When it comes to inventory, clarity is everything. If your team has to decode what a “unit” of inventory actually refers to, you’re setting the stage for costly errors and wasted time—not to mention frustration. For businesses managing assets and consumables across job sites, warehouses, clinics, or production lines, that’s a risk you can’t afford.
The good news? Your inventory system doesn’t have to dictate the language your business uses to measure or count your items. It can adapt to how your team already communicates. So whether you measure your inventory in pallets, fluid ounces, syringes, or anything else, you can track it accurately in Sortly. In this article, we’ll dive into the benefits of custom units of measure and how Sortly lets you track any type of inventory unit with ease.
The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Inventory Units
Most inventory systems come with a set of predefined units of measure, such as bins or kilograms. However, for many types of businesses, these units of measure are overly rigid or even irrelevant to the way their business operates.
For example, let’s say you run a medical clinic. Your staff needs to track everyday consumable items like cotton-tipped swabs or tongue depressors, which typically come in boxes of 100 or 500. If your business’s inventory system only allows them to track those items by metrics like quantity or weight, it forces the team into awkward workarounds, like manually calculating quantities or creating duplicate entries labeled “Box of 100.” This method is inefficient, inconsistent, and can easily lead to reordering errors, directly costing your business money.
When businesses are forced to count inventory with units of measure that don’t match what’s actually in the field or on the shelf, messy workarounds naturally follow: confusing notes, duplicated entries, or incorrect picks.
This disconnect grows even more painful when teams span departments or locations. For instance, if the warehouse team logs something in “rolls” but the team on the job site is expecting “cases,” that misalignment can lead to delays, reorders, or even project shutdowns.
How Language Drives Clarity Across Teams
When your inventory speaks the same language your team does, everything runs more smoothly. Being able to customize units of measure for all the types of inventory you track eliminates second-guessing and allows everyone from the warehouse to the field to track items confidently and efficiently.
This is especially important in industries where different teams interact with the same inventory for very different reasons. For instance:
- An HVAC technician needs to know how many “boxes” of air filters to grab before heading out to a job.
- A medical assistant must reorder a “pack” of syringes without hunting for product codes.
- A construction site manager wants to verify that enough “bundles” of rebar are ready before concrete gets poured.
In each case, clear and relevant inventory units reduce miscommunication and eliminate unnecessary back-and-forth.
Inventory Unit Consistency Speeds Up Onboarding and Reduces Errors
Custom units don’t just help your seasoned staff—they’re also a huge asset when training new employees. Instead of explaining internal lingo or reminding teams that “unit” means “pallet” in this case and “box” in another, your system simply reflects the real-world terms your team already knows.
That means faster onboarding, fewer mistakes, and more time spent actually working instead of deciphering the inventory system.
With tools like Sortly’s Custom Units of Measurement, teams can define, update, and manage units that align with their day-to-day operations, keeping systems intuitive and training to a minimum.
How Sortly’s Custom Units of Measurement Ensures Inventory Accuracy with Any Unit
Every business has its own language, and your inventory system should reflect that instead of forcing you into generic defaults. That’s why Sortly gives you the tools to take control of your unit language, streamline operations, and keep your team on the same page, wherever and however they work.
Sortly’s Custom Units of Measurement feature gives you the best of both worlds: a ready-to-use list of standard units like “each,” “box,” or “roll” for fast setup, and the flexibility to create your own units when the defaults don’t quite fit. Whether you’re tracking items individually or in batches, Sortly adapts to how your team already thinks about quantity.
And now, with recent updates, you can go even further. You can edit the unit of measure on any existing item in Sortly—no need to delete and recreate it just to fix or update a label. Regardless of whether you’re adjusting a single item or making a bulk change across dozens of records, Sortly makes it quick and painless to keep your units accurate and aligned with your workflow.
These enhancements mean your inventory can evolve as your operations do—without disrupting your data, your reports, or your team.
By letting businesses edit units as their workflows evolve, Sortly helps ensure your data stays clean, up-to-date, and accurate. That means better forecasting, fewer stockouts, and greater confidence in your data.
About Sortly
Sortly is an inventory management solution that helps you track, manage, and organize your inventory from any device, in any location. We’re an easy-to-use inventory software that’s perfect for large or small companies. Sortly builds inventory tracking seamlessly into your workday so you can save time and money and satisfy your customers.
With Sortly, you can track inventory, supplies, parts, tools, assets, and anything else that matters to your business. It comes equipped with smart features like barcoding & QR coding, low stock alerts, customizable folders, data-rich reporting, and much more. Best of all, you can update inventory right from your smartphone, whether you’re on the job, in the warehouse, or on the go.
Whether you’re just getting started with inventory management or you’re an expert looking for a more efficient solution, we can transform how your company manages inventory—so you can focus on your next build. That’s why over 15,000 businesses globally trust us as their inventory management solution.
Start your two-week free trial of Sortly today.
