Units in Warehouse Management

Inventory unit

The inventory unit, commonly called a piece, is the smallest unit in which the item can be referenced. This unit cannot be subdivided. Because all other units (boxes, pallets, and so on) can be split, an unsplittable unit is required for accurate description of stock levels. The inventory unit is registered at the item level. If you use package definitions, the unit must be a whole number. If you do not use package definitions, decimals are allowed by defining a rounding factor smaller than one (for example, for kilograms).

Order, receipt, approval, and rejection units

Unlike the inventory unit, these units can change frequently from order to order and from receipt to receipt. A conversion factor from these units to inventory units must always be defined. The inventory unit is always calculated and displayed whenever one of these other units has been used.

Package definition units

A warehouse will frequently receive items and issue items in a certain structure. For example, an issue might contain two pallets, each of which contains 10 boxes, which in turn contain 12 pieces each. The total quantity issued, expressed in the inventory unit, is 240 pieces.

Similarly, customers can require 240 pieces in different ways. Customer A might require 240 pieces, which consist of two pallets (that is, 2* 10 boxes * 12 pieces = 240 pieces.) Or, customer B requires 240 pieces consisting of one europallet (that is, one europallet containing five crates of 48 pieces).

Package definition units also allow the tracking of any reusable packaging (such as pallets and boxes).

Units on a receipt

On receipts, you can use units on both the inventory part and the packaging part, and you must treat the units differently in each case.

In the inventory part, you can use partial units. So, one box means one full box, one pallet means one full pallet, and so on. Furthermore, the terms pallet and box are simply units and do not refer to a physical packaging item.

Therefore, if you receive 24 pieces, you can also say that one pallet has been received because one pallet contains 24 pieces. The fact that you have not received a wooden pallet on which the items were shipped does not matter when considering the inventory part of the receipt.

In the packaging part, however, you must consider the physical packaging items that were received. If the 24 pieces that were received arrived on a wooden pallet, the quantity of this field is 1.

Units on an ASN

On an ASN, you can use partial units. For example, you can say that you received one pallet with 24 items, one pallet with six items, and one pallet with four items. You know that three physical wooden pallets were received and 34 physical items were received. No fixed conversion exists between pallets and pieces: on the first line, a pallet is 24 pieces, but on the second line, a pallet is six pieces, and on the third line a pallet is four pieces.