Tag: USA

This small article is written with the international focus. SAP B1 was initially targeted to small businesses, however its reasonably rich Corporate ERP functionality dictates mid-market user license cost (especially for SB1 professional user, where license is close to k$3 in USA). There is large number of Certified SAP BO consultants on the Corporate ERP consulting market, however in our opinion SAP B1 requires closer attention to such technologies as Crystal Report, SB1 SDK (Microsoft Visual Studio ecommerce programming in C# and VB.Net), SAP Business One Data Transfer Workbench (where you do initial SB1 data conversion from your legacy system, such as MYOB, Peach Tree, Quick Books, Accpac, Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows and Macintosh). We do not pretend to be ultimate authority for SAP Business One implementation recovery, however we did the service for numerous companies in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Russia, China. OK, below is our article:

1.Corporate ERP localization dilemma. Typically your problems are related to language translation and the compliance to the local country tax and corporate reporting legislation. SB1 is localized and certified in most of the Globe (probably excluding Arabic alphabet countries). SAP Business One supports Unicode (Chinese, Japanese, Korean). SAP certifies its SB1 application with local tax and government authorities in the countries, where SAP Business One is localized. New SAP Business One version 8.8 is now available on the same flavor for all the countries (while 2007 and 2005 versions were available in A and B flavors, and you had to implement them on different SQL Servers with different code page and language collation). For SB1 8.8 you can deploy SAP Business One system for all your international companies, where SB1 is localized: China, Russia, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Brazil, India, France, UK, etc.

2.SAP B1 implementation recovery service. We saw numerous implementation screw-ups when your company requires challenging technology integrations: ecommerce, barcode scanning and integration, EDI, customizations, Crystal Reporting, deep data conversions from your legacy accounting package to SAP B1. And you have to be tolerant to the consulting industry practices: your generic certified SAP Business One consultant should be good in Corporate ERP presentation, user licenses sale, CPA type of the implementation with reasonable onsite user training, simple initial data conversion (via SB1 Data Transfer Workbench, where you should help your consultant to prepare CSV files, based on DTW CSV templates)

3.SAP Business One Data Conversion Puzzle. Typically here you have the problem with your current SAP Business One Reseller, who has no experience in industry specific data massage and migration from your legacy accounting or Corporate ERP to SAP Business One

4.Do I have to switch out to another SB1 Partner? Yes, this is what you have to do or what is sort of recommended. Your SAP B1 Partner has access to your company record in SAP Portal and it allows your chosen partner to broke for your and sell you new software licenses

5.How to get help? Please, call us 1-630-961-5918, in USA or Canada: 1-866-528-0577, or email us:

If you think about light customization of your user interface, prior to considering SDK programming we recommend you to review User defined fields and tables with your consultant. We would like to show you where they are and give you some modification case studies. We will base our publication on current version 8.81. However similar functionality is available in earlier versions, such as 2007A and B and 2005A/B. Lets begin with extending existing master records:

1.Business Partners table extension with user defined fields. Both Customers and Vendors are united in the same table. Lets now assume that you would like to add several persons with specific commission description and percentage each, where you need no more than three sales representative. Add nine fields to the Business Partner, each three per commission (Salesperson ID, Commission description and Percentage). How do I get there? Tools -> Customization Tools -> User Defined Fields Management, here expand Master Data, then Business Partner, highlight Business Partner and click on Add button on the right bottom corner of the window. Now, how do I do calculate commission without programming it in SDK? Good question. Consider Crystal Report, which looks at paid invoices and business partner custom commission fields

2.New User Defined Table monthly service unit cost. Lets now imagine that you are reseller of something like advertising time and your franchisor is varying your cost every month. Instead of updating the cost in all your Inventory Items, you would like to have one central table, where the cost is specified for each month, and probably in relation to the country or region, if you are participating in international business. If your business is relatively simple in the form of Sales Order and Invoice creation, you may decide zero cost for your service items and do one General Ledger monthly cost transaction to keep your Balance Sheet, P&L accurate. User Defined Cost table is accessible through normal user interface

3.Animating User Defined field or tables via SDK programming. If you feel that customization and reporting options described above are not doing the job, the next step would be to register User Defined Object or appeal to SDK programming. Object will be described in separate publication. Software Development Kit coding should be done through certified SB1 reseller, who carries certified programmers in staff

4.Some notes about version 8.8 and 8.81. First of all there are no more of such things as A and B versions. This means that your corporate ERP SAP Business One could be installed on the same Windows 2008 and SQL 2008 Server with companies for all the countries, where you have facilities (assuming that SAP B1 is localized for these countries). Previously there were two flavors A and B (like 2007A and 2007B, where USA and Canadian versions were available in A and Brazilian or Chinese in B, and you had to have two server installs). Second, we would like to mention such cool feature as Purchase Quotation and Purchasing Quotation Generation Wizard (in Corporate ERP terminology it is also referred as Requisition Management)

5.Business One as an option for your international subsidiary, where in USA or Canada you are deploying Microsoft Dynamics (GP, AX, SL, NAV). We did it for several of the well-known multinational corporations. There are several methods. One of them is to export SAP BO GL Trial Balance into Excel worksheet and use it in your FRx or Microsoft Management Reporter consolidated P&L or BS (this should be setup in Reporting Tree). The second method is GL transaction level consolidation. Here you have SB1 as your overseas accounting application and in US you have the shadow company with exactly the same GL accounts. You export SBO GL transactions every night or weekly and import them into Dynamics via Integration Manager or eConnect programmed custom integration. Similar options exist for Axapta, Navision, Solomon, as well as for non Microsoft Corporate ERP platforms, such as Oracle eBusiness Suite/Financials

6.Crossing the borders in Easter Europe and South America. This Corporate ERP application is localized for Russian Federation, where it is facing strong competition with such locally developed package as 1S Bukhgalteria (1S Accounting in English translation). In Brazil this small business MRP and ERP package has very good reputation and it is often implemented for larger organizations. It naturally competes with local accounting application Microsiga

7.Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904. We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese

In comparing to other ERP and Small and Midsize Business Accounting applications, SB1 is more flexible and where traditional system may require programmer to code the custom logic and then integrate it with existing user interface and the database – SAP BO may have this custom logic to be easily set up in User Defined Tables and User Defined Fields, and SAP B1 software developers already supplied simple user interface to work with newly created objects, let’s us show you how. We will be assuming that you are on SAB BO version 2007A, international version 2007B should be the same if you translate our article to you local language, and if you are on SB1 2005A/B, you should be able to find the same functionality in slightly different menu paths:

1.OK, let’s assume that you need few new fields to be associated with Business Partner, such as Statement Type: email or mail. You will need new field on the Business Master table, the field should be named Statement Method, it should be Drop Down List with two options: Email and Mail. Please, open Tools->User Defined Tools->User Defined Fields-Management. Expand Master Data, Business Partner, highlight it and click add button at the bottom of the form. Name the field Statement Method, give appropriate description, alphanumeric, Structure: regular, mark Set Valid Values for the Field and click new to create Email and Mail options in this new DDL. Now, open Business Partner and pull out existing customer, for example. in Menu: View->User Defined-Fields and you should notice that New Small Windows is now open to the right of the Business Partner Master Data window, here you may select Email or Mail from DDL, when you will click on OK (or Add, if you are adding new Business Partner/Customer), Statement Method will be saved together with the regular Business Partner info. For those of you who are IT people or Software Developers, please click on View->System Information and then place your cursor over new field – you will see that it is created in OCRD table (Business Partner Master Table)

2.Let’s come out on the fresh air and between us, who are Corporate ERP consultants discuss, what we just saw. In other more traditional Corporate ERP, MRP, CRM, Sales Order Processing systems, etc., this is legitimate so-called “customization”, where programming is required or at least recommended. SAP Business One does the job in out-of-the-box install with five minutes long setup procedure. Please, relax and expect more surprises, let’s move on to new custom table creation

3.User Defined Tables. Tools->Customization Tools->User Defined Tables Setup, here give it the name, description, and select No Object if the table will be stand alone, or select Master Data if it is supposed to be linked to Master Data table, or Master Data Rows (in you plan to link it to Business Partner Address, which is Master Data Row classified table), Document (if you plan to link it to AR Invoice, or other legitimate document header), or Document Rows (if you plan to link it to AR Invoice Inventory Item or Service Line, for example). In our example, let’s try to be moderate and give you just simple example, we would like to create Non-Inventory Item Monthly Cost table, which is No Object. Give it the name, description, and then Tools-> Customization Tools->User Defined Fields Management, expand User Tables, highlight Non Inventory Item Monthly Cost and click Add: Add Year, Month and Cost fields (feel free to apply your judging on the type). Now, let’s enter the rows into newly defined table. User Defined Windows, select your newly created table and feel free to enter data there. Small comment, SB1 designers looks like were trying to make our life easier, so the created two mandatory fields: Code and Name, we recommend you to enter unique values there

4.SAP Business One Executive Demo or technical presentation. Via Web Session and Phone Conference you can request this service being USA, Canada Nationwide, in Europe, Brazil, Latin America and Internationally

5.Second Opinion on SB1 implementation or modules selection. This service is popular if your local SB1 reseller failed in challenging implementation, when you have to do complex Data Conversion, Integration to Legacy Systems, including Lotus Notes, Oracle Custom DB, legacy ecommerce

6.SAP B1 as Publicly Traded Multinational Corporation local branch ERP. SB1 licensing is relatively cheap and considering the fact that it is localized (translated to local languages in the majority of the countries: Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Israel, Russia, China, to begin the long list; plus it is certified with foreign countries tax agencies). Special considerations to the customers, where their corporate ERP is not localized in the overseas branches. Good example is Dynamics GP Great Plains, it is only supported in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Arabic countries, Spanish Speaking Latin America and English Speaking South East Asia. If you have Dynamics GP Great Plains as your Corporate ERP in USA or Canada, please consider SAP Business One in such country as Brazil, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, etc., for your local branch with GL or even full data consolidation to Dynamics GP via Great Plains Integration Manager. SAP Business One allows simple data export to Microsoft Excel, or you can do exported data marking on SB1 SQL DB level

7.How to get help? Please, call us: 1-866-528-0577,

Business One is good solution when you are midmarket organization with attributes of multinational corporation, such as branches in foreign countries and headquarters and research facility in the United States. SAP B1 is popular in international business scenarios as it is localized in such popular regional powers as China, Brazil and Russian Federation. There are known cases studies when companies with non-SAP Corporate ERP applications launched Business One for their branches in Brazil and later one switched to it in the headquarters as well. There are some challenges however and one of them is consolidated financial reporting. As you may know such popular tools as Microsoft Management Reporter and FRx do not have GL connectors to SAP BO. Some customers are doing GL trial balance export to Excel and then prepare it to fit consolidation template. This is definitely possible way but you may mention that it is time consuming and open to human errors. In this publication we recommend old-good-days method of GL consolidation:

1.How does it work conceptually? You have to create new company with account structure matching your template. Then you schedule regular GL entries migration into this company General Ledger. This company obviously doesnt represent legal entity but it has all your branches GL activity and ready for consolidated Balance Sheet and P&L. You can use internal reporting

2.How does it work technically? You can deploy several tools. First of all it is possible to pull GL records via Data Transfer Workbench when it has integrations for each company SQL database via ODBC. Second method is programming with Software Development Kit. This second method might seem like something challenging. However it is only one type of transactions and code samples in VB and C# are straight forward. There are ISV products working with SAP B1 SQL database via direct data feed. They are usually expensive and require learning curve. But if you are ready to deploy luxury solution then you should probably make your homework

3.International Business Specific multicurrency. Business One is multicurrency enabled so in our opinion it is just one additional factor to incorporate into the solution. We have done it for the company which operates in Brazil and USA with respectively Real and Dollar

4.Standard for Chart of Accounts. This might be additional challenge as often company deploys the same system in several countries but contracts different consulting partners to do from ground up implementation without coordination with central office. In consolidated financial reporting Chart of Accounts should be reviewed and unified in all business entities. In any case this is good exercise in order to understand you foreign country branch operations and finances or in other words strengthen central control

5.Other aspects of multinational environment and Business One. It is generally good idea to host all the installations on the server located in the Headquarters. There are definitely some specifics associated with foreign company regulations and tax code. But these compliances should not be the central emphasis. Instead you should think about your new Corporate ERP system as the tool allowing you to exercise tight central control over all of your overseas subsidiaries. General advice is to assign chosen consulting organization here in the United States for picking subcontractors for each country to implement just compliance related functionality. Compliance is just a small part of what the system is for

6.Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representative pick up the phone in St. Joseph, MI call center). [emailprotected] We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan and Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. We feature our expertise is in International Business. We provide second opinion in SB1 data migration, customization and reporting

Take a leap forward in China and head toward the market instead of its mighty walls what today’s offshore import and export China business enthusiasts do. Follow the footsteps of leaders to discover the enormous business opportunities lies in China’s import and export industry. Already small and mid sized import and export companies from various parts of the world are keen on venturing China business and global sourcing. Numerous legendary companies of US like United Technologies, GE, Motorola, DuPont etc., have established deep penetration in China market. As per an estimation taken in 1992, 3,100 small and medium scale import and export companies have landed in China and later the number rose to more than 20,000. From manufacturing to exporting and servicing, China business opportunities are burgeoning and attracting all size of import and export businesses from the rest of the world. Over the last decade, number of US import and export companies taken up China business has raised at an astronomical rate more than five times faster than other parts of the world.

-Scope of China Business Broad Market Range and Manufacturing Potential

Attractive China business opportunities are growing and the growth is spanning through diverse industries. The growth is already evident in a series of industries, like medical, construction, energy exporting China business, telecommunications, agribusiness, machine tools, security and recreational products and service market, infrastructure etc. These are just to name a few of the vast import and export market where overseas China business owners are venturing in.

-China Business Partnership of Us Companies

China and Hong Kong together has become the third largest export partner of USA Canada and Mexico have taken the first and second position. China continues encouraging US based import and export companies to venture and fortify greater business partnership. To generate further enthusiasm amongst more US business owners, Hu Jintao, the president of China, sent two hundred Chinese executives for a buying tour to US. US companies’ trade offices being located in China and fostered by China speak how US companies are deepening their penetration in China business and import and export industry.

-Haven for Import and Export Companies and Investors

Besides immense potential found in import and export China business, China has become the heaven for overseas investors. USA companies alone have invested over three billion dollars annually, making China the third largest investing area in the world. China is yielding sumptuous returns on investment, also profits at an expected ratio to the overseas investors. US companies are reaping myriad benefits by investing in manufacturing China business. The list of benefits includes competitive labour resources in China, incentives on investment and extensive local markets of China.

-Investment in Locally Manufactured and Imported Products in China

China now allows foreign firms to invest in China’s locally manufactured products as well as to support in products brought through global sourcing. Small and medium sized companies can secure huge benefits for trading different types of China business ventures in locally manufactured products, imported goods and import and export of both locally manufactured and goods accessed through global sourcing in China.