What are case equivalents?
The short answer: A case equivalent converts different bottle sizes and pack counts into one standard volume so you can compare them. For spirits and wine the standard is usually the 9-liter case, which is twelve 750 mL bottles. A 6-pack of 750s is half a 9-liter case, even though it ships as one physical case.
The math
Bottles × liters per bottle ÷ 9 = 9-liter cases.
- 12 × 750 mL = 9 L = 1.0 case
- 6 × 750 mL = 4.5 L = 0.5 case
- 24 × 375 mL = 9 L = 1.0 case
- 6 × 1.75 L = 10.5 L = about 1.17 cases
Why it trips people up
If one distributor reports your 6-pack as "1 case" and another reports 9-liter equivalents, the same volume shows up as two different numbers. Add them together and your total is wrong before you've started.
It gets worse when you change packs. Move a SKU from 12-packs to 6-packs and your physical case count doubles while your volume stays exactly the same.
What to do
Ask each distributor what their "cases" column means. Keep physical cases for warehouse and shipping work, and use 9-liter equivalents when you compare markets, SKUs or months. Always label which one a number is.
If a report is missing the pack size for a product, stop and find out. Don't guess.
In DepletionIQ
We map every SKU's size and pack during onboarding, so reports from different distributors land on the same basis.