Item Unit of Measure Configurations

Overview

One item can have multiple Item Units of Measure. Setting up the Item Units of Measure properly from the start is critical for the success of the GoldFinch setup.  

Common Questions

These are the common questions to help you decide what to use for the Base Unit of Measure or whether you want to create multiple Items for each Unit of Measure:

1. What Unit of Measure do you use to purchase, stock, sell, consume, and for forecasting planning?

2. What is your trading partners' preference?
   Example: Walmart prefers to use EACH for EDI 850. If you keep inventory in CASE, you will have to breakbulk CASE into EACH to fulfill the demand, or you will have to work with your EDI provider to convert EACH to CASE when they insert EDI orders into GoldFinch. Both options are NOT desirable and add significant complexity to the system.

3. Do you need to breakbulk often? If not, it may make sense to create multiple items for each of the units of measure.

4. Take into account the cost of the Items based on the Unit of Measure. (If you do breakbulk often and if you set up multiple Items for each Unit of Measure, the costing could be wrong between the items.)

5. The Supply Plan is calculated by the Base Unit of Measure only (not by each of the Units of Measures defined for an Item) Because of this, there are some recommendations for the setup of the Base Unit of Measure for the items. 

   1. Raw Material Items - Use the most commonly used stocking Unit of Measure as the Base Unit of Measure.  This may not be the smallest or largest Unit of Measure. 

      

      Additional Item Units of Measure should then be set up for purchasing and consumption purposes.

      

   2. Finished Good Items - Use the most commonly used selling Unit of Measure as the Base Unit of Measure.

   3. Batch Manufactured Items - Use the default Weight Unit of Measure (KG or LB) as the Base Unit of Measure.  Various Batch Units of Measure can be set up for different batch sizes. It is also possible to pack the output (KG or LB) into different Units of Measure, such as Case or Carton.

6. Each Item Unit of Measure will have a conversion factor. When you start using the Item Unit of Measure, you cannot change the conversion factor until the Inventory Quantity on Hand is 0, and the Item Unit of Measure is not used on any open transactions such as Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Item Journal, or Work Orders. 

7. On importing items, GoldFinch automatically creates Item Units of Measures based on the template. You can also manually enter new Item Unit of Measures. 

8. Read Item Unit of Measure for field help.

More Information

How to Change an Item's Base Unit of Measure or Item Units of measure?