The purchase order counts cases while the store counts individual units

The quantity agrees only when the unit agrees

A purchase order that says ten cases and a store that sells single units can produce two confirmations that both read '10' while describing entirely different shipments. The number is the last thing to trust, because it is the one thing both documents get right while disagreeing about everything else. The first thing to establish is the unit each document counts in.

This is a commercial reconciliation only. It asks what the buyer ordered, what your catalog sells, and what the invoice will charge. It says nothing about how any product is used, and no quantity conclusion here should be read as one.

Read the unit of sale off each record

Collect four statements before confirming anything: the purchase unit on the PO, the unit your catalog publishes, the unit your stock count keeps, and the unit your invoice will print. Microsoft's Business Central documentation illustrates the underlying pattern in that system: inventory keeps a base unit of measure, while alternate purchasing and sales units can be defined with their own conversion quantities and rounding precision. The general pattern — businesses buy in one unit and sell in another — is common, but the configuration described belongs to that platform, and your store's actual units must be read from your own records.

Where the catalog lists only single units and the PO knows only cases, neither document is wrong yet. They are untranslated, and an untranslated order confirmed anyway becomes a picking error or an invoice dispute with a date on it.

Convert from a verified record, never from habit

There is no standard number of units in a case. The conversion for this product must come from a record someone can point to: the catalog's package definition, a packaging specification, a supplier confirmation, or a receiving record that states what a case actually contained. Write the basis next to the arithmetic, with who verified it and when. A conversion the team 'has always used' is a claim in search of its document.

Where alternate units are configured with stated conversion quantities — as the Business Central documentation describes for that system — check that the configured conversion still matches the physical reality for this item and this supplier. Configurations drift when packaging changes, and a stale conversion fails quietly on every order until someone counts a case by hand.

Settle rounding and partials before the pick

Conversions that do not divide evenly force a rounding decision, and rounding changes both the pick and the invoice. Record the documented rounding precision and whose rule it is. If the PO quantity converts to a fraction of a store unit — or a fraction of a case in the other direction — decide from your stated policy whether partial quantities are sold at all, and put the answer on the order before confirmation, not into a dispute afterward.

The invoice should name the buyer's unit and quantity as ordered, with the converted store-unit equivalent alongside. An invoice that silently substitutes your unit for theirs recreates the original mismatch inside the one document the buyer's accounts team will actually pay from.

An unverifiable conversion has an owner

If no record establishes the units per case for this product, the order waits. The discrepancy goes to the named owner — the catalog maintainer for a listing error, the purchasing contact for a supplier change, or the buyer for an ambiguous PO — and the confirmation goes out only after the answer arrives. If unit-of-sale presentation on the storefront is the underlying problem, that website question can be raised in a Prism consultation; scope, responsibilities, fees and terms are confirmed before work.

Unit-of-sale reconciliation

Complete one copy per affected order line before confirming. Every conversion must cite its basis document. An unresolved conversion keeps the order unconfirmed; it does not get averaged away.

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