Units of measurement in SAP are one of those cases in which we must be sure that we are going to account for, how and how our Stock will be..
When entering a material into our system and working with it, several aspects must be taken into account to establish a single criterion.
The units of measurement in SAP These are some of those cases in which we must be sure that we are going to account for, how and how our stock will be, even if we later have secondary units of measurement.
The Base Unit of Measure field is found in the material master, Base Data 1 view.
The technical name of the field is
Unit of measure in which material stock is managed. In the base unit of measure, the system converts all quantities entered by the user into other units of measure in SAP (alternative units of measure).
The base unit of measure and alternative SAP units of measure with their respective conversion factors are specified in the material master record.
Since all data updates are made in the base unit of measure, the user's specification regarding the conversion of alternative units of measure in SAP is particularly important. This is important because a quantity can only be accurately represented using an alternative unit of measure if the value it indicates can be represented with the available decimal place. To ensure this, you should consider the following two principles as much as possible:
- The base unit of measurement is the unit used that best satisfies the demand for necessary accuracy.
- Conversions from SAP alternative units of measure to base units of measure should result in simple decimal conversions (i.e., not 1/3 = 0.333…).
In stock management, the base unit of measurement is equivalent to the warehouse unit of measurement.
Service
For services there are some units of measurement in SAP, for example
- Activity unit (unit of measure at the top level of the unit of measure at the top level of the position. The exact quantities corresponding to the individual services are respectively located at the detailed level of the service line.
- Global: Unit of measurement at the activity line level for one-time activities, for which exact quantities cannot or should not be indicated.
Alternative units of measurement
Although we have a main unit assigned, we can make conversions within the master, for example if we have Unit as the base measurement and by weight we have that 1 unit has 3KG, we can buy 21 Kilos from a supplier, the measurement is automatically calculated for us, to adjust our Stock, according to the unit that we have enabled for it.
We'll need to add unit conversion data to the material master in the additional data tab.
We will have a table where we will indicate the additional units of measurement in SAP or how they are grouped:
We will have to calculate based on our base unit of measurement how many “Alternative Units of Measurement fall into that base unit of measurement.”
Given an alternative unit of measurement equal to kilograms (kg), the base unit of measurement being units (UN). 5 kg corresponds to 3 units.
5 kg = 3 UN => 1 kg = 3/5 UN
In this case, the quotient is 3/5, the numerator is 3 and the denominator is equal to 5.
If we want to place an order and we do not have a unit registered:
If we want to add a unit and there's no conversion in the material master, we won't be able to place the order and will receive an error message. If we don't know which units exist for that material, we open the Matchcode and it will show us which ones are enabled for that material:
This is data we need to reconcile with the company and understand how they operate, as it's very important for stock to be accounted for in that unit of measurement. This is the basis for the stock price and accounting for that company.
