Lesson 5: Creating Units of Measure

Part 1: Basic Order Management Configuration

In Acumatica ERP, you can maintain diﬀerent units of measure (UOMs), which are units used to account for and express the quantities of products that are purchased or sold by your company. Multiple units of measure are required when items can be sold by the piece or be sold by the boxes, packages, crates, or other storage units into which they are packaged. In this lesson, you will create system-wide units of measure.

Units of Measure: General Information

Some non-stock items can be purchased, tracked, or sold by your company in multiple ways: by the piece, or in storage containers into which they have been packaged. Storage containers can include boxes, packages, or crates. In Acumatica ERP, you can define and maintain any number of diﬀerent units of measure (UOMs) to account for and express these quantities of the items. You can also define conversion rules, so that for diﬀerent UOMs of the same items, the system can calculate the prices of items to your specifications. 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.

Learning Objectives

In this lesson, you will do the following:

Create units of measure that can be used system-wide
Create conversion rules for system-wide units of measure

Applicable Scenarios

You create system-wide units of measure in the following cases:

You are initially configuring order management in Acumatica ERP.
You need to measure non-stock items in specific units that are not defined among the system-wide UOMs.

System-Wide Units of Measure 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 non-stock 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 non-stock item. For details, see Units of Measure for Item Classes and Non-Stock Items.

Units of Measure for Item Classes and Non-Stock Items You specify UOMs for item classes or non-stock items in the Units of Measure section of the General tab on the Item Classes (IN201000) or Non-Stock Items (IN202000) form, respectively. The UOMs specified in the settings of an item class are copied to the corresponding boxes of a new non-stock item of this class created on the Non-Stock Items form. For both item classes and non-stock items, you can select system-wide UOMs or type new item class- specific or item-specific UOMs.

New UOMs added on the Item Classes form are not copied automatically to the Units of Measure (CS203500) form. If you want to use these units globally, you must manually add the units to the Units of Measure form.
New UOMs added by using the Non-Stock Items form are copied automatically to the Units of Measure form.
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 non-stock item defined on the Non-Stock Items form, you can specify the following units:
Base Unit (required): The unit of measure used to calculate unit costs and to maintain availability data for non-stock items (that is, the system counts the quantities of each non-stock item by using the UOM specified as its base unit).
Sales Unit (optional): The unit of measure typically used when your company sells the item.
Purchase Unit (optional): The unit of measure typically used when your company purchases the item.
```
        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 Non-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 non-stock items. When you enter a sales transaction and specify the quantity and UOM of the non-stock 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 non-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 sales and purchase documents.

Conversion Rules

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 specified in the Decimal Precision box on the Companies (CS101500) form corresponds to your organization's rounding policy for the base currency. 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.

UOM                           To Unit                       Multiply/Divide               Conversion Factor

BOX                           BOTTLE                        Multiply                      10

CRATE                         BOTTLE                        Multiply                      60

CRATE                         BOX                           Multiply                      6

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.

UOM                           To Unit                       Multiply/Divide               Conversion Factor

BOTTLE                        BOX                           Divide                        10

BOTTLE                        CRATE                         Divide                        60

Units of Measure: Implementation Activity

In the following implementation activity, you will create global units of measure and conversion rules.

Story

Suppose that the SEO World agency provides website promotion services to SweetLife Fruits & Jams. According to the terms of the contract with the SEO World agency, the financial documents must have the DAY unit of measure. The predefined units of measure in Acumatica ERP include only MINUTE and HOUR. Acting as an implementation manager, you need to define a new unit of measure.

Process Overview

In this activity, you will do the following:

Enable the Multiple Units of Measure feature on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form
Create a new global unit of measure and conversion rule for this unit of measure on the Units of Measure (CS203500) form

System Preparation

To create a global unit of measure, make sure that you have completed the following prerequisite activity: Order Management Basic Configuration: Implementation Activity.

Step 1: Enabling the Needed Feature To give users the ability to define multiple units of measure and the rules for conversion between them, do the following:

Open the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.
On the form toolbar, click Modify.
Select the Multiple Units of Measure check box.
On the form toolbar, click Enable.

Step 2: Creating a Global Unit of Measure To create a global unit of measure and a rule for converting it to an existing unit of measure, do the following:

On the Units of Measure (CS203500) form, add a new record.
In the Unit ID box, specify DAY.
In the Description for Reports box, specify DAY.
On the form toolbar, click Save.
On the table toolbar, click Add Row.
In the To Unit column, specify HOUR.
In the Multiply/Divide column, select Multiply.
In the Conversion Factor column, type 8.
On the form toolbar, click Save.
You have created a unit of measure and a rule for converting it to another unit of measure.