Units of Measure: From Whole Numbers to Bags and Kilos
Every item now carries a unit of measure, and an item in kilograms or litres holds 12.5 kilos or half a litre exactly. What an item still cannot do is hold two units at once — bought in bags, sold by the kilo — so the unit you choose per item is a decision worth making once, before you name your first hundred items.
A trader weighs out 12.5 kilograms of seed. A storekeeper issues 40 litres from a 200-litre drum. A miller receives 43 bags of maize that weigh 3,847 kilos in total. All three are ordinary agricultural transactions, and all three used to run into the same wall: an item in this system had no unit of measure, and its stock was a whole number.
Updated 15 October 2026: units of measure and fractional stock
This post was written when an item had no unit field and every quantity was a whole number, and its advice was to shrink the unit until the fraction disappeared. On 14 October 2026 that changed. Every item now carries a unit from a fixed list — bags, pieces, bottles and other count units stay whole; kilograms, grams, tonnes, litres and millilitres take up to three decimals — and stock, receipts, issues, transfers, counts and the till all accept the fraction. So 12.5 kg of seed is 12.5, and 40 litres from a drum is an issue of 40 against an item in litres. What has not changed is that one item holds one unit: a bag and a kilo of the same fertiliser are still a conversion you do yourself, and the rest of this post is now about choosing that unit well.
The fraction is now handled by choosing a measured unit. The choice of unit still has to be made before you build your item list rather than after — because changing three hundred items and restating their history is not a ten-minute job.
What is actually stored
The precise position, since half-measures in describing it are what cause the trouble. An item carries a name, a category, a description, a barcode, a buying price, a selling price, a moving average cost, a unit of measure and a stock figure in that unit. The unit comes from a fixed list and decides the precision: count units such as bags, pieces and bottles are whole, measured units such as kilograms and litres take three decimals. There is one unit per item — no separate purchase unit, no conversion factor and no pack size beside it.
The quantity at each location is held the same way, and the movement paths agree with each other: transfers, check-ins, check-outs and counts all store three decimals and check the item's unit, so an item in bags refuses 2.5 and an item in kilograms accepts it. This is consistent rather than accidental — there is no path that quietly accepts a decimal and then rounds it somewhere you cannot see.
What you say in the yard What the system stores
A bag of maize One bag of an item stocked in bags and named "Maize — 90kg bag"
The unit is the bag; the 90 kilos live in the item name and in your head. Nothing knows the bag weighs 90kg, so nothing can convert bags to kilos or price per kilo for you.
12.5 kg of seed 12.5 of an item stocked in kilograms
Stored exactly. The older advice to make the unit a half-kilo or 500g is no longer needed.
A 200-litre drum Either 1 unit of "Herbicide — 200L drum" or 200 units of "Herbicide — 1L"
Still the whole decision. The first is easy to receive and impossible to issue in part; the second is easy to issue and makes your purchase order read 200 litres.
3,847 kg across 43 bags 3,847 of an item in kilograms, or 43 of an item in bags
Only one of those two figures can be your stock. The other is a number on a weighbridge ticket that belongs beside it.
Half a bale of twine Storable only if the item is in a measured unit
A count unit stays whole, so if a half bale is a real transaction, stock twine by the metre or the kilogram rather than by the bale.
The pattern in every row: the unit field holds what one of the item is, and the name still carries any pack size or weight per bag. The field catches a fraction on a count unit; it cannot catch a bag recorded where a kilo was meant.
The rule that resolves it
Stock each item in the smallest unit you ever transact in, set it as the item's unit, and keep any pack size in the name. Not the unit you buy in, not the unit you count in at stock-take — the smallest one that ever appears on an issue, a sale or a transfer.
If you ever issue part of a drum, the item is in litres. If you always move whole drums and never decant, the item can be a drum. If you sell fertiliser both by the 50kg bag and by the kilo, the item is in kilograms and a bag is 50 of them. The cost of choosing a count unit that is too large is that the smaller transaction becomes impossible; a measured unit takes the fraction. Bigger numbers on a document are a nuisance. Impossible transactions are a reason people stop using the system.
Choose the smallest unit you ever transact in. Large numbers on a document are an irritation; a transaction the system cannot represent is how a store goes back to a paper book.
| Commodity | Sensible item unit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fertiliser sold by bag and by kilo | Kilogram | The kilo sale exists, so the kilo has to be the unit. A bag is a quantity of 50 |
| Fertiliser only ever sold in sealed bags | Bag, weight in the name | Nothing is ever decanted, so the bag is the smallest real transaction |
| Herbicide decanted from drums | Litre | A part-drum issue is routine, and a drum cannot be split |
| Veterinary vaccine in vials | Vial or dose, stated | Whichever one your issue note says. Decide once and name it explicitly |
| Maize received on a weighbridge | Kilogram | The weighbridge produces kilos; forcing bags loses the precision you paid to measure |
| Twine, sacks, crates | Piece | Already whole units — no decision to make |
Deciding a unit, per item, in one pass
The commodity is weighed at intake or at sale
Use the kilogram
Anything weighed should be stored in the weight unit, because the whole reason you weighed it was to be precise. Bag counts are then a division you do for reporting, and the arithmetic runs the right way — kilos to bags rather than bags to an assumed weight.
The commodity is sealed and never opened
Use the pack, with the size in the name
"Urea — 50kg bag" is honest, readable on a purchase order and correct on a stock count. The stock figure is a bag count, which is what your storekeeper counts anyway.
You sell the same thing both ways
Use the smaller unit, always
One item in the smaller unit beats two items for the same commodity. Two items means two stock figures for one physical pile, and the day somebody decants a bag without transferring between them, both are wrong.
You genuinely need fractions — 12.5 kg, 0.5 L
Set a measured unit on the item
Kilograms, litres, metres and the other measured units take up to three decimals, so 12.5 kg is 12.5 and half a litre is 0.5. Cost per unit and reorder points work in the same unit. Shrinking the unit to 500g or 500ml to avoid the fraction is no longer necessary.
You need both a weight and a count on the same record
Accept that only one of them is stock
Stock is one number. A weighbridge ticket, a bag count or a moisture reading that also matters belongs in a custom field, a document attachment or the batch record — captured, but not the stock figure.
What the choice costs you downstream
Two consequences are worth pricing before you commit, because both are invisible until you meet them.
The first is cost per unit. Moving average cost is held per item in its unit, so if the item is a 50kg bag, the cost is per bag and every per-kilo figure you quote is a division you do yourself. That is fine for a store that thinks in bags and unhelpful for one that prices per kilo.
The second is freight. Landed cost — freight, duty, clearing, transport — can be spread across the lines of a purchase order by value or by quantity, and nothing else. There is no weight basis and no volume basis. On a mixed container that is exactly backwards for agriculture: a tonne of fertiliser and a carton of seed dressing arrive on the same truck, and quantity-based allocation charges the carton the same freight as a bag while value-based allocation charges the expensive seed dressing most of a fertiliser truck's haulage.
The workaround for freight, and its price
If your items are already defined in kilograms, then allocating landed cost by quantity is allocating by weight — the two coincide. That is a genuine argument for the kilogram as your unit, and it is the strongest one in this article. For containers mixing weight units with piece units, allocate by value and accept the distortion, or split the shipment across two purchase orders and allocate each on its own basis.
Scoring your own item list
Every item name states its unit
Make them prove it: Read ten item names at random. Can a new storekeeper say what one unit is, without asking?
One commodity, one item
Make them prove it: Search for your top five commodities. Is each one a single item, or several in different units?
Fractional transactions sit on measured units
Make them prove it: Ask the storekeeper for the last five part-issues they made. Is each of those items stocked in kilograms, litres or another measured unit?
Weighed goods are stored in weight units
Make them prove it: Is anything that crosses a scale stored as bags?
The unit works for landed cost
Make them prove it: Would quantity-based freight allocation be roughly fair across your typical container?
Prices are quoted in the stored unit
Make them prove it: Does your price list use the same unit as the item?
Where the extra numbers should live
Choosing one unit does not mean throwing the others away. A weighbridge ticket number, a moisture percentage, a bag count, a grade — all of them can be captured, just not as the stock figure. Custom fields on items and on the movement documents hold them, the batch record holds a batch number and an expiry date, and attachments hold the ticket itself as a scan.
That distinction is the practical resolution of this whole article: stock is one number in one unit, and everything else about the consignment is recorded beside it rather than inside it. A store that understands that gets clean stock figures and keeps its measurements. A store that fights it ends up with two items for one pile of maize.
What we do and do not do
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- A unit of measure on every item, from a fixed list, shown beside stock on the web and in the mobile app.
- Fractional stock in measured units. Kilograms, litres and the other measured units take up to three decimals through receipts, issues, transfers, counts and the till, while bags, pieces and other count units stay whole — and every movement path checks the same rule, so no route quietly rounds a decimal behind your back.
- Batch and lot records with batch number, expiry date, supplier and purchase-order reference, plus per-batch cost.
- Custom fields on items and movement documents, for weighbridge tickets, moisture readings, bag counts and grades.
- Moving average cost per item, blended on every receipt and rolled forward through landed cost, in the item's unit.
- Landed cost allocation across purchase-order lines by value or by quantity.
More we can add to your workspace
- Buying in one unit and selling in another — a purchase unit, a stock unit and a conversion factor on one item, so bags-to-kilos and litres-to-drums become arithmetic the system does.
- A pack size on the item, so the weight of a bag lives in a field rather than in the item name.
- Weight or volume basis for landed cost, which is the allocation basis a mixed agricultural container actually needs.
- A dual unit of measure, so one item is stocked in kilos and sold in bags.
- Catch-weight handling, so items whose individual weight varies (a carcass, a bunch, a crate of tomatoes) carry both a piece count and an actual weight.
The unit on the item is built; conversion between two units is the root of most of the middle column, and choosing the smaller unit is the mitigation until it lands. Stated plainly: it is entirely survivable if the decision is made once, deliberately, before the item list exists.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsOur take
Stock every item in the smallest unit you ever transact in, set it as the item's unit, and prefer the kilogram for anything that crosses a scale — it keeps your measurement precision, now to three decimals, and makes quantity-based freight allocation approximately correct at the same time. Put weighbridge tickets, moisture and bag counts in custom fields beside the stock figure rather than trying to make the stock figure carry them. Decide this before your first import, because one item holds one unit and changing it later restates its history.
See the item master and batch records
Items with barcodes, batches with expiry and supplier references, custom fields for the measurements that matter, and weighted average cost carried through landed cost.
Explore inventory managementFrequently asked questions
Can we store 12.5 kilograms of something?
Yes. Set the item's unit to kilograms and stock, receipts, issues, counts and the till take up to three decimals — 12.5 kg is 12.5. Items in a count unit such as bags or pieces stay whole and refuse a fraction at entry, so nothing rounds a decimal silently anywhere.
How do we handle bags when we buy in kilos?
Pick one as the item's unit and put the pack size in the item name. An item holds one unit and there is no conversion factor yet, so nothing can hold that a bag is 50 kilos. If anything is ever sold or issued by the kilo, make the kilo the unit and treat a bag as a quantity of 50 on the document. If bags are always sealed and never decanted, make the bag the unit and state the weight in the name — "Urea — 50kg bag".
Should a weighbridge commodity be stored in kilos or bags?
Kilos. You weighed it precisely, and storing bag counts throws that precision away in exchange for an assumed weight per bag that will not hold. Storing kilos also makes quantity-based landed-cost allocation behave like weight-based allocation, which is the basis a mixed agricultural shipment actually needs and the only one available.
Can we allocate freight by weight?
No. Landed cost spreads across purchase-order lines by value or by quantity only. On a mixed container that misprices exactly the case where freight matters most — a tonne of fertiliser and a carton of seed dressing on the same truck. Two workarounds: define weighed items in kilograms so quantity allocation coincides with weight, or split a genuinely mixed shipment across two purchase orders and allocate each on the basis that suits it.
Where do we record the weighbridge ticket and moisture reading?
In custom fields on the item or the movement document, in the batch record, or as an attachment of the ticket itself. Stock is one number in one unit; everything else about the consignment is recorded beside it rather than inside it. That is the practical resolution — you keep the measurements without trying to make the stock figure carry two meanings at once.
What if the same commodity really is sold both by bag and by kilo?
One item, in kilos. The alternative — two items for one physical pile — breaks the first time somebody decants a bag without recording a transfer between them, and then both stock figures are wrong and neither is obviously the wrong one. A single item in the smaller unit means a bag sale is a quantity of 50, which is only an inconvenience on the document.
Does this affect items with variable individual weight?
Yes. Catch weight is an offer rather than a feature today. A carcass, a bunch of bananas or a crate of tomatoes whose weight varies per unit can be counted as pieces or stored as kilos, but not both, and nothing links a piece count to an actual weight. For those lines the honest approach is kilos as stock plus a piece count in a custom field, accepting that the piece count is descriptive rather than something reports can total against stock.
