Production Wizards and Reports

For some people the concept of wizards might be unclear with regards to SAP Business One, wizards are tools in SAP Business One that are used to generate documents on a large scale. For example, Payment Wizard can be used to generate batches of incoming and outgoing payments according to the selected open A/R and A/P invoices in one go. In this blog we will look into the wizards and reports available in the production module. 

• Procurement Confirmation Wizard : - This Wizard assists the users in creating multiple procurement documents such as production orders, purchase orders to name a few, directly from one or more sales orders. Procurement documents created using this function can include a select few or all of the items from the sales order(s). The functions of this wizard are: - 

• Consolidate multiple sales orders for production.

• Create a production order directly from a sales order.

• Bill of Materials Report: - This report lists all the bill of materials created in a very comprehensive manner. Information such as route sequence, route stage, price, quantity are some of the fields that are shown in the report. 

•  Production Cost Recalculation Wizard: - This wizard enables you to recalculate production costs based on current cost values. Components managed by serial/batch valuation method might be issued for production before their final cost is determined. There could be a valuating cost price transaction such as Landed Cost, AP Invoice based on goods receipt PO (GRPO), Inventory Revaluation that will change the component's price after it was issued for production.That is when we make use of this wizard to re-calculate the production cost of such items. 

• Open Items List: - This report displays all the open documents related to the production module. All open production orders can be viewed using this report.

Production Process

The production module in SAP Business One supports light manufacturing processes. In this blog we will try and understand the various steps involved in the Production Process. 

• Step 1: -  The first step in the production process is to create a Bill of Material for items that undergo the production process. Bill of Material(BOM) is a list of all raw materials and child items used for creating the parent item. The BOM has a hierarchical arrangement of components, wherein you add all the child items and the relevant raw materials that are required to assemble and produce the finished item. 

• Step 2: -  The second step involves creating a production order. A Production Order helps the user to choose items with pre-existing BOM and compile them into a list, which is then sent to the production department for the production process. The production module in SAP Business One supports both manual and backflush methods of production . The different types of production orders are: - 

• Standard Production Order

• Special Production Order

• Disassembly 

• Step 3: - Once you’ve created a production order, the next logical step is to issue items that are required to fulfil the production order onto the shop floor. This is where Issue for Production window is used. This window allows the user to issue manual items to production orders.  On a side note, backflush components are issued automatically.

•   Step 4: - The final step in the production process is to make use of the Receipt from Production form and report the completion of the product. For standard and special production orders, post the finished product to the inventory. For disassembly production orders, post the components to the inventory.

Resources

The Resources module combined with the existing production module provides a base platform for managing light manufacturing processes in SAP Business One. A resource is defined as a commodity, machine, labour, or other asset used to produce goods and services. Unlike items, resources have capacity available throughout a period which can be consumed in a production process. Resources (resource capacity) can therefore be assigned to production orders. Resource capacity is always viewed within a period called "capacity period". Using the resources functionality, you can perform the following key business functions such as: -

·       Manage basic production capacity

·       Analyse real-time production variances

·       Simplify BOM management

·       Use production order more flexibly

·       Monitor complete standard production costing

 

All resources belong to a group. You can create multiple groups to classify your resources. Upon creation, a resource acquires setting defaults from its group and under every group you can assign a unique resource type. Depending on the resource type you have created, you can either assign a fixed asset or an employee to it. Some of the resource types are: -

·       Machine: - They can be linked to fixed assets.  

·       Labour: - This type of resource can be linked to employees.

·       Other: - This resource cannot be linked to fixed assets or employees.

 

 

When used in conjunction with the production module, resources could prove to be quite handy. For example, you can use the resources capacity window to review your resource and factory capacity constraints and narrow down your constraints by warehouse, resource code, resource group and resource type for optimized resource allocation and production planning. Another major function of resource capacity allocation is to balance workloads while ensuring uninterrupted resource allocation to your production schedules by setting up the resource master data for each machine & labour and configuring the resource capacity.

Inventory Reports (2)

We will cover the remaining reports that belong to the inventory module in this blog: -

 

·       Inventory Audit Report: - This report reveals the audit trail for the posted inventory transaction in the chart of accounts. You can use this report to compare between accounting and logistics view, i.e. the inventory balance accounts and inventory value displayed by the audit report, which in turn explains the value change in inventory accounts.

·       Inventory Valuation Simulation Report: - If your organization uses perpetual inventory, this report can be helpful in providing total inventory value as per the selection criteria. This report is intended to be a managerial report to check what-if scenarios. For Example, you get to know what happens if you value an item based on a different calculation method.

·       Serial Number Transactions Report: - As the name suggests this report displays the inventory receipts and issues for each serial number as per the selection criteria. As you select each serial number in the report, the relevant transaction to that item appears on the screen.

·       Bin location List: - The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the Bin Locations in your system. The functions of this report include: -                 

o   An overall view of the bin locations.

o   Access the inventory posing with its details about the receipts and issues in bin locations.

o   Restock the inventory in bin locations.

o   Clear out inventory from the bin locations.

o   Access the bin location content list with its details about inventory in bin locations.

·       Price Report: - This report enables the user to view the different prices defined for an item. The items prices are also unique for individual business partner. The different price resources that are available in the selection list are: -

o   Price List

o   Special Prices for Business Partners

o   Period and Volume Discounts

SAP Business One Learning Mind Map

Inventory Reports (1)

Inventory Reports enable the user to view information about items and their inventory status, valuation and so on. Since there are quite a lot of inventory reports, the entire topic will be split into two blogs. The first set of inventory reports that we are going to discuss about are: -

 

·       Items List: - This report helps the user to view a list of items, generated as per the defined selection criteria. Some of the fields that appear in this report are, In-stock, Barcode, Inventory UoM, and Last Purchase Price.

·       Last Prices Report: - This report displays the last purchasing and sales price of an item, either for a specific business partner or for all business partners.

·       Inactive Items: - This report is used find out the list of items that have not been used in a transaction since a specified date. The selection criteria for this report includes item no., date range, item group, and item properties.

·       Inventory Posting List: - This report makes the overview of all the posting made in the system accessible to the user, based on various selection criteria and sort option. The selection criteria for a specified warehouse is as follows: - Item, Business Partners, and other (enables you to specify a selection criterion such as warehouse or sales employee).

·       Inventory Status Report: - This report is used to assess the planned inventory transaction for a specific item with respect it the defined selection criteria. The report shows available, ordered, committed, and in-stock quantities and their related open marketing documents.

·       Inventory in Warehouse Report: - This report lists the current inventories by warehouses based on the information provided by the user in documents like Sales orders or transfer requests. To know the precise inventory level in your warehouse, it is essential to record the correct warehouse in every single document.

Inventory Transactions

Inventory transactions help you maintain complex recording and accounting functions that are involved in moving inventory in and out of locations. For Example, you can use the goods issue to remove damaged, Expired, or obsolete goods out of your inventory. Or, you might use inventory transfer to move stock form one warehouse to another. Let us look at the available transactions: -

 

·       Goods Receipt: - The Goods Receipt window allows the user to increase the stock level in a situation where the user does not have the liberty of adding a purchase document. Example, you may need to add goods using goods receipt if you find out during an inventory count that a part of stored quantity has not been taken into consideration. You can then enter the overlooked quantity through Goods Receipt.

·       Goods Issue:  - The Goods Issue function lets you reduce the inventory level in a situation that is not the direct result of a sales entry. For Example, when some goods suffer water damage in your inventory, they cannot be sold and must be removed. In such cases Goods Issue can be used to remove the damaged stock.

·       Inventory Transfer: - Use this function to transfer inventory form one warehouse to another. An inventory transfer can also be carried out as a consignment for a customer, where the items then stored in the customer’s warehouse and are sold form here.

·       Inventory Counting: - The inventory count refers to the physical verification of the Quantities in a warehouse, it also ensures the goods that you have stored are in prime condition. By matching the actual inventory to the quantities saved in the database, organizations can adjust existing records, detect unusual discrepancies, and improve inventory management. You can either manually enter counting results into the system or import it through Microsoft Excel.

·       Inventory Revaluation: - Inventory Revaluation is used where you need to adjust the cost of inventory to reflect changes in the standard costs. These changes may occur due to changes in procurement, manufacturing, and exchange rate movement. While running a perpetual inventory the valuation is based on calculation methods such as Moving Average, Standard FIFO, or Serial/Batch.

My SAP B1 Voyage!

Inventory Module Functions

SAP Business One provides various other functions excluding the item mater data in the inventory module and we will be looking in detail how these other functions might add value to our business.

 

 

·       Barcodes: - The inventory module has a provision for barcoding your inventory items. Barcoding serves as a tool for quick identification. They make inventory tracking, invoicing, and servicing a lot easier.

·       Document Printing: - This window is used to print batches of documents base on the selection criteria. You have the option of printing out a specific document or the entire list. Example, you can print out all the A/R invoices dated form 12^th march to 15^th April in one fell swoop.

·       Bin Locations: - Bin Locations are descriptions or markings given to each and every storage space in your warehouse in order to track your inventory with ease. It is with the help of these Bin Locations that the system devises an optimal path to pick the necessary items called the Pick List. SAP Business One enables you to set up Bin locations function for individual warehouses.

·       Item Management: - It is this window that lets you manage your items with serial numbers and batches. A serial number is a unique identification mark given to an item. The serial number is used for tracking down an item and provides additional information such as manufacturing date, expiry date and so on. Batch numbers are used to track groups of items that come in large quantities be which have similar characteristics. A few examples for items processed in batches are medicines, milk, and baked goods.

·       Price lists: - SAP Business One gives the user the flexibility of offering customised prices to different customers via price lists. SAP Business one provides ten different price list for the user to define. They are fairly easy to create and can be easily edited according to the user’s requirements.

Inventory Module (Item Master Data)

SAP Business One allows the user to store the details of all Items and Services that the organization either purchases, sells, or stores in the inventory using the item master data. You use the item master data to add, update, search, and maintain item data.  The concept of using an item master is to avoid human errors, save time, and eliminate repetition of data. The tabs that are present in the item master data are: -

 

 

·       General Tab: - This tab includes general details relating to the item, that are relevant to all item types. Example, shipping type, remarks….

·       Purchasing Tab: - This tab contains all purchase-related information for an item. It is in this tab that we define how the item is purchased, i.e. the minimum quantity, unit of measure and preferred vendor for the item.

·       Sales Tab: - In this tab all sales-relates information for an item is stored. Sales unit of measure, items per sales, item dimensions are some of the examples of the data captured in this tab.

·       Inventory Tab: - This is the tab where information regarding warehouses are stored and defined. You get a detailed view of your inventory status of the selected item. The detailed view of your inventory status includes ordered quantity, In-stock quantity, committed quantity (the quantity you have promised your customers) and available quantity (In-stock + ordered – committed = available qty).

·       Planning Data Tab: - This tab holds all information related to MRP and production. Example, planning method, procurement method, Order multiple……

·       Properties Tab: - Properties tab is where you define any extra characteristics that belong to the item, which has not been defined anywhere else. Example, if your item is a mobile, its unique colour or its internal specification can be stored as the item’s property.

Attachments Tab: - You can store any extra information specific to the item as attachments in this tab. Example, a file containing the user manual of the item can be stored. 

Banking Reports

 In this blog we will discuss about the reports that are available in the banking module.

 

·       Check Register Report: - This report illustrates the checks for payment created in SAP Business One. The functions of this report are to list checks for payment, grouped by the originating accounts, and provide information such as which checks were printed, its amount, the confirmation status, and more. The report is generated according to selection criteria that you define.

·       Banking Drafts Report: - This report is used to view the drafts created for banking related documents. Essentially, incoming and outgoing payment document drafts are displayed in this report. Details such as document number, posting date, BP Code, and document total are some of the information shown in the report.

·       House Bank Accounts Report: - This report enlists all house banks that are defines in the system. Name, branch, account number, bank country, IBAN are some if the details captured in the report.

·       Bank Reconciliation Report: - This report compares the ending balance of a bank statement with the adjusted balance of the G/L account that represents the bank account as of the given statement date. Its lists the cleared transactions in the bank statement and the uncleared transactions in the G/L account as of the statement date.

·       BP Bank Accounts Report: - This report displays all the details regarding the Business Partner banks that has been defines in the system. BP name, BP code, bank name, bank code, bank account number, IBAN are some of the information displayed in the report.

Banking

The way we handle payments in SAP Business One is through the Banking Module.

We can use banking module for the following activities: - Manual and automatic creation of incoming and outgoing payments for various payment means, Manual and automatic performance of internal and external reconciliations, Post-dated and cash deposits of checks and credit card vouchers, Batch and single check printing. Let us now dive into the details of the various forms available in banking module.

 

·       Incoming Payments: - This form records information regarding the payments the company has received. Payment means for which incoming payments can be made  are: - Cash, Check, Credit Card and Bank transfer. (Bills of exchange are accepted in certain localization.)

·       Deposit: - This window is used when the received payment is actually deposited in a bank or in any other financial institution. There might be a delay between the organization receiving payments form its customers and depositing the payment to a financial institution. This window helps in recording the status of the payments received.

·       Outgoing Payments: - When you issue a payment to a vendor use the outgoing payments to aid this function. Like incoming payments, the outgoing payments supports five types of payment means, Cash, Check, Bank Transfer, Credit Card, and Bills of Exchange (in certain specific localizations).

·       Check Register: - SAP Business One uses the check register to store information about all checks that have been received in the company. The check details are recorded in the Payment Means window during the creation of an incoming payment and updated when the check is deposited. The check register reflects the current status of every check received, which means that you can find out at any point of time whether the check was endorsed and when and where the check was deposited.

Business Partner Reports

In today's blog we are dealing with a straightforward topic of reports that are available in Business Partner Module.

 

·       My Activities: - This report encapsulates all necessary details about all activities recorded in SAP Business One. This report can be used by both mangers and sales employees, where the manger can use it as a summary of all the activities of his/her employees and the sales executive can use it as a report showing all the activities of his/her customers.         

·       Inactive Customers: - This report shows the list of customers for whom no marketing documents were for the give date range mentioned in the selection criteria. Essentially, the list of customers that have not brought in any revenue recently to the organization.

·       Dunning History Report: - This report displays dunning letters and their included invoices, in terms of individual customer, according to your selection criteria. Dunning is the process by which SAP Business One generates reminder letters to the customers who have exceeded their credit period in terms of payment.

·       Aging Reports: - Aging reports paints an overall picture on the age of unpaid customer debts, the age of unpaid liabilities to the vendors, and the value of the debts or liabilities. Two major types of aging reports that are available in Sap Business One are, Customer Receivable Aging and Vendor Payable Aging.

·       Internal Reconciliation Report: - This report provides the list of all internal reconciliation that has happened grouped by date or reconciliation amount or by transaction number.

·       Customer Credit Limit Deviation: - Each customer can be allotted a fixed credit limit by the user. This report shows the deviation from the allotted credit limit for each customer.

Campaigns List Report: - To briefly see all campaigns that exist with for a particular business partner or for certain date ranges, you can generate a Campaign List Report.

Business Partners

The Business Partners module helps the user to store all information related to the organization’s vendors, customers and leads. The concept of storing all the necessary details of your organization’s business partners in single window, which is adopted by SAP through the business partner master data window, helps the user to avoid errors while entering the business partner details in any marketing document. Its also avoids duplication and a single set of data can be used multiple times which saves a lot of time. Forms related to the Business Partner module are: -

 

·       Business Partner Master Data: - This is window where you add new business partners, display, and edit business partner records. It contains five major tabs: -    

o   General

o   Payment Terms

o   Payment Run

o   Accounting

o   Remarks

·       Activity: - Use this window to add or update one-time, or recurring activities that you have pertaining to your business partners, such as meetings, phones calls, notes, and tasks, as well as to your private activities. All activities are displayed in the calendar.

·       Campaign: - SAP Business One aids the user to create promotional marketing campaigns. You can make use of this window to create, maintain, and analyse your marketing event information. Managing a promotional campaign typically involves the steps outlined below:

o   Creating and Maintaining a Target Group

o   Creating a Campaign Using the Campaign Generation Wizard

o   Managing the Campaign Data

o   Viewing and Maintaining the Data

o   Generating Sales Opportunities from a Campaign

o   Filtering Campaign Response E-Mails

o   Viewing the Campaign List Report

·       Internal Reconciliation: - Use this function to internally reconcile transactions posted to business partners. You can perform either partial or full reconciliation, for specific business partner or for multiple business partners.

Purchasing Reports

Reports are an integral part of informed decision-making process in an organization. A well- documented report will reveal nuances related to the core business functions, while opening new windows to new opportunities and market gains. SAP Business One’s purchasing module allows the user to access multiple purchasing reports for the management to make informed decisions.  The various purchasing reports are:

 

·       Purchase Analysis Report: - As the name suggests the reports helps in identifying the purchasing trends of your organization. Some of its many other functions are to provide information on areas like, which vendors provide the lowest prices for their products, which products you purchase most frequently, which of your buyers obtain the best deals.

·       Purchase Request Report: - The purchase request report provides you with an overview of the purchase requests created in the company and enables you to create directly purchase quotations or purchase orders based on selected purchase requests.

·       Open Items List: - This report provides you with the list of all open documents in the purchasing module. You can find the vendors that have not provided the items you ordered, and you can track your missing items in stock.

·       Documents Draft Report: - This report allows the user to view all the draft documents related to the purchasing module. You can remove a draft document form the list as per your discretion.

Purchase Returns

In case a purchased item turns out be defective, we as a customer have no other choice other than to return it or ask for a credit note for that item. SAP business One has provisions for both the cases. SAP business one tactfully handles the situation of purchase returns with two major forms ‘Goods Return’ and ‘A/P Credit Memo’.

 

·       Goods Return: - The goods return document is used to return delivered goods to vendors or to reverse a purchasing transaction either completely or partially. A Goods Return is entered after a GRPO is posted but before an A/P Invoice posting is made. Due to legal reasons, you cannot delete or make any accounting-relevant changes to the GRPO. However, to return unwanted or faulty goods, or to correct errors made when entering a GRPO, you can create a goods return. When you create a goods return, the goods are issued from the warehouse and the quantities are reduced. If your company uses perpetual inventory, SAP Business One automatically creates the relevant posting to update the inventory values as well.

·       A/P Credit Memo: - When you create an A/P invoice in SAP Business One, legal stipulations prevent you from deleting or making any changes to these documents. You may, however, want to return the goods to the vendor for a variety of reasons, or you may find that you have made a mistake while creating the documents. The A/P credit memo is the clearing document for the A/P invoice. Therefore, if the vendor has delivered goods, and you have already created an A/P invoice, you can reverse the transaction either partially or completely by creating an A/P credit memo.

 

There is also an additional document, Goods Return Request, which aids in purchase return process. Consider a scenario where your purchase process and purchase return process are handled by different people. In the above scenario, the Goods Return Request document can act as an approval document. The way it works is, the person in charge of purchasing is informed that there are several defective items that needs to be returned. It is then the duty of the purchasing in charge to immediately raise a Goods Return Request seeking an approval and action form the employee that handles purchase returns in returning the defective items.

Purchase Process

There are a lot of similarities in the sales and purchase processes of SAP Business One. In fact, the streamlined process (where in you directly add an A/R Invoice instead of starting from a sales order) is also available in the purchasing module. The standard purchase process stars with:  Purchase Order à GRPO à A/P Invoice à Outgoing Payments.

 

·       Purchase Order: - The purchase order is a document used to request items or services from a vendor at an agreed upon price. There are no financial or inventory postings that take place when you add this document to the system.

·       GRPO: - GRPO (Goods Receipt Purchase Order) is added when you receive the good ordered form your vendors. The GRPO makes sure the goods are added into the warehouse, updates the quantities, and creates an accounting journal entry if you manage your Business One system by perpetual inventory.

·       A/P Invoice: - The A/P invoice is a request for payment from the organization’s side. By adding this document your legally obligated to pay the said amount to you vendor. It also records the cost in the profit and loss statement.

·       Outgoing Statement: - This document is used to create a record each time your company issues a payment to a customer, vendor, or on account. Once the outgoing payment is added, an appropriate journal entry is created. The outgoing payment document can be created for the following payment means:

o   Cash

o   check

o   credit card

o   bank transfer.

Sales Reports

Analysing your sales information is necessary for the success and efficiency of your business. SAP Business One provides several different reports for the Sales module that assist you in running your business. Some of the reports incorporate graphical displays, which allows information analysis. Use the sales reports to do the following: Analyse sales transactions, View open documents, Generate backorder reports, View and process documents saved as drafts.

 

·       Open Items list Report: - This report lets you track the status of your sales and purchasing documents. You can find the customers that still need to pay for their orders and the vendors that have not provided the items you’ve ordered.

·       Document Drafts Report: - This report allows the user to view all the draft documents related to the sales module. You can remove a draft document form the list as per your discretion.

·       Sales Analysis Report: - This report captures an overall viewpoint of your organization’s sales trends. The report captures information such as: - customer details, all the related invoice details and gross profit to name a few. The three main selection criteria of this report are, Customer, items, Sales Employee.

·       Backorder Report: - This report displays a list of overdue sales orders or A/R reserve invoices that cannot be shipped due to inventory shortages. This report helps the user to gain perspective on order priorities which in turn helps to the user to further the pace of stock replenishment or production.

Sales Return

In day-to-day business you might come across many scenarios where customers return or deny the goods and services that your organization has offered. SAP Business One’s sales module is equipped to handle sales returns and credit memos. In this blog we will see the various forms that support sales returns and the scenarios where those forms come in to use.

 

·       Return: - For legal reasons, you cannot delete a delivery or invoice that you enter in SAP Business One or change accounting-relevant data in these documents. However, the customer might send the goods back for various reasons, or you might have made a mistake when you entered the documents. In such situations, create a return document. When you enter a return document, you can reverse the posting of a delivery. When you create the return, the system corrects the inventory quantities. If your company runs a perpetual inventory, creating a return automatically generates a journal entry that updates the inventory value. The return is the clearing document for a delivery. Therefore, if an A/R invoice has not yet been created for the delivery you want to reverse, use the return document.

 

·       A/R Credit Memo: - The credit memo is the clearing document for the invoice and for the returns. If the goods were delivered to the customer and an invoice has already been created, you can partially or completely reverse the transaction by creating a credit memo. With the credit memo you correct both the quantities and the monetary values. The system increases the inventory of the credited items by the amount specified in the credit memo. The credit memo credits the value in the customer account in the accounting system and amends the revenue account by the same amount. The system corrects the tax amounts automatically.

 

When you create a return document based on a sales order, you can choose to reopen the item quantity of the order. Reopening the item quantity has the following consequences:

1.      The status of the sales order changes to Open.

2.      The delivered quantity is decreased by the quantity in the return.

3.      For service type transactions, the open amount is increased accordingly by a value equal to the value from a return line. If the sum of the remaining open amount plus the returned amount is greater than the total amount for the original order line, the total amount is used as the open amount.

4.      If there are any freight charges related to the returned item, these charges are reopened in the same way as the item quantities.

5.      If the item is managed by batches, the returned batch-allocated quantity is increased by the quantity from the return line.