Setup Alternate Units of Measure

AcctVantage supports Unit of Measure conversion for purchasing and selling. This means you can stock a product in one Unit of Measure (UM), and sell it in any number of alternate UMs. For example, you can stock an item as INDIVIDUAL UNITS (i.e. EACH) and sell it as a CASE which could be defined as 12 units.

  • You can define the base unit and as many alternate UMs for your Products as you need.
  • The base UM on the Product record should be the smallest unit that you deal in. This unit is used throughout the Inventory system for Physical Inventory Counts, Work Orders, Maintenance, Inventory Reporting, etc.
  • Units of Measure should multiply up, not down. While the system will allow and can track partial units, it's not an ideal situation. It can cause problems with your inventory if you do things like sell 0.75 of a unit or build assemblies that contain 0.125 of a unit. Eventually, the rounding off of partial units will become problematic. Ideally your Units of Measure would be multiples of whole numbers.

*NEW for AV 2015*

  • Universal Units of Measure are no longer supported.
    • In AV2013, if you defined a CASE as containing 12 units, then CASES were defined as 12 units for all Products.
    • In AV2015, every Product will have its own multiplier for any given Unit of Measure. For example, a CASE of widgets might contain 12 units whereas a CASE of thingamajigs might contain 10 units.
    • When you convert from AV2013 to AV2015, all of your current alternate Units of Measure will be converted to the new format.
  • There is now a separate Unit of Measure tab on the Product record where all of the alternate UMs will be defined.

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Please see these related lessons for more on how to Purchase or Sell Products using Alternate UM's:

Purchase Orders & Alternate Units of Measure

Sales Orders & Alternate Units of Measure

1. Open a Product record.

Navigate to Warehouse Management ➤ Products (Inventory ➤ Products in AV 2015 and earlier) and open an existing Product record.

Open a Product record.

2. Go to the Unit of Measure tab of the Product record.

Select the Unit of Measure tab to add a new alternate UM.

Note: The base Unit of Measure should be the smallest unit you deal in. If you end up using fractions of this base UM, this will eventually cause problems with Lot values.

Go to the Unit of Measure tab of the Product record.

3. Create a new Unit of Measure.

Click the + symbol to add a new Unit of Measure for the Product.

Create a new Unit of Measure.

3.1. Create a new Unit of Measure.

The highlighted row in this screenshot is the new UM that was just created. Enter the data in each cell that is relevant to you and click OK to save when you're finished.

There a few restrictions:

  • There are only 2 required fields (the rest of the fields are optional):
    • Name
    • Multiplier
  • Only one of the following Sales-related fields can be used per Unit of Measure: Sell or Discount %
  • Only one of the following Purchasing-related fields can be used per Unit of Measure: Cost or PO Discount %
  • Only one Unit of Measure can be tagged as Dflt SO and only one can be tagged as Dflt PO. If no alternate Unit of Measure is tagged, then the base Unit of Measure is the default.

Note: see definitions of the terms in bold above in the intro to this article.

Create a new Unit of Measure.

4. Addendum: Download and install the new standard View Definition for the Unit of Measure window.

If you want to view this Unit of Measure info in the Inventory ➤ Unit of Measure list view, you'll need to install the new View Definition for that list view.

  1. Download the zipped view definition here.
  2. Unzip the file.
  3. Open up the folder where your AV Client application is. (Applications folder on Mac, Program Files or C: drive on Windows).
  4. Within the AV Client folder you will see a folder titled INSTALL. Drop the View Definition into the INSTALL folder and restart your AV Client app.

Glossary

There are some new fields available for Units of Measure. Name and Multiplier are the same as before. Here are all of the field definitions:

  • Name: The name for the alternate Unit of Measure.
  • Multiplier: The number of base units that are counted in the alternate Unit of Measure. If there are 12 base units in a CASE then the Multiplier is 12.
  • SKU: A field for your Stock Keeping Unit. This is an alpha-numeric, 20 character field. It can be entered for the base unit (Product Info tab) and all alternate Units of Measure.
  • Piece Count: This is useful if you have an alternate UM that is a function of a different alternate UM. Piece Count is sort of like a Unit of Measure within a Unit of Measure. For example:
    • The Piece Count of your base Unit of Measure for widgets is 1 -- (1 UNIT contains 1 PIECE).
    • Then, you might have a CASE of 12 widgets where the Piece Count is also 1 because the CASE is also a self-contained unit -- (1 CASE contains 1 PIECE).
    • Next, you might have a MASTER PACK, which is defined as 2 CASES (24 base units) -- (1 MASTER PACK contains 2 PIECES).
    • Finally, you might stock a PALLET which is defined as 4 MASTER PACKS (96 base units) -- (1 PALLET contains 8 PIECES).
  • Volume: The 3-dimensional size of the Unit of Measure.
  • Weight: The weight of the Unit of Measure.
  • Sell or Discount %: You can use one or the other, not both.
    • If you set the Sell Price for the Unit of Measure then that is the price that will be used when the UM is added to a Sales Order.
    • If you set the Discount %, then the Sell Price for this UM = BASE UNIT Sell Price x UM Multiplier x Discount %
    • If you choose to leave both of these fields blank, then the Sell Price for this UM = BASE UNIT Sell Price x UM Multiplier
  • Default SO: If this box is checked then when you add this Product to a Sales Order it will, by default, be added in this Unit of Measure.
  • Cost or PO Discount %: You can use one or the other, not both.
    • If you set the Cost for the Unit of Measure then that is the cost that will be used when the UM is added to a Purchase Order.
    • If you set the Discount %, then the Cost for this UM = BASE UNIT Default PO Cost x UM Multiplier x Discount %
    • If you choose to leave both of these fields blank, then the Cost for this UM = BASE UNIT Default PO Cost x UM Multiplier
  • Default PO: If this box is checked then when you add this Product to a Purchase Order it will, by default, be added in this Unit of Measure.
  • A few custom fields that can be defined as you choose.