Measurement units

Introduction

In the fulfillmenttools platform each article (identified by one tenantArticleId in a facility) is tracked in a unit. A unit commonly represents a physical unit like "g" or "kg" or for countable goods something like "pieces" or "pcs". Since each product is kept in just one measurement unit, operations like adding or moving stock do not need to validate or convert units between stocks.

Units can be defined in the measurementUnitKey in the Iisting. The defined key will be displayed in the clients, e.g., during picking if no measurement unit is defined for the key. It is not required to define units for articles. When no unit is set in the listing, no validation takes place and our clients will default to a localized version of "pieces".

Measurement units REST API documentation

Unit validation in inbound processes

When using the inbound process it is recommended to define units for each product in the respective listing of this product's facility.

Since no conversion between units occurs automatically, it is essential to specify the correct unit when new goods are accepted into the system. This eliminates a common source of critical errors in stock levels.

When a measurementUnitKey is set on the corresponding listing each new line item in the requested items of the purchase order and the received items of the receipt is validated against it: All quantities MUST match the unit of the listing.

Attention: When creating an InboundProcess with a PurchaseOrder with unit "xyz" and changing the listing.measurementUnitKey to something else ("qwe") the inboundProcess.purchaseOrder must now be patched/replaced to reflect the correct unit again before a receipt can created in the inventory app. This is intentional and ensures the consistency of new stock levels in the facility. In general it is not advised to change the unit of a product in a facility without careful consideration, but in some cases it might be desired to start with no unit on the listing (= no validation) and transition to stricter rules later.

More information on unit validation in the inbound process can be found under Products – Inbound Process.