Base Unit of Measure in Business Central Items

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Posted on by Nick Webb

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If a line is being added to a sales invoice and an item code is chosen, it pulls in a 'Unit Price' and 'Unit of Measure Code' from the relevant Item record. However, a different 'Unit of Measure Code' can be chosen. On doing this you'd think the Unit Price would change, wouldn't you?

For example, let's say the item code was for 'Development Work' and the default 'Unit of Measure Code' was 'HOUR' but in fact in this case we're charging for 1 'DAY' so we change HOUR to DAY, the Unit Price has to be manually changed.

What's the text-book solution to this? Is it to have two item codes: 'Development Work (HOUR)' & 'Development Work (DAY)' or can the Item code be configured for multiple 'Unit of Measure Code's? Or other?

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Nick Webb 797 on at

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RE: Base Unit of Measure in Business Central Items

Thanks all for your help. Very useful.
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Ben Baxter 5,815 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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RE: Base Unit of Measure in Business Central Items

From the Item List > Actions > Item > Units of Measure:

This way when I sell a Box, it knows there are 10 PCS in it, and the Unit Price for the Box is 10 * the Base Unit Price. Ideally the Base Unit of Measure is your smallest UOM, but I have seen people go the other way as well, which opens the door to having fractional inventory on hand.
Nick Webb 797 on at

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RE: Base Unit of Measure in Business Central Items

Thanks for your response.

How do you define for the day UOM how many hours adds up to a day?
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Ben Baxter 5,815 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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RE: Base Unit of Measure in Business Central Items

I would recommend against multiple Items, that will grow your Item list exponentially.

If you have different UOM set for an Item, you need to set the additional UOM relationship to the base UOM. In your example, base unit of measure is Hour, so the Day UOM would be 8 Hours, which will then calculate your hourly * 8 for a Unit Price for Day.

This allows you to further build out your pricing to offer discounts based on the UOM used.

Lastly, if you generally sell your time in Days, you can set Day as the Sales Unit of Measure, which makes it the default when entering a Sales Line.
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Inge M. Bruvik 1,029 Moderator on at

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RE: Base Unit of Measure in Business Central Items

What i would recommend is to define different Unit of measures for the same item. And you can define for the day UOM how many hours adds up to a day.

Then you can also use your price list to define different prices for different unit of measures.

It is not wrong to have two item numbers either. I think it is important to consider how you want to report your sales before you decide what path to go along.