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SAP Business One – Systems Admin Made Easy

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Leverage Technologies September 2015 – Customer Seminar

Every month one of the SAP Business One product experts conducts free systems training for our customers. During the September 2015 session the SAP Business One experts at Leverage Technologies demonstrated SAP Business One user admin:

  • New user set-up in SAP Business One – creation of the user, applying forms settings to the user, assigning a license to the user, setting the correct authorisations for the user,
  • User authorisations – tips and tricks when setting up user rights and authorisations,
  • The differences between SAP Business One license and authorization error messages.

This blog and the associated YouTube recoding (embedded below) is aimed at super users and administrators of SAP Business One who would typically be responsible for systems administration.

The first point to note is that to complete many of these tasks in SAP Business One you will need Super User access to the SAP Business One system. A super user has full access to SAP Business One and only a super user can set up authorisations.

To set-up a new user in SAP Business One go to the Administration menu then on the setup menu click on general and then the users menu item. The user form (image below) will open. Notice that the form will open in add mode. You can change the form to find mode by using the Ctrl F shortcut. Ctrl A moves you back to add mode. The Add and Find mode is used in SAP Business One to Add a new user and Find an existing user.

SAP Business One – User setup and administration:
Sept15_customer1
SAP Business One – Users – Setup Screen – used for user admin:Sept15_customer2
When setting up a new user don’t forget that the user code is the unique identifier. Here’s a good tip – the user code in SAP Business One is case sensitive. As such Brett and brett will be seen in SAP Business One as two different users. This is particularly relevant if you have multiple databases set-up in SAP Business One. When setting up users in different databases remember that the user code is case sensitive otherwise each database will assume that it is a different user (Brett and brett).

When setting up the user ID don’t forget that the mobile device ID is important if you are going to set up the mobility apps (Apple and Android) for SAP Business One.

Another tip and trick – use the “locked” functionality to lock access for a user who has left the company. As an alternative the user can be “removed” from SAP Business One.

SAP Business One – Locked functionality – systems admin:Sept15_customer3
User defaults can be used to create for example a state based user – NSW, QLD, VIC etc. This will associate a different address, a different printing header, different login colours, different font sizes, a specific warehouse (local distribution / local dispatch requirements), print user defaults (document preferences relating to the user). The “path” tab on the user defaults is a SAP Business One 9.1 feature which allows you to change the attachments folder (for document management) per user.

SAP Business One user default settings:Sept15_customer4
Authorisation groups – can be used for authorization templates. For example you might have an authorization template for sales, admin, inventory users. These authorization groups will assign standard group authorizations (default set-up authorisations) to a user.

SAP Business One User Admin – Authorisation Groups:Sept15_customer5
License administration in SAP Business One allows you to review available and allocated user licenses. On the SAP Business One menu structure go to Administration, License, License Administration. Using the SAP Business One license administration window you can re-allocate licenses, import new licenses and check license availability. The “components” tab shows you what licenses are available. As we know from previous blogs SAP Business One offers multiple different license types https://staging.leveragetech.com.au/blog/sap-business-one-sap-b1-user-types/

SAP Business One License Administration:Sept15_customer6
The “assignment” tab is new (SAP Business One 9.1 release). This tab shows you the assignment of different licenses across the business – which users are allocated to which license types.

Another quick tip – don’t forget that SAP Business One 9.1 allows you to copy a table and export to / from MS Excel https://staging.leveragetech.com.au/blog/sap-business-one-version-9-1-ms-excel-integration/ This will allow you to export the user license assignments to MS Excel for checking and reporting.

You can use the “license allocation” tab to change user allocations for a license or license type.

Once you have allocated a new user the relevant license you can look at the correct authorization levels that you want to assign to the user.

On the SAP Business One menu structure go to Administration, system initialisation, authorisations and general authorisations. User authorisations can be copied from one user to another user by simply “dragging” the user authorisations from one user to another user using your mouse. Alternatively you can use the “copy authorisations” button to copy various authorisations to one or multiple users.

Copy authorisations in SAP Business One User Admin:Sept15_customer7
A quick tip – when setting up a new user authorisation from scratch (without copying the user authorisations from another user) – to run formatted searches the user will need full authorisation to the relevant query group and the “execute non-select SQL statement” function.

Don’t forget to assign the correct forms to a user. When you create a new user without copying any authorisations SAP Business One will default to the standard forms (for example the standard Sales Order Form). For most implementations of SAP Business One you will have modified the form layout, added user defined fields and will have hidden other fields. Remember that you can copy forms from one user to another by going into the user set-up screen in SAP Business One and then copy the forms setting from one user to another.

Another quick tip – seeing who is logged into SAP Business One at any point in time. You might want to do some system admin and you want to see who is logged into the system before you perform any administration tasks. SAP Business One 9.1 offers some new functionality to make your life easier. On the SAP Business One menu structure go to Administration, Utilities and click on Connected Clients. This screen will show you which users are logged in. As the administrator you can now send a message to the “connected users” or you can disconnect users who have gone home for the day and have left their machines logged in to SAP Business One.

A quick tip from the Leverage Technologies SAP Business One team – there is a difference between an error message associated with trying to access SAP Business One functionality without the correct license and the alternative error which is associated with the user not having the correct user authorisations. An error message that says “You cannot open window with your current license”. This means that the user has authorisation to the relevant function but the license allocated to the user does not allow access to that functionality. More information about SAP Business One license types is available on our previous blog  https://staging.leveragetech.com.au/blog/sap-business-one-sap-b1-user-types/

An alternative message is the authorisations message which indicates that the license being used has access to the relevant functionality but that the user does not have authorisation for the relevant function. This error message says “You are not permitted to perform this function”. This message will allow authorisation by another user (with the relevant authorisation status).

SAP Business One User Forum – Leverage Technologies (September 2015) – User Administration:

Thanks to everyone for participating in the Leverage Technologies September user forum. In October we will focus on SAP Lumira.

SAP Business One Lumira – using SAP Business One reporting to tell the full story

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The team at Leverage Technologies has spent some time evaluating SAP Lumira reporting for SAP Business One. Our view – outstanding……get SAP Business One Lumira to tell the full story in your business.

SAP Lumira Reporting for SAP Business One:Lumira1All SAP Business One customers have data – some have greater volumes of data than others. One thing is certain – SMEs are starting to build larger data volumes from multiple different sources – CRM, the web, mobility etc. The trick is sorting and analyzing data into meaningful analysis tools to help with decision making.

SAP talks about SAP Lumira being a self-service business intelligence tool and I think that assessment is correct. In many respects SAP Lumira answers the question I am often asked by SAP Business One customers – “can I create my own reports?”. The good news is that with SAP Business One Lumira you can.

Let’s assume you are about to walk into a management meeting. Some questions you might get asked include:

  • Which are my most profitable customers, products and product lines?
  • How did we go with budget Vs actual last month?
  • How did last month’s sales compare with the same month last year?
  • How did this quarter’s sales compare with the same quarter last year and the previous quarter?

The answers to these questions lies in your ERP data – the challenge is data extraction into meaningful reports – preferably graphical reports with drill down. Most people are not IT savvy and do not have days to prepare reports. The answer – self-service Business Intelligence form SAP Lumira.

The analytics dream:

  • Graphical – a picture is worth a thousand words, people are more likely to retain graphical reporting images and knowledge;
  • Get real time answers to your questions;
  • Tell a story with your data.

Let’s take a look at some of the SAP Lumira features:

Prepare your data – SAP Business One Lumira is already integrated to SAP Business One. This makes data preparation easy. As you can see in the image below your data sets are already available and integrated from SAP Business One to SAP Lumira.

SAP Business One Lumira Reporting – step 1 – prepare your data:Lumira2Visualise your data – use SAP Business One Lumira to visualize your data. Choose from different graph types (bar chart, line chart, pie chart, geo bubble chart, heat maps and more). This allows the user to choose the graphical representation that is best for their report. Choose your measures and dimensions. For example if you need a sales report your dimension might be sales, quantity or gross profit. Your dimensions might be item group or item. Of course the report can be filtered.

SAP Business One Lumira reporting – step 2 – visualize your data:Lumira3In summary for your reporting – what type of graphics do you want? Pie chart, column chart, geo, heat maps and more – you decide on the presentation of data for your story.

What measures and dimensions do you want? Drag in the relevant measures and dimensions. No technical skill set required.

Compose your story. The next step in the reporting process is the most exciting. Compose your data in a storyboard. This step allows the user to combine multiple visual or table reports to tell a story. You might want to combine 4 different sales reports – by item, item group, GP and budget to tell the complete story.

SAP Business One Lumira reporting – Compose your storyboard:Lumira4

Share – now that your story is complete share your story with team members by exporting the report, publishing the report to SAP HANA, publishing the report to explorer, using SAP Lumira cloud or SAP Lumira server.

Our summary – SAP Lumira reporting integrated to SAP Business One is:

  • Low cost, high return;
  • Easy to use;
  • Does not require technical or IT skills;
  • Users can create their own reports;
  • Great visual representation.

Another great example of value add from the team at SAP.

Leverage Technologies increases efficiency by 26% with SAP Business One HANA

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The team at Leverage Technologies implemented SAP Business One HANA for CRM and finance 4 months ago. Leverage runs all finance, accounts receivable, purchase orders, accounts payable, reporting, and mobility through SAP Business One HANA. We have had such positive feedback from the accounts, sales and marketing team that I thought we should spread the word.

In the words of the Leverage Technologies accounting team

“The enterprise search allows me to search through thousands of transactions to find the document, transaction or contact details I am looking for – in seconds. This saves me time and allows me to give instant answers to our customers”.

SAP Business One HANA Enterprise Search:Hana_effeciency1

“The new SAP Business One 9.1 MS Excel cut and paste functionality saves me 4 hours a month capturing consultant’s expense claims. The Leverage Technologies consultancy team submit their expense claims in MS Excel and I simply cut and paste into SAP Business One (AP invoices) simple, quick and efficient”.

SAP Business One MS Excel cut and paste:Hana_effeciency2

“The SAP Business One HANA dashboards give the management team instant access to information. We use the standard KPIs and dashboards extensively”.

SAP Business One HANA Dashboards (demo data):Hana_effeciency3

Some examples of time saving SAP Business One technology at work:

  • The team at Leverage Technologies has integrated timesheet management into SAP Business One HANA. An invoicing process that used to take a full day a week of someone’s time now takes 20 minutes.
  • Back to back PO’s are created from sales orders and the SAP Business One relationship map functionality is used to map out the relevant sales order, back to back PO, AR invoice, AP invoice etc. – saving time looking for related documents.

An example of an SAP Business One Relationship Map:Hana_effeciency4

  • All AP invoices are attached to the SAP Business One AP attachment folder. When payments are ready to be made or there is a query on an AP invoice the team simply clicks on the scanned attachment to review the original document. No more time consuming searches through manual paper folders to find the AP invoice.
  • Approvals – all credit notes and purchase orders are automated through the SAP Business One approvals process.
  • Pipeline sales management is run through the SAP Business One CRM – Sales Opportunity Management.
  • All customer agreements are attached to the customer master data (SAP Business One BP form) to allow instant access to agreements and project related documents.
  • The SAP Business One GUI editor (9.1 feature) and relevant screens have been modified to suit individual users.
  • Reporting continues to be automated – a combination of the standard SAP Business One HANA dashboards and KPI’s, Leverage Technologies designed HANA KPIs and Dashboards, a few SAP Crystal Reports, use of SAP Business One HANA Interactive Analysis and MS Excel Pivot Tables.
  • The sales team use the SAP Business One mobility app (iPhone and iPad) extensively. Before meeting with a customer we can check on customer details, previous notes and correspondence, support questions and accounts receivable updates.

Short term plans include the use of SAP Lumira for additional self-service Business Intelligence.

We measured the results of our moving to the SAP Business One HANA platform and we believe that we have become somewhere between 25% and 30% more efficient using SAP Business One HANA. These time savings where measured on:

  • Invoicing process
  • Approval process
  • Document management
  • Search and find
  • Data capture
  • Back to back orders
  • Report generation
  • Mobility

An outstanding result achieved through the implementation of SAP Business One HANA.

SAP Business One customer order notifications – helping improve customer service

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The team at Leverage has received regular requests for automated order acknowledgements to be sent from SAP Business One. The requirement varies slightly from customer to customer but essentially needs an automated email to be sent to customers on various order statuses:

  • Receipt of order from customer;
  • Order status update;
  • Dispatch of order to customer;

The screenshot below shows an example. This is an automated order confirmation email for an order received. As the order is created in SAP Business One the mail is triggered and moments later your customer has an email confirming their order details.

SAP Business One order confirmation email:

Confirmation_email

This is another great example of the value add offered by SAP Business One and the team at Leverage Technologies.

A short demonstration of the SAP Business One Order confirmation functionality:

Leverage Technologies Customer Presentation – SAP Business One 9.1 and SAP Business One Reporting Options

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The team at Leverage Technologies presents monthly SAP Business One updates for all Leverage customers. The August 2015 update was run on the 25th August and includes an overview of SAP Business One 9.1 enhancements and reporting options for SAP Business One. We have embedded a YouTube recording (below) of items covered in the customer session. As always we are happy to share this information with the broader SAP community. We hope you find the presentation useful.

Items covered include:

SAP Business One 9.1:

MS Excel cut and paste to / from SAP Business One
  • Cut and paste journals, purchase orders and other document types to and from MS Excel.
New and enhanced SAP Business One GUI / forms editor
  • Edit your SAP Business One forms – quick easy to use editor
Hide business functions
  • Create a clean user interface by hiding business functions that you do not use
Manufacturing enhancements
  • Resource management – to assist with production planning and identification of resource and labour constraints
  • Enhancements to the Bills of Material. Add text / notes for instructions on the bill of materials. Group items together on the bill of materials. Also add resource (machine / labour) to the bill of materials.
Production enhancements
  • Pick and pack manager. New functions and features to streamline the pick and pack process including the ability to create the pick list from a sales order or production order.
  • Weight management – additional functions for units of measure and weight management.
  • Batch / serial costing – cost items per batch.

Leverage Technologies (August 2015) Customer update – SAP Business One 9.1:

SAP Business One reporting options

SAP Business One HANA
  • Cash flow analysis
  • Pervasive analytics
  • Interactive analysis
  • Dashboards, KPIs
SQL Server Reporting Services
SAP Lumira
  • visualize and share your SAP Business One data in a storyboard
SAP Crystal
  • graphical reports run from the SAP Business One menu
SAP Business One Query Manager
  • create your own SAP Business One SQL or SAP Business One HANA reports – quick and easy
Pivot tables
  • great for financial reporting

Leverage Technologies (August 2015) Customer update – SAP Business One Reporting:

SAP Business One Dunning letters – helping your business collect cash.

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Most SME’s will agree that cash is critical for business growth. ERP providers talk about helping with the quote to cash process – expediting the collection of cash in your business. The good news is that SAP Business One provides us with multiple cash collection tools and reports to help improve your cash flow. The dunning letter facility available in SAP Business One can automate reminder letters to your overdue debtors. These reminder letters are sent to your overdue debtors based on rules that you set in the SAP Business One dunning letter module. Let’s take a quick look at how this works:

  1. You can set-up your dunning terms in the SAP Business One Dunning Terms Setup window. This configuration screen allows you to assign different letter layouts and severity levels to overdue debtors. As an example you might send dunning letter layout 1 (a simple reminder) to debtors that are 60 days overdue. This letter might be a simple reminder – something like “please note that your account is in 60 days – we would appreciate prompt payment. Please can you arrange payment of the outstanding 60 day balance of $8,688 as soon as possible?” Dunning letter 2, which might be sent on 90 days could have a somewhat firmer tone. The good news is that you can decide on the wording of each letter and can assign different letter formats to different customers. As an example you might decide that certain customers are exempt from dunning letters. As with many SAP Business One options and configurations – the choice is yours.
  2. You can decide if there is a “fee per letter” and interest calculations / costs can be added to overdue accounts.
  3. The dunning letter configuration window also allows you to set a minimum balance requirement. For example you might not want to send dunning letters to customers who owe you less than $100. Once again the configuration choices are yours to make.

 SAP Business One Dunning Letter Setup:Dunning1Use the SAP Business One dunning letter wizard to configure the mailing of your reminder letters. This process leads you through some simple choices to create the reminder letters and send them to your overdue debtors.

SAP Business One – Dunning Letter Wizard:Dunning2SAP Business One Dunning Letter – setting general parameters:Dunning3Other steps included in the SAP Business One Dunning Letter Wizard include:

Select the business partner (debtor) or range of debtors that you want included in a dunning / reminder letter report:Dunning4Set your document parameters:Dunning5Review the recommendation report. This standard SAP Business One report can be used to check the details of relevant customers due for a reminder letter, terms, outstanding amounts and interest, if applicable. As you can see from the screenshot below each invoice is individually listed. If you want some invoices excluded from the reminder letter you can simply un-tick the relevant invoice. This option might be used if you are aware of an issue with one particular invoice or invoice that relates to an unfinished service and you do not want that particular invoice excluded from the reminder letter / dunning wizard run.Dunning6As we all know SAP is constantly enhancing SAP Business One. A recent minor patch level release has seen the team at SAP add the ability to send emails out directly from the dunning wizard. SAP Business One 9.1 PL6 allows several options for delivery of the dunning / reminder letters:

  • Save the selection and exit,
  • Save the recommendation report as a draft and exit,
  • Execute only and exit. Print or email the letters later,
  • Print dunning letters and exit,
  • Email dunning letters and exit (SAP Business One 9.1 PL6 enhancement).

As you can see SAP Business One dunning letters is another way of automating business processes to help your business with cash collection.

See a demo video on Dunning Letters.

SAP Business One HANA Analytical Reporting

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Using SAP Business One you can add analytics to the business partner master form (and other forms/windows) giving the user instant access to the relevant customer, supplier, lead and other related information. These analytics can be graphical or grid-based. The image below shows a graphical view of the gross sales for a customer by year – with the last 10 years on display.

SAP Business One HANA – Analytics – gross sales by year:sap business one hana analyticsIf you prefer your data in a grid format then you can easily swap between the analytical graphical view and a grid view. Swapping between these views is as easy as clicking the grid or graph button on the top left-hand side of the analytics tab.

SAP Business One HANA Analytics – grid view of data:sap b1 hana analyticsUsers can add multiple analytics tabs. In this example, we are looking at the sales by year for our customer Earthshaker. By adding multiple tabs we might for example get access to:

  • Budget vs actual,
  • Gross profit,
  • Opportunity vs actual,
  • A whole lot more (analytics) that you might want access to.

For current users of SAP Business One who use multiple user-defined fields on the business partner form who are wondering how the new SAP HANA analytics tab effects the traditional user-defined fields tab – fear not – the traditional user-defined field view is still available by simply clicking on the tab that you want – analytics or UDF (user-defined field). Let’s not forget that since the release of SAP Business One version 9 users have been able to add their user-defined fields to the main business partner form using the GUI edit function.

For the more technical team out there let’s take a quick look at how we set up these analytics in SAP Business One HANA.

Log into SAP Business One HANA and then:

  • Click on the pervasive analytics,
  • Go to “new dashboard” or select an existing dashboard,
  • If you are creating a new dashboard then select your data source – for example, “sales revenue analysis”,
  • For new dashboards – choose your target measures and target dimensions (I have chosen revenue (local currency)) as the target measure and BP code as the target dimension.
  • Click on the “action” button,sap business one hana
  • Click on the “display dashboard in sidebars” buttonHana_Analytics4
  • Choose the relevant / required “target SAP Business One window” from the drop-down list. You can choose from:
    • AR invoice,
    • Business partner master data,
    • Sales order,
    • Delivery,
    • AP invoice,
    • Purchase order – split,
    • Sales quotation,
    • Item mater data,
    • AR credit memo,
    • Journal Entry,
    • Goods receipt,
    • Inventory transfer.

These target SAP Business One window options allow the user to attach dashboards to multiple different windows. For example, a user might want to attach a stock turnover analysis for the last 6 months to the item master. When the user is logged into a specific item master they get instant access to the last 6 months stock turnover for the selected item.Hana_Analytics5Add your dashboard dimension

The adding of SAP Business One HANA analytics is best demonstrated in a video – you can check out a Leverage YouTube session on SAP Business One analytics here


SAP Business One HANA analytics on the sidebar of an SAP business one window is another great example of SAP Business One providing users instant access to information.