Set up your Units of Measure
Lesson 11 of 24 6 min read
Turn on Units of Measure for your organisation, add the units you trade in, and manage the codes each unit is known by.
In this lesson you will switch Units of Measure on, build the short list of units your business actually uses, and learn how each unit's codes decide what gets sent to other systems.
Switch Units of Measure on
- Open Settings → Reference data → Units of Measure.
- Click CONFIGURE DEFAULTS.
From now on, when an order arrives, Supply Lens checks your Unit of Measure configuration and cross-references the units for the Products on it. Once your defaults are set up, the default unit lists show the unit names straight away.
Add a unit
- On the Units of Measure screen, start typing the unit in the Add unit of measure box.
- Pick it from the drop-down list.
- Click + ADD.
Remove a unit
- On the Units of Measure screen, click the unit you want to remove in the Units of Measure section.
- Click - REMOVE.
Keep the list short
Add only the units you or your partners actually trade in. A short list makes the drop-downs on Products, prices and Integrations quicker to use, and leaves less room for someone to pick Box when they meant Case.
Each unit's identifiers
Different systems write the same unit differently: one sends CS, another Case, another
CASE. Like Products, each Unit of Measure has identifiers: the codes it is known by.
Each unit on the Units of Measure screen has an edit button that opens its identifiers. You can add, edit, delete and reorder your organisation's own identifiers there. Shared identifiers, maintained by Supply Lens for everyone, are shown but can't be changed.
Why the order matters
Units of Measure are shared reference data, so they work a little differently from Products. Instead of scoping to Parties or Integrations, each identifier has a position in an order:
- On the way in, your organisation's own identifier beats a shared one.
- On the way out, when a unit has several codes of the same identifier type, the one highest in the order (the lowest order number) is sent.
So if a system expects CS but receives CASE, reorder the unit's identifiers so the code you
want comes first.
Priya's units
Priya clicks CONFIGURE DEFAULTS and adds just two units: Bag for single bags and Case for the outer of six. She considers adding Pallet for Brookside's inbound deliveries but decides to wait until she actually sends Brookside pallet-level data. One fewer unit to get wrong.
A single unit for your organisation
Some unit of measure behaviour, such as reading a line's unit from the barcode it was ordered by, only happens when your organisation has a default single unit configured: the unit that counts one individual item. If you are relying on that behaviour, check your defaults with Support.
Recap
- Turn Units of Measure on with CONFIGURE DEFAULTS under Settings → Reference data → Units of Measure.
- Add units by typing them into Add unit of measure and clicking + ADD; remove them with - REMOVE.
- Keep the list to the units you actually trade in.
- Each unit has identifiers; your own can be edited and reordered, shared ones can't.
- On the way out, the identifier highest in the order is the code that is sent.
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