If you are not familiar with SAP Business One, this small to mid-sized ERP package packs a lot of functionality for a mid-range package. What’s even better is that all of the standard modules are included for one price. This is part of the reason that SAP Business One has been the fastest growing ERO system for many years. But, as with every ERP system, SAP Business One is not perfect and SAP Business One reports is an area where you may need some help. So, with regards to SAP Business One Reports – What’s Missing?

The sweet spots for SAP Business One are distribution and light manufacturing. These two industries rely heavily on sales, inventory, and financial reporting. Let’s explore some of the strengths and weaknesses of SAP Business One reports in these two areas.

Sales Reporting

The primary questions to be answered for sales managers, related to ERP reporting, relate to how much, who from and which type. Let’s look at how SAP Business One handles the task of reporting how much sales were. So for Sales SAP Business One Reports – What’s Missing?

How Much did I Sell?

 The Sales Analysis Report that comes standard with SAP Business One is a flexible report with respect to the various selections that you can choose to filter your data. You can choose to summarize the data by Customers, Items or Sales Employees. Additionally, you can select whether you want to show invoice, orders, or delivery information. You can further filter the data by date range, account or item codes groups or properties. Also of significance is the ability to show data by year, month or quarter. You really can slice and dice the sales data in a number of ways.

SAP Business One Sales Analysis Report

This report suffices for most of your quick inquiries and even some standard sales reporting that can be used to calculate KPIs or chart sales data. However, some companies want a view that lets them quickly see where they are performing compared to prior periods, year-to-date and month-to-date. Our Sales History report, for example, takes a look at sales by product and compares them to prior year, as well as it gives a month-by-month history for the last 12 months.

SAP Business One Sales History Report

The same type of comparison can be achieved for customers or sales persons.

Inventory

Warehouse managers and purchasing personnel for distribution companies need to have a handle on where their inventory is and what the status of that inventory is. Being able to look at how old the inventory is will help in the material replenishment decisions. Management and accounting will look at the age of inventory to help decide how effectively they are using their working capital and making replenishment decisions. So for Inventory SAP Business One Reports – What’s Missing?

Inventory Turnover/Aging

Standard SAP Business One Reports provides an Inventory Turnover Analysis report out of the box. This report indicates the balance of inventory along with the product usage. The number of days in inventory is then calculated from these figures, along with the turnover rate. This is a helpful report as inventory managers can evaluate which SKUs are not moving fast enough and adjust replenishment parameters in order to minimize investment.

Lot / Batch Traceability

From a risk standpoint, some businesses are required to be able to track every batch of product that moves through their warehouse. SAP Business One has the capability to do this for batched and serialized items. The only thing that is lacking, out of the box, is a Lot Traceability Report (also known as Batch Traceability Report). See our article “Why Batch Traceability?” to see more details about the importance of tracing batches all the way through production to the end consumer. We have developed a Lot Traceability Report that works with the standard SAP Business One functionality and is called our “Batch Trace Report”.  This will let you enter a batch number and product number and trace it though the entire production and distribution process.

SAP Business One Batch Traceability Report
SAP Business One Batch Traceability Report

In short, SAP Business One is an awesome ERP package that really enables small and mid-sized businesses to grow their business without very large investments in ERP. The right reports can help a business manager run their business more efficiently and profitably.

SAP Business One – What’s Missing?

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