About Unit of Measure
All inventoried items must be associated with a unit of measure that you define on the Items form. This U/M is called the base unit of measure.
To change the base unit of measure for an item, the following conditions must be met:
- The quantity on hand must equal zero.
- The item must not be in use on any purchase order, history purchase order, PO requisition, customer order, job material, ECN, transfer, estimate, or estimate job.
The display formats for quantity fields throughout the system are defined through decimal format fields on the Inventory Parameters form. The display formats for the cost, price, amount, and amount total decimal fields are controlled by decimal format fields on the Currency Codes form. All decimal format fields have ten decimal places.
Example: Unit of Measure Conversion
Use caution in setting up and maintaining the unit of measure conversions where two units of measure have previously been defined. This becomes more apparent with the following example, where conversions have been set up at different levels.
This table provides an example of unit of measure conversion:
| Level | Base U/M | Converted U/M | Conversion | Type | Item | Vend/Cust |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (a) | Box | EA | 10.00000000 | Global | ||
| (b) | Box | EA | 12.00000000 | Item | FA-10000 | |
| (c) | Box | EA | 24.00000000 | Vendor | FA-10000 | 9 |
In the above scenario, if level (a) is the existing conversion and two new conversion levels - (b) and (c) - are created, then the following happens:
- All CO and PO transactions involving item FA-10000 use the level (b) conversion; however, any PO transactions involving item FA-10000 and Vendor 9 use the level (c) conversion instead.
- All transactions with items other than FA-10000 use the level (a) conversion.
Reciprocal Conversion
The system calculates the inverse conversion value when needed. Inverse conversion records are not required or automatically created.
Multi-Site Conversion
If an item has the same unit of measure at different sites, no conversions take place.
If an item has different units of measure at different sites, then the system will perform a unit of measure conversion.
Example
| Item | Unit of Measure | Quantity | Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| XYZ | Feet | 1 | A |
| XYZ | Inches | 12 | B |
Assumptions:
- A valid Unit of Measure Conversion has been established between Site A and Site B.
- A valid Unit of Measure Conversion has been established between Site B and Site A.
- A user at Site A has requested the Item Availability form for item XYZ with a view comprising of Sites A and B. In this scenario, Site A is considered to be the 'local' Site and Site B is considered to be the 'remote' site.
The system performs the following background process prior to the Pegging Display form being displayed. During the record gathering phase, the system converts the quantities according to the base unit of measure for the item at the 'remote' Site into the 'local' base unit of measure using the local conversion table.
This means that in the above example, the quantity of item XYZ at Site B is converted from Inches to Feet by using the unit of measure conversion established at Site A. The Item Availability form displays the quantities of XYZ at Site A in Feet, in this example, 1. The same form also displays the quantities of XYZ at Site B in Feet, in this example.