Information about Units of Measure

Each time a quantity is entered a unit of measure (UOM) is required. For example, to raise a purchase order for 50 blue pens, the UOM must be specified - for example, does the 50 refer to each, box, pack of 5 etc? This is similar to currency in that the system needs to know what currency is being used - GBP, USD, EUR and so on.

On the purchase order, purchase invoice, sales order, and movement order there are three unit of measure labels:

  • Value Label Unit of Measure
  • Unit of Purchase/Sale/Movement
  • Reporting Unit of Measure

Value Label Unit of Measure

For a purchase/sales/movement transaction type, a value label can be marked as being 'with units'. That is, a label that will hold a quantity that requires a unit of measure. One 'with units' label must be marked as holding the purchase/sales/movement quantity within the transaction type. This field is mandatory.

When entering a purchase order, purchase invoice, sales order, or movement order, a quantity must be entered in the field marked as the purchase/sales/movement quantity.

A value label can have up to three parts: for currencies this is base, transaction, and reporting; for quantities and percentages the transaction and reporting parts are ignored, and the base is used.

Each part of a value label has several fields which can be used to set it up. There is a 'value' field where either a quantity, percentage, or amount is entered depending on what the value label is being used for, that is to say a number is entered. There is also a field for 'UOM'.

The default purchase order/purchase invoice/sales order/movement order forms contain these 'quantity value' and 'UOM' fields, and are labelled 'Quantity Value' and 'Quantity Unit' respectively.

The Quantity Unit field can be used to enter a unit of measure on the purchase order/purchase invoice/sales order/movement order line. If it is left blank, the default from the Item Master is used.

The Quantity Unit field may differ from the inventory/reporting unit of measure, in which case Unit Conversions are used. For example, lemonade may be bought in bottles and cases, and stocked in bottles. When buying in cases, the unit 'cases' would be entered in this field. If lemonade was always bought in cases, the unit of purchase on the Item Master would be set to 'cases', so that it is the default. When receiving the cases, the UOM is automatically converted to bottles, using Unit Conversions.

Unit of Purchase/Sale/Movement

This is a read-only field which is populated from the Quantity Value label - base unit label field (as described above). That is, the value in the value label UOM field is copied to the field.

In the above example of lemonade being bought, this displays 'cases'.

This field is used more for internal program purposes than elsewhere.

Reporting Unit of Measure

This is the inventory unit of measure for the item on the transaction. This may be different from the transaction unit of purchase/sales/movement after any unit conversions. It is a read-only field which is populated from the Item Master - Base Item Unit, and is also known as the inventory or reporting unit of measure.

In the above example of lemonade being bought, this display 'bottles'.

This unit of measure corresponds to the Demand Quantity on the transaction line as detailed in Units of Measure - Demand Quantity.