Units of Measure

Looking for the physical items you stock, check out and count? Those are Units. This page is about measurement units — "lb", "gal", "ea".

Availability — Part of the Inventory module. Manage modules and your plan tier in Account & Billing.

A unit of measure is not the same thing as a Unit — a Unit is one tracked physical item of a Product; a unit of measure is just the label a quantity is expressed in. The API keeps them apart the same way: units of measure live at /api/v1/inventory/units-of-measure, physical Units at /api/v1/inventory/units.

A unit of measure is the label that makes a quantity meaningful — it's what turns the number 500 into 500 mL, or the number 1 into 1 pallet. Units of measure are referenced on Products for their stock amount and weight, on reorder points for min/max thresholds, and on bill of materials components. Getting them right before you build out your catalog avoids relabeling work later.

Every new account is seeded with a complete set of standard units across all types (see below). You will rarely need to add more, but custom units are fully supported for industry-specific cases like pallet, roll, or a bespoke packaging form.

Unit types #

Each unit belongs to exactly one type, which groups related units for display and filtering:

• Weight — lb, oz, kg, g; used on Product weight fields.
• Volume — gal, qt, pt, cup, fl oz, L, mL; common for liquids and bulk materials.
• Length — ft, in, yd, m, cm, mm; for cable, fabric, trim, and similar.
• Area — sqft, sqin, sqm; for sheet goods and flooring.
• Count / Each — ea, item, pcs, pair, set; the most common type for discrete goods.
• Packaging — box, bag, case, pack, carton, pallet, roll, sheet; describes the outer container rather than the contents.
• Time — hr, min, day; used for service and labor Products.
• Other — a catch-all for anything that doesn't fit above.

The Time type is excluded from quantity-type selectors (it doesn't make sense as a stock amount) but is available for service-oriented Products where billing is measured in hours or days.

Creating and managing units #

Units of measure are managed from Account Administration → Units of Measure. The form has four fields:

• Abbreviation — the short symbol shown throughout the app (e.g. lb, box, ea). Required; must be unique per account, max 20 characters.
• Name — a human-readable label like Pound or Box. Optional but recommended for clarity in dropdowns.
• Type — one of the types listed above. Required; used to group and filter units wherever they appear.
• Sort Order — an integer that controls display order within a type. Lower numbers appear first. Leave blank to float to the end.

The unit list defaults to sort order ascending and can be filtered by type. You can edit any unit in place or delete it. Deleting a unit removes it from the list; existing Products and Units that already reference the abbreviation retain it as a plain string value.

Products store their unit as a plain abbreviation string, not a relational link to this catalog. Changing a unit's abbreviation here does not retroactively update any existing Product records — they will still carry the old string. Update Products manually if you rename an abbreviation that is already in widespread use.

How units appear on Products #

When you create or edit a Product, two unit pickers use this catalog:

• Unit of Measure (the amount unit) — what one stocked unit is, e.g. mL on a 500 mL bottle of fluid. The Product's Amount field carries the number; the unit carries the label. Together they read as 500 mL.
• Weight Unit — the unit for the Product's shipping weight (e.g. lb).

Units also appear on reorder point thresholds and on bill-of-materials component amounts, so consistent labeling across the catalog keeps quantities comparable.

The built-in unit set #

Fresh accounts include 36 seeded units spanning all types. The defaults cover the most common imperial and metric measurements. Because abbreviations must be unique per account, you cannot add a second lb — but you can rename the built-in lb unit's label or sort order freely.

Doing it from the API #

See API: Getting Started for authentication details and how to generate a Bearer token.

# List all units (ordered by sort_order)
curl "https://your-domain.com/api/v1/inventory/units-of-measure" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

# List only Weight units
curl "https://your-domain.com/api/v1/inventory/units-of-measure?type=weight" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

# Create a custom unit
curl -X POST "https://your-domain.com/api/v1/inventory/units-of-measure" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"abbreviation": "drum", "label": "Drum (55 gal)", "type": "packaging", "sort_order": 68}'

Valid type values are: weight, volume, length, area, count, packaging, time, and other.