Overview
Luminous tracks inventory in a base unit (e.g. "each" or "piece") but can sell in a completely different unit (e.g. "pair", "carton", "dozen"). Price levels — your wholesale tiers, cost-based markups, or manual overrides — are always defined against the base unit price stored on the SKU. When a sales order line uses a non-base selling unit, Luminous automatically multiplies the effective per-base-unit price by the conversion factor and displays the result as the price for the selling unit. You do not need separate price levels for each unit of measure.
Step 1 — Confirm your Unit of Measure infrastructure is in place
Before connecting price levels to non-base units, the UOM catalog must be configured. If you have not done this yet, follow the steps in How to Utilize Units of Measurement in Luminous.
At minimum you need:
- A Unit Class (e.g. "Quantity") that groups your related units together.
- A base Unit of Measure within that class (e.g. "each" or "piece") — this is the unit inventory is tracked in.
- One or more selling Units of Measure within the same class (e.g. "pair", "carton").
- A Conversion Rule linking the base unit to each selling unit (e.g. 1 pair = 2 pieces → conversion factor 2).
All of this is managed at Inventory Admin → Units of Measure.
Step 2 — Set the Selling Unit on each SKU
- Go to Inventory → SKUs and open the SKU you want to configure (or create a new one).
- In the SKU form, locate the Selling Unit field (in the Units of Measure section).
- Select the unit your customers order in (e.g. "pair").
- Save the SKU.
The Selling Unit you choose here becomes the default UOM that pre-fills whenever this SKU is added to a sales order line. The Unit Class on the SKU determines which conversion rules are available.
Tip: You can also update the Selling Unit in bulk via the bulk-edit SKU form, or by importing SKUs with the
DEFAULT_SELLING_UOMcolumn.
Step 3 — Set up price levels as normal
Price levels are configured at the company level and work exactly the same regardless of which selling unit you use:
- Price-Based — a percentage discount from the SKU's wholesale (list) price.
- Cost-Based — a percentage markup over the SKU's weighted average cost.
- Manual — an exact dollar amount per SKU (and optionally per quantity tier).
To assign or check price levels, go to the Company (customer) record, open its Pricing Structure tab, and review Apply Client Price Level, Pricing Groups (category-based tiers), or SKU Price Overrides.
No extra configuration is needed for the selling unit — Luminous handles the conversion automatically (see below).
How Luminous calculates the price when the selling unit differs from the base unit
When you add a line to a sales order and the line's UOM is a non-base unit (e.g. "pair"), Luminous:
- Looks up the conversion factor between the base unit and the selected selling unit (e.g. 1 pair = 2 pieces → factor 2).
- Resolves the effective per-base-unit price by applying the active price level to the SKU's wholesale price.
- Multiplies that effective per-base-unit price by the conversion factor to produce the price per selling unit shown on the line.
Example:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Base unit | piece |
| Selling unit | pair (conversion factor = 2) |
| SKU wholesale price | $5.00 / piece |
| Active price level | 10% off (Price-Based) |
| Effective price per piece | $5.00 × 0.90 = $4.50 |
| Price shown on sales order line | $4.50 × 2 = $9.00 / pair |
The list price column (if enabled in the column chooser) shows the undiscounted per-pair amount ($10.00 in this example), and the line discount reflects the $1.00/pair reduction from the price level.
Changing the UOM on an individual sales order line
Even if a SKU has a default selling unit, you can choose a different unit on any specific line:
- On the Sales Order create or edit form, find the UOM column on the line-item table.
- Use the dropdown on that line to select a different unit (only units in the same class with a valid conversion rule will appear).
- The pricing, quantity, and line total will recalculate automatically using the conversion factor for the newly selected unit.
Quick checklist
- Unit Class created and base UOM marked as the base unit
- Selling UOM created within the same Unit Class
- Conversion Rule in place between the base UOM and the selling UOM
- SKU's Selling Unit field set to the customer-facing unit
- Price level assigned to the company (default level, category price group, or SKU-specific price)
- No separate price levels needed per UOM — Luminous scales automatically