Some units of measure apply to many items and, as such, are defined at the system level. Other units of measure are used only for particular items or for item classes (which group similar items). In Acumatica ERP, you can define UOMs and conversion rules at all of these levels, as described in the following sections.
In this chapter, you will do the following:
You create system-wide units of measure in the following cases:
When you deploy a tenant from scratch, the tenant already contains predefined units of measure, which you can view on the Units of Measure (CS203500) form. If you need to define additional units of measure, you use the same form. Units of measure defined on this form can be used system-wide, for example, for all inventory items and item classes.
For each UOM, you can also specify how this unit is converted to units already defined in the table, if applicable. For more information on conversion rules, see Conversion Rules.
In addition to system-wide UOMs, you can create UOMs when you are creating an item class or inventory item. For details, see UOMs for Item Classes and Stock Items.
You specify UOMs for item classes or stock items in the Units of Measure section of the General tab on the Item Classes (IN201000) or Stock Items (IN202500) form, respectively. The UOMs specified in the settings of an item class are copied to the corresponding boxes of a new stock item of this class created on the Stock Items form. For both item classes and stock items, you can select system-wide UOMs or type new item class-specific or item-specific UOMs.
If the Multiple Units of Measure feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, for each item class defined on the Item Classes form and for each stock item defined on the Stock Items form, you can specify the following units:
If you need to change any UOM of an item class or item, make sure that rules for conversion between the current and new UOM are specified on the Units of Measure (for system-wide units), Item Classes (for item class-specific units), or Stock Items (for item-specific units) form before you use the item with the new UOM in any new transaction.
If the Multiple Units of Measure feature is not enabled on the Enable/Disable Features form, you can specify only base units for item classes and for individual stock items.
When you enter a sales transaction and specify the quantity and UOM of the inventory item, the system converts the specified UOM to the base unit for cost-of-sold-goods calculation and to the default sales unit for finding the proper price (or to any other unit of the item for which a price can be found).
For stock items, you can configure units of measure (UOMs) for items that can be measured only in quantities that are integers. This helps to eliminate the number of errors in inventory, sales, and purchase documents. For more information, see Stock Items: Units of Measure That Are Not Divisible.
For more information about UOMs for stock items, see Stock Items: Units of Measure.
If the same item can be measured in multiple UOMs, you should define conversion rules between these UOMs so that the system can recalculate item quantities to the base UOM of the item. For system-wide UOMs, you add conversion rules to the settings of a unit on the Units of Measure (CS203500) form. If you specify different UOMs for base, sales, and purchase units for an item on the Stock Items (IN202500) form, you need to add conversion rules for the sales and purchase UOMs with respect to the base UOM on this form.
You define conversion rules similarly for a non-stock item on the Non-Stock Items (IN202000) form.
Before you define conversion rules for UOMs, you must make sure that the decimal precision of the base currency in the Base Currency ID box on the Currencies (CM202000) form corresponds to your organization's rounding policy for your base currency. You can click the base currency ID to open its settings on the Currencies (CM202000) form and view the value in the Decimal Precision box.
In conversion rules, you use the operations of multiplication and division and the conversion factor, which is a number the system uses to convert one UOM to another UOM. For example, suppose that your organization purchases bottled lemonade in crates and sells lemonade by boxes and crates. The base UOM for lemonade is BOTTLE. The BOX UOM contains 10 bottles. The CRATE UOM includes six boxes or 60 bottles. The conversion rules between these UOMs are listed in the following table.
The conversion rules are not reversible—that is, the system cannot use the rule in the first row of the table above to recalculate the quantity specified in bottles to the quantity specified in crates. To convert bottles to boxes and crates, you need to add the conversion rules listed in the following table.