Units of Measure explained

A Unit of Measure (UOM) is the standard way a quantity of a product is defined, counted or priced: pieces, kilograms, litres, bags, boxes, cases, pallets, even hours. Units give everyone in a business, and across a supply chain, a shared language for exactly how much of something is being referenced, ordered, stored or sold.

Conversions

A UOM conversion translates a quantity from one unit into an equivalent quantity in another, such as kilograms to grams, boxes to single units, or pallets to cases. Conversions matter whenever different parts of a business, or different trading partners, work in different units. They keep inventory, pricing, logistics, reporting and financial figures accurate.

In Supply Lens, conversions live on each Product, because pack sizes differ from product to product: one coffee may come six bags to a case, another four. A conversion always reads as a sentence, with one side fixed at 1:

1 Case is equivalent to 6 Bag

The Visualise button on a Product draws its conversions as a diagram so you can check them.

Who needs them

UOM conversion matters most for businesses with complex, multi-tier supply chains and data from many sources. Procurement, supply chain and operations teams often receive data in different units from different suppliers, regions or systems; conversions let it be normalised and compared accurately. You need Units of Measure if, for example:

• your web shop sells single items but a wholesaler orders by the case;
• a supplier invoices in kilograms but you stock in bags;
• a 3PL counts pallets inbound and units for picking.

Off until you turn them on

UOM checks are disabled by default. You switch them on with CONFIGURE DEFAULTS under Settings → Reference data → Units of Measure. From then on, when Supply Lens receives an order it checks your Unit of Measure configuration and adds a cross-referencing step to resolve units and conversions for the Products on it.

If you don't need UOM conversion, Supply Lens recommends not configuring it, so orders don't go through an unnecessary step. Once it is on, an order line in a pack size with no matching conversion fails rather than flowing through.

Which units you can use

You can add any UN/CEFACT Recommendation 21 code as a unit. If you need one that isn't available, Support can arrange for it to be added. See Available Units of Measure.

Each unit has identifiers: the codes different systems use for it, such as CS or CASE. Your own identifiers can be added, edited and reordered; shared ones can't be changed. On the way out, the code highest in the order is sent.

The three kinds of default unit

A Product identifier can also say which unit it stands for, such as a GTIN-14 for a case. When a partner orders by that identifier and sends no unit, the line takes the identifier's unit before any default. For the full order Supply Lens follows, see How Supply Lens matches codes.

Key terms