Author Archives: Natalie

Freight Management for SAP Business One – SmartFreight®

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SmartFreight Multi-carrier transport management systemsAre you looking for an integrated freight management solution for SAP Business One? SmartFreight®  provides multi-carrier transport management systems. The team at Leverage Technologies has completed a substantial upgrade to our SmartFreight®  integration for SAP Business One. This freight management solution for SAP B1 provides generic multi-carrier freight management – a single solution across multiple freight companies. Image carrier independence, with least cost routing, full carrier compliance– with a bi-directional interface to / from SAP Business One.

 

Advantages of SmartFreight®  include :

  • Bi-directional interface to SAP Business One,
  • Reduced freight expenditure ,
  • Real time freight tracking,
  • KPI analysis on freight,
  • Invoice reconciliation
  • Shipment Optimisation
  • Powerful reporting
  • No “double capture” between SAP Business One and your freight management solution.

The integration to SAP Business One includes the following key features:

  • Creating a new connote  – the user creates the new delivery or AR invoice in SAP Business One and clicks on the create “Connote Button”. The connote will be created with the defaults as defined in the system. The user can modify defaults as required.
  • Multi-company support  – The SAP Business One / SmartFreight®  integration operates across an SAP Business One multi-company environment.
  • Tracking data from SmartFreight to SAP Business One – data is imported from the SmartFreight system to the SAP Business One connote table – including the tracking number of the base document.
  • Business Partner (SAP Business One) carrier mapping – the association of a freight carrier or range of carries to a business partner in SAP Business One.

  • Warehouse carrier sender account mapping – sender account numbers can be specified at a warehouse level. You can select from a list of freight carriers using the formatted search and can move from the listed carrier to the carrier maintenance screen in SAP Business One.
  • Shipping types – you can specify default delivery and packaging options on a shipping type.

The sender name and phone number will default from the warehouse in SAP Business One. The receiver contact details will come from the details on the business partner in SAP Business One for the contact person selected in the base document (SAP Business One).

  • Receiver SmartFreight account and charge to default – the receiver SmartFreight account number will be determined by a combination of the base documents in SAP Business One (business partner) and the selected freight carrier.
  • Receiver address – the receiver address will either be obtained from a custom address specified by the user on the logistics tab of the base document in SAP Business One or if the user didn’t specify a custom address we will use the ship to address specified in the above form and look up the appropriate address, from the business partner in SAP Business One.
  • Sender address – the sender address details will default to the address found on the warehouse of the first records in the detail lines of the base document.
  • Delivery options – delivery options can be defaulted from the shipping type specified on the base document. If any defaults are found, they will be selected when the screen opens for the first time.
  • Freight lines – Freight lines will be populated by either the lines specified in the packaging section of the base document or the detail lines. If the packaging section has been populated the SAP Business One integration will grab default for the size and dimensions of the packages from the package types.

As detailed above, the team at Leverage Technologies has invested a great deal of energy developing this SAP Business One / SmartFreight® solution . If you are an SAP Business One user looking for a multi-carrier, freight management solution then SmartFreight®  integration from the team at Leverage Technologies will provide the answers that you are looking for.

For more information visit SmartFreight.com

SAP Business One Sales Report – Crystal Reports – monthly customer status

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SAP Business One 8.82 includes another great example of SAP Crystal Reports integration – the SAP Business One monthly customer status report (SAP Business One sales reports). Available on the standard SAP Business One Sales AR menu under the Sales Reports section this report is a great addition to the other standard SAP Business One sales reports.

Choose the Monthly Sales Status Report under the Sales Reports Menu:  

As with most SAP Business One reports there are multiple criteria to choose from including:

– Date type (posting date or document date),
– Date range for the report,
– Customer range,
– The report can also be filtered by SAP Business One customer group and / or SAP Business One user defined customer properties.

The report presents in a graphical format on page one (see below).

Page one information includes top 5 customers by invoiced amount in SAP Business One and top 5 customers by business partner balance. The next few pages of the report provide a detailed customer status report.

Information provided includes order amount, order growth, Gross profit amount and %, delivered, credited, collected and open balance. This is another great example of SAP Crystal Reports being used to deliver graphical reporting in SAP Business One.

SAP Business One Inventory and distribution – streamlining your logistics

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SAP Business One offers comprehensive inventory control, warehousing and logistics functionality. Purchasing and purchase planning with built in workflow assists your team in making the right purchasing decisions. The SAP Business One MRP (Material Requirements Planning) Wizard can be used to further assist with purchase planning and creation of sales orders. Here are some of the great functions and features available:

  • Landed costs – use SAP Business One to calculate costs for imported goods. Most Australian based distribution and manufacturing based organisations import raw materials or finished goods from overseas. The SAP Business One landed costs module will allow you to calculate the full landed costs of an item based on additional import costs such as customs, insurance, taxes and transport.
  • Item traceability – batch and serial number traceability is available in SAP Business One. You can decide to manage item traceability management by serial number, batch or no traceability. Many organisations will have some more expensive items which are serial tracked (or batch tracked) and some items which do not require traceability. Serial and batch traceability reports are a standard feature of SAP Business One – providing the user with full traceability of inventory items with drill down to source transaction.
  • Item Master– manage item master data including manufacturer information, purchasing and sales data, inventory per warehouse data, planning data for Material Requirements Planning, item user defined properties and active and inactive dates for items (QA).
  • Inventory movements – goods receipts, goods issue, inventory transfers, inventory transfer requests, recurring transactions and more.
  • Stock take and cycle counts – prepare stock take and cycle count recommendations – assisting your warehouse team to keep accurate and complete stock records.
  • Price lists – keep multiple price lists including contract pricing, customer specific pricing, period based discounts, volume discounts and more.
  • Available to promise – check item availability and the SAP Business One available to promise report to see what stock is available in which warehouse.
  • Back-order – SAP Business One provides you with the tools and reports to effectively manage your back-orders. Helping you improve customer service by expediting and clearly communicating back-order delivery times and commitments.
  • Alternative items – use the SAP Business One alternative items functionality to check for alternative stock item availability and stock check. If you are out of stock of item one what alternative items do you have stock availability of and what is the percentage fit – provide your customers with an alternative.
  • Relationship mapping – use the SAP Business One relationship mapping to view the relationship between various documents. For example – if I have a partially open purchase order what are the corresponding AP invoices and goods receipts associated with this open purchase order.
  • Inventory reports – there are hundreds of standard reports available in SAP Business One.

Let’s not forget that the team at Leverage can also write any customer specific reporting requirements for you – using SAP Crystal Reports, SAP Dashboards or SAP SQL Query. Standard SAP Business One inventory reports include :

  • item list o open item list
  • last prices report
  • alternative items report
  • inactive items
  • inventory posting
  • inventory status
  • inventory in warehouse
  • inventory audit
  • inventory valuation
  • stock turnover
  • serial number traceability
  • batch traceability

Other options available for SAP Business One inventory control include bar-code scanning, freight management integration for multiple freight carriers, e-commerce and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). 

SAP Business One EDI – Saving you time and money by integrating your supply chain.

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Many SAP Business One wholesale / distribution companies in Australia are running or have contemplated running EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to streamline supply chain and SAP Business One logistics. For some companies the requirement for EDI comes from the customer – large retail companies in Australia are constantly looking to streamline their ordering and fulfilment. As your order volumes with the large retailers grow so too does the requirement for EDI.  EDI is the ability to trade order and supply information electronically by bridging the gap between different business management solutions used by different organisations. What starts out as a reasonably straight forward proposition can become rather complex. Consider the requirement for GS1, EAN, ASNs, SSCC labels, Scan packing – all integrated to SAP Business One.

The team at Leverage Technologies has worked on EDI projects for many of Australia’s large, small and medium sized distribution based organisations across a range of different industries – food, chemical, IT, electronics and building materials. The challenge is that the major retailers in Australia require different document and data exchange formats.  There are other considerations like freight management, back-order rules and retailer distribution centre requirements that need consideration. Another consideration is 3PL (3rd Party Logistics). What is clear is that with integrated EDI solutions you can achieve substantial cost savings and increased customer satisfaction as you streamline ordering, warehousing, logistics, replenishment, delivery and reporting.

Leverage Technologies provides a best of breed EDI solution based on GXS Integrator, SAP Business One and Levitation EDI. Further extensions to the solution are available for Vendor Connect and Scan packing integration.

There are multiple integration points for EDI to and from SAP Business One and multiple documents that need to be created depending on which retailer you are working with, which standards you are working to and the nature of the goods that are being distributed.  Leverage is also able to provide customised reporting and validation in the EDI solution.  Common requirements include:

  • Purchase Order – PO (850)
  • Invoice (810)
  • Advanced Shipping Notice – ASN (856)
  • Purchase Order Acknowledgment – POA (855)
  • Product Activity Data – PAD Data (852)
  • GS1 compliance GTIN support – global trade identification number
  • DC integration – Distribution Centre shipping

If you want to discuss your SAP Business One / EDI requirements in more detail  feel free to give the team at Leverage a call on 1300 045 046.

SAP Business One mobile app version 1.7 released.

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A new version of the SAP Business One iPhone and iPad app has been released – version 1.7.0.

What’s new in release 1.7.0 of the SAP Business One iPhone and SAP Business One iPad app.:

  •  Log into the SAP Business One app with up to two mobile devices per user. Log in using your iPad and / or your iPhone from the same account.
  • Selection criteria for SAP Business One Crystal Reports.
  • At login you now have the ability to select which company you want to access (assuming you have multiple company databases).
  • Enhanced sales documents. – Optimisation for iPhone 5 / IOS 6. The app is free for all SAP Business One licensed users with a professional or limited profile licence.

As a reminder some of the great functions and features that are accessible from the SAP Business One iPhone and SAP BusinessOne iPad app include :

Alerts and approvals – workflow approvals and alerts accessible form your iPad or iPhone. Approve SAP Business One workflow deviations from discounts, prices and credit limits. Drill down to relevant data before finalising your decision on approval of workflow.
Dashboards and reports  – standard and customised dashboards and KPI reporting.
Business One iPhone and iPad app.- use SAP Business One CRM to create and modify sales opportunities to track your sales pipeline.
Sales quotations – create and modify sales quotations.
Sales orders – create and modify or review sales orders.
Service calls – create, modify and allocate service calls for your service team.
Monitor inventory – keep track of stock levels, check pricing information and find detailed inventory by warehouse.
Manage customer and supplier information – view business partner details, create new leads, suppliers or customers.
Create activities and reminders – add to your to do list on SAP Business One.

Thanks to the team at SAP for another great release of the SAP Business One iPhone and iPad app.

 

SAP for SME – is SAP really for small business?

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“SAP light? SAP for SME? SAP for small business? I am a relatively small business – is there an SAP product for me?” These are questions that people ask on a regular basis. The answer is a resounding yes – SAP Business One is the SAP solution aimed at the SME (small to medium enterprise) market. So who is the target market and just how big or small should my company be before I consider SAP Business One? I have been involved in 140+ SAP Business One implementations and the size and complexity of these implementations has ranged from simple 2 user systems to divisions of multi-nationals with hundreds of users across multiple locations. Smaller companies implementing SAP Business One might have turnover of $4 million who have outgrown their existing applications and want better reporting, mobile access and operational functionality. Larger multinational subsidiaries could have turnover running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. So, how long it takes to implement SAP Business One will depend on the complexity of the proposed implementation.  Whilst SAP Business One works very well for small and larger organisations, the focus of this blog is SAP for small business. So let me give you a few real examples of SME’s using SAP Business One: 1.Australian company – turnover $4 million, 6 users, functional requirements – finance, CRM and basic distribution, reporting. Implementation days = 20. 2.Australian company – turnover 12 million, 15 users, functional requirements finance, CRM, distribution, manufacturing assembly, dashboard reporting. Implementation days = 35.

The implementation timeframes for these implementations can be measured in weeks not months and the return on investment is realised very quickly.

What is interesting is that many small businesses have processes which are just as complicated as larger multi-nationals but only have limited budgets with which to implement business management solutions. SAP Business One offers all of the functionality normally associated with multi-million dollar implementations (workflow, alerts, customer relationship management, BI reporting, dashboards, mobility and business analytics) at a fraction of the price. Most prospective customers have traditionally been using entry level or older business management solutions and might be struggling with concurrent usage, reporting, integration, CRM and operational functionality. SAP Business One addresses all of these challenges and more – finance, distribution, manufacturing, CRM, Outlook integration, workflow, mobility and BI Reporting.