order:

The default Supplier has a default purchasing unit of measure of CASE, so the resulting Purchase Order is created with this default taking the conversion rate into account.

1490 divided by 24 (conversion rate for CASE) = 62.0833 given we round to 4 decimal places.  
Then 62.0833 multiplied by 24 for the Base Unit BOTTLE = 1489.9992 given we round to 4 decimal places.

Prior to placing the purchase order, change the Order Quantity to a whole number:

Using Alternate Units of Measure in Doc Designer

The Purchase Order and Supplier Return templates will be updated to include the purchasing unit of measure. 
The Order Quantity will contain the actual order quantity in the purchasing unit, however the "Unit" is still reflecting as the base unit.  This will be updated to link to the purchasing unit.
And additional "BaseUnitOfMeasure" will be added to the grid components.

The Labels template will give you the option to choose a Product's unit of measure:

FAQs

How do I make use of Multiple Units of Measure (MUoM) on a product?

This feature is available immediately using the Units of Measure on the Product Details tab

What’s the most appropriate unit for base unit?

It is generally recommended that you use your smallest increment of product as a base unit.
When you purchase in bulk, prices and quantities are more easily multiplied on purchase
orders and during receipting.
For example, if you use grams of salt in an assembly but purchase in kilograms, then your
base unit should be grams, your purchasing unit kilograms, and the conversion rate x1000.

When are you supposed to use alternate units?

Alternate units are a great way to simplify your documents for purchasing.
You don’t have to use alternate units, but they make buying in bulk, or
buying in imperial or metric units less of a hassle.
For example, if you purchase chemicals in pounds, but store and use them by the kilogram,
then you can set up ‘pounds’ as an alternate unit. Your purchase orders will be completed in
pounds for that product, but it’s stock on hand will be adjusted in the correct quantities of
kilograms.

NOTE: Alternate Units of Measure are not available to use on Sales Orders.

How does the conversion rate work?

The conversion rate is the multiplier used to calculate your alternate unit. Think of it as:
“1 alternate unit is the base unit multiplied by the conversion rate”
For example,
1 case = bottle x 12
1 gram = kilogram x 0.001

How do cloned products work in terms of multiple units of measure?

Cloning a product works as per usual, cloning all details of the product, including any units
of measure.

How do I change a product's base unit of measure?

• Change the product's Default Purchasing Unit to a Unit of Measure that is not being removed or edited (in the Purchase tab of a product's record). 
• Change the Unit of Measure allocated as a default for a specific Supplier for the product (in the Suppliers tab, in the Purchase tab of a product's record).
• Change the Unit of Measure allocated as a default for a specific Supplier Quantity Price for the product (in the Quantity Prices tab, in the Purchase tab of a product's record).
• Delete the product from any open (Parked or Placed) Purchase Orders.

Why can’t I change my base unit?

If any of the following are true, you cannot change the base unit.

• It is the default purchasing unit (you can undo this)
• has been assigned on a product supplier record (you can undo this)
• has been assigned on a supplier quantity pricing record (you can undo this)
• used in a purchase order (including deleted Purchase Orders) (you cannot undo this)
• it is otherwise used in a manner in which the base unit is referenced i.e. If it ever became possible to select a unit within a Sales Order, it would lock the unit as soon as a reference is made.

Why can’t I change the Unit I created in Settings?

Once the unit is assigned to a product or used on a transaction, you cannot edit the unit
nomenclature in Settings, as it would retro-actively apply the change to all historic
transactions.

What units are being displayed on the reports?

For most reports, Unleashed will report quantities, costs, and values against the base unit.
Some reports have been updated to specifically include quantities and values against the
purchased unit, but these columns must be added in via the toolbar hidden columns option.

How do purchase units interact on the reorder report?

• The reorder report shows suggested replenishment stock in base unit, but will
  generate the purchase order in your default or supplier purchasing unit (if specified)
• Units won’t round to the highest whole number of the purchasing unit
• You can set an ‘alert’ via the pack size so that you can update your purchase orders
  to the nearest whole number
• Double check the purchase order quantity before placing!

How do alternate units and pack sizes interact?

Set your pack size to ‘1’ or another whole number for your alternate units to guarantee that
the reorder report rounds up to the nearest whole number.

How does minimum order quantity work with alternate units?

Provided you have set up minimum order quantities for the appropriate unit of measure,
they will work as they did before.

What if I don’t want to use Multiple Units of Measure on a product or any of my products?

This is an optional feature that you can ignore or use depending on your business.

Why don’t I see the ‘Units of Measure’ section on my Product Details tab?

If you have a product with dimensions but no Base Unit of Measure, the original Unit of Measure dropdown and Dimensions section will be shown on the Product Details tab. Once you select a Base Unit for your product, the new Units of Measure section will show and the dimensions will be applied against the Base Unit of Measure.