Units of Measurement Rather than using dollars as the initial unit of measurement, forecasts often begin with service or product units, such as individual products, express packages to deliver, or customers needingmaintenance service or repairs for their cars. Forecasted units can then be translated to dollars by multiplying them by the unit price. If accurately forecasting demand for a service or product is not possible in terms of number of units, forecast the standard labor or machine-hours required of each of the criticalresources.