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SAP Business One

SAP Business One

Overview

What is SAP Business One?

SAP Business One is an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for small and medium-sized businesses, The product encompasses functionality around sales, customer relationships, inventory, operations, financials and human resources.

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Recent Reviews

SAP Business One is #1

10 out of 10
April 27, 2021
Incentivized
SAP Business One is being used by my organization within both the sales and administrative departments. It helps us manage our inventory, …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 66 features
  • Accounts receivable (40)
    7.8
    78%
  • Accounts payable (41)
    7.8
    78%
  • Inventory tracking (40)
    6.4
    64%
  • Standard reports (40)
    6.4
    64%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Limited

$99.00

Cloud
per month

Starter

$110.00

Cloud
per month

Pro

$132.00

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

SAP Business One Demo

YouTube

Step 9 - Installing SAP Business One on SQL Server

YouTube

The SAP Business One WOW demo

YouTube

SAP Business One Demo

YouTube
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Features

Payroll Management

Provides for pay calculation and benefit plan administration, in addition to managing direct deposit, salary revisions and payroll tracking.

10
Avg 7.2

Customization

This addresses a company’s ability to configure the software to fit its specific use case and workflow.

5.3
Avg 7.3

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

7.1
Avg 8.1

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

6.4
Avg 7.0

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting

Financial management solution, including capabilities for general ledger and configurable accounting

5.1
Avg 7.6

Inventory Management

The ability to track and manage the flow of goods or materials into and out of an inventory.

7.4
Avg 7.9

Order Management

The ability to process orders, and track them from quote to cash.

6.4
Avg 7.8

Subledger and Financial Process

Revenue management solution including capabilities for subledgers and financial processes

5.9
Avg 7.4

Project Financial Management

Project financial management solution including capabilities for project budgeting, cost control, billing and contract management.

7
Avg 7.6

Project Execution Management

Project execution management solution including capabilities for project scheduling, resource management, and team member task management.

8.9
Avg 6.8

Grants Management

Grants management solution for higher education, public sector, or non-profits with capabilities for managing financial awards for program and project funding

7.7
Avg 7.6

Procurement

Procurement management solution with capabilities for sourcing, contracting, procure-to-pay and supplier management

8.1
Avg 7.0

Risk Management

Risk management solution with capabilities for managing controls, assessing control effectiveness, certifying controls, and addressing deficiencies

8
Avg 6.5

Logistics

Logistics solution with capabilities for transportation planning, transportation execution, trade compliance, customs management, warehouse management and warehouse workforce management.

6.9
Avg 6.9

Manufacturing

Manufacturing solution for managing manufacturing processes and costs.

8.3
Avg 7.5

Supply Chain

Supply Chain Planning solution with capabilities for planning, performance monitoring, change responses and execution.

6.4
Avg 7.2

Product Lifecycle Management

Product Lifecycle Management solution with capabilities for innovation management, product development

9
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

What is SAP Business One?

SAP Business One is an ERP system ideal for small to midsize businesses. It is sold only through SAP partner companies, and offers both on-premise and cloud deployment options. Users have access to core accounting features such as journal entries, AP/AR, cash flow management, fixed asset management, bank reconciliation, and financial reporting and analysis. SAP Business One also includes a host of other ERP features including procurement, production planning, warehouse and inventory management, CRM and sales process management, and business intelligence tools. Vertical-specific features for manufacturing, retail, and wholesale distribution are available as well.

SAP Business One Integrations

SAP Business One Competitors

SAP Business One Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

SAP Business One is an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for small and medium-sized businesses, The product encompasses functionality around sales, customer relationships, inventory, operations, financials and human resources.

Sage 100 are common alternatives for SAP Business One.

Reviewers rate Pay calculation and Benefit plan administration and Direct deposit files highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of SAP Business One are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

View all alternatives
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Reviews and Ratings

(220)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-22 of 22)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Business One is used daily at our facility. We use it to manage our inventory and others that we have at other locations. It handles all internal orders and billing as well as streamlining our processes.
  • Relationship Maps - showing us the process from start to finish in one screen is helpful
  • Holding people accountable as their name is attached to each process they do
  • Easy to Bill and Pay our customers and vendors
  • Reporting is very clearly designed for maximum clarity
  • Not easy enough to customize other reports that come up as being needed
  • Training myself and my staff at time of implementation
  • Setting up macros automatically would be nice
  • Having more included instead of having all the extra pieces being extra money especially for upgrades
Overall I love the program and it is an imperative program for us to use daily now. I would strongly recommend that if you get this program that you have someone that can be fully trained in every way and every program that this program uses so that you can utilize it to the fullest extent.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Due to a spin-off, last year our company was faced with the decision of which ERP to use. In the previous years, we were using SAP R/3. We chose SAP Business One because is more suitable for small and medium scale enterprises (like us) where the business processes are more flexible. Moreover, we were looking for a cost-effective solution whereas R/3 is meant for large scale enterprises having multi-country locations and where budget is not much of a concern. SAP Business One does not have all the functionalities as that of R/3 but the functionality list is slowly increasing.
Regarding the implementations and consultant's skills, the SAP Business One consultants are certified in all the modules. In SAP ECC, the consultants are certified in one or two, so the teams needs much more consultants in SAP Business One. At the end, we decided to move to SAP Business One.
  • SAP Business One is more suitable for small and medium scale enterprises
  • SAP Business One is : analytics, mobile technologies, cloud technologies
  • SAP Business One has exceptional performance in handling business functions such as purchasing and operations and customer relationship management
  • An important key features of SAP Business One is Reporting and Analytics.
  • The Firefox web browser is currently the only web browser supported.
  • Multi-currency capabilities- SAP Business One only does the real-time conversion at a period closing, but can simulate an approximation of the conversion for mid-period reports.
  • Ancillary system applications such as HR have pared-down feature sets
SAP Business One provides a comprehensive and sophisticated financial system that also easily extends to add the functions of a true ERP system including modules for production, HR, CRM, and MRP. I think it represents the company's small to midsize enterprise offering.

Some important benefits of choosing SAP Business One is that it is a complete [set of] small-business essentials in a single system and it helps you to save money for implementation.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used [SAP Business One] as 1 of the tools to pick for accounting. SAP business was 1 of the tools in our selection process. SAP is great for complex operations and can connected to many other systems to automate global orders, accounts, purchases and project management.

So for complex rules, and bigger companies this is a great tool to implement because of the freedom you have. Or does it?
  • Inventory management
  • Automations with other systems
  • Reporting (i mean you can report everything)
  • Price... For us it's more a enterprise solutions modules, users etc ramp up the price FAST
  • Learning curve, prepare to train your people!
  • Report building is simple, and needs a upgrade (still it's flexible!)
Like i said for complex implementations and use with other systems SAP [Business One] is great. You can create automatic warehousing if you want with this system as it base. We used it to integrate CRM systems with the production orders to make a seamless automated order process from purchase to warehouse to costumer. And it works great!

But with this it will cost you for implementing and get it to run, next to the training of people to use the system. So again for big companies i would suggest SAP [Business One], but for smaller ones and even mid... There might be better and cheaper options for your needs!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Business One is being used by my organization within both the sales and administrative departments. It helps us manage our inventory, purchasing decisions, sales processes, customer relations, projects, and operations. SAP Business One helps us gain company wide oversight in real time and offers us peace of mind when making business decisions.
  • Offers reports for various analysis
  • Provides inventory and restock alerts
  • Has a user friendly interface
  • Provide more security features
  • Offer a quicker load up process for the system
  • Less confusing licensing process
I am very likely (10) to recommend SAP Business One to my colleagues. I have had a great experience with the system with little to no issues. I like the peace of mind it provides me when performing my duties. Working in Events Management, it is really helpful having a system like this to monitor inventory and provide me with restock alerts.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP B1 has helped us to consolidate all the financial information of our company. Simplified our operation and since it is a cloud-based implementation we don't run any additional cost related to maintaining it.
It covers the whole cycle from e-accounting to billing which can be tricky in Mexico, provide us with the required information on time and it is specially useful since our accounting is outsourced.
  • Billing.
  • Account harmonization in Mexico.
  • Accounting (FICO).
  • Reporting.
  • Diary Document edition.
  • Integrating documents to billing.
SAP Business One is well suited for growing small business on cloud that requires a sound solution for finance and accounting.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using SAP Business One as our primary system for financial control. The entire accounting and tax part goes through SAP. SAP Business One is used by the entire company. Logistics uses SAP Business One for goods inflows and outflows, usage management; financial service uses SAP Business One by issuing and controlling service bills for our customers; and the inspector uses SAP Business One to issue the necessary tax collection forms.
  • Tracking goods, from entry to application
  • Billing control and recurrence for customers
  • We have difficulties finding local support. We always have to bring it from another state.
  • The price of licenses is very high.
This version of SAP Business One is ideal for small and medium-sized companies. SAP Business One helps in the process of controlling financial and company assets and it allows for faster communication with suppliers by sending quotation requests from within SAP. I do not believe that SAP Business One is the best tool for CRM. We have other options that are more specialized for this type of relationship.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SAP Business One across the whole organization. I think our biggest problem with SAP is that we have either not fully implemented the software in certain areas and our item setup was flawed at inception. The time we spend on improving SAP is around these areas. In item set up that includes GL mapping.
  • I like the feature of pulling data out of a report. I can right-click and copy table and it pastes right into Excel.
  • I like the theory of the MRP process while we have not yet been able to utilize it. We are pushing to get it working.
  • Reporting! I don't like needing to be a wiz with SQL in order to create a report.
  • I am sure most of my issues revolve around not being trained. It is very hard to find courses or seminars for SAP Business One. Most of my training resource is Youtube.
I think SAP Business One is well suited in almost any company. The key is having a good implementation and regular maintenance. Training is always key for software and I think SAP could do a better job with marketing training courses for its customers. It seems like SAP Business One is a lower level product so they want to push you into using the full SAP.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is currently being used for accounting and finance and will also be used by manufacturing when we get to that stage. Entire organization will use it. SAP consolidates everything onto one platform and will help us manage our inventory and manufacturing processes better than QuickBooks.
  • The user interface is easy to navigate.
  • Reports are easily created in order to analyze data.
  • Inventory is tracked in an efficient manner.
  • SAP doesn't allow for there to be updates to inventory items once they have been created. It would be ideal if updates to items could be made.
SAP Business One is well suited for a small to mid-sized company that has inventory and manufacturing processes.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Business One is being used are our ERP system which is used in all departments within the organization. This includes Sales (not business development), Purchasing, Logistics, Technical Services (Production), Finance.

SAP has given us the ability to mainstream our processes and have one source of truth. Our legacy systems were comprised of two systems and now have the ability to manage all processes in one. This system also allows in house customization needed to process data specific to our needs.
  • SAP offers the Relationship Map tool which shows users all linked documents visually which allows users to quickly see where the order is at in the order fulfillment process.
  • SAP offers Internal Reconciliation for prepaid and accrual accounts on the balance sheet which allows us to quickly identify unresolved items.
  • SAP offers a global search which has not been available in our legacy systems. This is a great feature as it reduces search times and gives users the ability to quickly find documents.
  • Other features such as Drag & Relate, as well as, the standard 'Find' tool for most fields on Marketing Documents have proven to be invaluable. These features allow users to find an array of information/documents rather easily.
  • Inventory Management / Reporting inefficiencies. Lacking reports to provide historical inventory data to see a snapshot of inventory for any given period of time. Lacking reports of aging inventory for non-serialized products. Limited inventory cycle count functionality.
  • Inability to reopen closed documents more than once. (returns and replacements).
  • Under financial Reports, Trial Balance (TB): Updating the functions to reflect G/L Accounts, must include opening balance for a period with "OB from the start of company activity" to have any current data. The Profit and Loss section of a TB does not have an opening balance of $0, and Retained earnings to not reflect up to date balance regardless of time frame requested for posting dates.
  • Move some of the general authorizations into the specific modules. For instance, would like to give users access to post a draft Sales Orders from a previous month without having to give them authorizations to back post any documents they have authorizations for.
  • Ability to customize out of box reporting. We have a UDF which is reported on frequently and is not hitting the P&L, however, we cannot add this to the Sales Analysis (and other) reports which have everything else needed baked in.
  • Inability to link documents when Freight and Sales Tax only are credited. Would like to see these linked without the use of referenced documents as the copy to / copy from feature was utilized. The link should tie to the header, not just the line item level.
  • Would like the ability to create a production schedule within the system utilizing production order dates.
SAP is well suited for most standard practices. It has been less appropriate for Business Development and Marketing.
Guillermo Villamizar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the product for our complete sales and purchase process, meanwhile, it is fully connected with the finance module and it creates automatically a journal entry for every transaction that affects the general ledger. The reporting module has many options and is really customizable, and you can create your own reports once you get familiar with the structures of tables and fields in the database.
  • All the modules are connected. A document you post on the sales or purchase modules gets an immediate journal entry on the finance module.
  • The system is very customizable. You can add extra fields to almost every document in the system.
  • The reporting is very good. You can create your own report via the Query Manager and then even add some layouts to the reports.
  • The Software Development Kit (SDK) has some errors that haven't been solved from previous versions of the system.
  • The Print Layout Designer (PLD) is somewhat tricky to work with.
  • The cost of each user license could be pretty expensive for some companies.
The license cost per user is a little expensive, and then annually you have to pay approximately 20% of the total cost of your licenses for the support from SAP, but what you get in return is totally worth it. You get a world class ERP for your company and the support is really good. The main benefit of the system is that you have all the departments in your company connected in real time.
July 18, 2019

SAP B1 for the win

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP B1 took the three software systems we were using and integrated them all into one ERP. This made our productivity increase and made us much more efficient in all aspects of our business. Everything was located within one ERP and made reporting much easier for us. We were able to integrate other third-party solutions into SAP to make our business run even more smoothly.
  • Reporting: out of the box reporting was good, it helped us manage at a high level and see what we needed to see.
  • Financials: financial reports were easy to pull and review. They allowed us to quickly see any areas of concern.
  • Search option: the search capability within the system was great; if you weren't able to find something the search would always be the way to go.
  • In order to have the system do everything we needed, we had to pay for more third-party solutions. Out of the box, it did not solve all of our needs.
  • Support: until we switched support companies, support was greatly lacking from our partner because they were too large.
  • There were glitches that were never fixed from version to version such as pulling reports showing different years in the same report.
SAP B1 is great for a small to medium sized company to use as their all in one ERP. It gives a company a way to have all areas of the business within one system.
John SCOTT Livingston | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SAP B1 9.3 for our entire procure to pay process. We're a small company that has been able to benefit from the use of an ERP system like SAP B1. After several years of using SAP B1 we are still working on process improvement however we've experienced strong company growth in the past 3 year. We are confident we chose the correct platform as it has allowed for our growth.
  • Flexibility in reporting and form development
  • Easy adaptability to third party applications
  • For a small company it has been easy to manage technically
  • Following a bench mark process - this seems contradicting to flexibility however we have wished we could follow more of an industry benchmark. Our challenge as a small company has been knowing how to properly use the system. We have discovered that we have set up the system wrong based and are using it improperly which has cause a lot work to correct.
  • Better live reporting options - current we are on prem SQL. Yes SAP is moving to HANA however smaller companies like ourselves are not ready for that. We need to be able to maintain our existing SQL DB. We also have a demand for live BI Reporting. It has been difficult to do this with our current set up.
  • Error handling - have found it very difficult to troubleshoot. Errors are not always clear and answers are hard to find.
I wouldn't recommend SAP B1 for everyone. For it won't fit many companies our size due to the expense of implementing and maintaining. Simple financial operations would not really need it. It is good for companies that recognize future growth and need for flexibility B1 is not recommended for companies with large and complex manufacturing processes.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Operations, Finance and Order management currently uses SAP B1 in our organization. It is great for our small hopefully scaling business and managing inventory needs.
  • Inventory Management
  • Pulling data into Excel
  • Add-on flexibility
  • Reporting capabilities
  • Web access
It's been really good for helping us manage inventory. We struggle a bit with getting data out of the system at times, but that could be because we've transitioned staff recently and prior management was database management focused not reporting focused.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a SAP Business One Partner in the United Kingdom. We have implemented the product in various industries. It's an ERP which can handle all the aspects of a business including Finance, Operations and Reporting
  • SAP Business One version for Hana provides analytical reporting for management.
  • With SAP Business One Mobile application you can monitor your business on your fingertips such as you can manage your approvals on mobile device.
  • Controlling can be made more effective in SAP B1. You can configure authorisation for all the users. Also you can put up approvals on the document which are critical for the business aspect.
  • The production module is still a section where it is improving. Recently Routing have been introduced but there is still some more place for improvement.
  • Remote support platform of SAP B1 need some improvement. Specially when backup are configured we need to make sure that RSP service doesn't get to stop automatically.
  • Financial report such as VAT needs to be uploaded by the system itself which SAP is supposed to introduce in upcoming patch level.
SAP Business One is highly suitable for SME's
Ronald Socorro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The use of the tool allows to have an ERP which is implemented, in general, in all areas of the company, integrates in a coordinated manner in the areas of Marketing, Production, Marketing Channels, Inventories, Administration, Accounting, Finance, Portfolio Management of Customers, Accounts Payable and Charged. Allowing the control of all these functions in a single integrated application.

It is ideal for small and medium businesses, since it is a complete application, with a good technical service, and with accessible costs for the benefits received.
  • It allows making a real follow-up of the state of the company, without the need to wait for periodic reports. This provides a corrective tool for situations that deviate from the standard.
  • It prevents the business areas from working separately so the information is not duplicated and is managed effectively by all involved. thus avoiding conflicts and optimizing resources.
  • It allows the proper management of the client portfolio, accurately projecting the inputs and outputs of resources, products, orders, and invoices. Therefore, the inventory and cash flow are properly managed.
  • By correctly managing cash inflows and customer requirements, a real plan of goals can be established that is adjusted to the company's capabilities.
  • It is a standardized program in its use, with a parent company with decades in the market and renowned, which provides adequate user support to the tool.
  • The learning curve is greater than other programs of its type. You need staff who previously worked with the tool. The learning time is going to be high. Being a more developed tool, the user requirements are high compared to other similar ones.
  • Visually, it is a sober program. I believe that the presentation could be improved by adjusting it to the user level with which it is worked. In order to make it more user-friendly, we must not forget that a tool such as an ERP will be used by all areas of the company, which includes inexperienced personnel up to senior levels.
  • They should improve the integration with other tools that do not belong to the SAP family. In today's world, emphasis should be placed on emails, social networks, mobile applications, applications of calls and messaging, as well as providing adequate storage access on the cloud.
  • The implementation of the tool is in accordance with the type of program, however, for people who have not worked with programs of the SAP family, it will require more implementation time, as well as intensive user training courses.
As we have already described, it is an ideal tool for small and medium companies, with a well designed ERP system and adjusted to the reality of the business. It is a sober, reliable tool with extensive experience in the development of administrative tools. The cost-benefit ratio is appropriate for companies of this size. The points of improvement are the integration with other platforms and the visual interface for average users.
Brandon Knight | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We used SAP B1 to manage our sales pipeline. As a reseller, I also used it to demonstrate and sell to companies in manufacturing and distribution.
  • Manages items through BOM, tracking serialized components and batch/lot traceability
  • Manages many aspects of the business; manufacturing, inventory, sales, distribution, service, etc
  • Audit trails, detailed logs of all system activity by the user. Sox compliant.
  • At times, the on-premise deployment can be a tad slow
  • Not the cheapest price option
  • Maybe too much software for true small business
Companies that have many aspects of their operations would be a good fit, great step up for companies that have outgrown QuickBooks.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I started working on SAP Business One implementation and support with many clients since its early release. It is normally used by whole organizations of small/medium size companies. SAP Business One provides a sturdy financial accounting backbone with standard reports that meet most companies’ requirements. The financial data is obtained from an integrated system of sales, purchase inventory and production, which gives business owners’ visibility to inventory and financial data any time during the whole logistics cycle. This is a reason that many clients move to SAP Business One.
  • Cost Effective: even with add-ons from a third party, SAP Business One still wins in terms of cost compared to larger ERP providers such SAP All in One.
  • Stable Accounting module. Financial accounting is no stranger to users who use any other ERP systems, it provides standard reports and operations. The core financial accounting function is stable and accurate.
  • Flexibility to Customize. Users can customize by creating user defined fields, alerts, approvals to define thier own workflow. The UI form can be edited by hiding or moving field. The Query Generator is easy to use, even by a user who is not familiar with SQL. Users can create a customized report.
  • Strong Support. Strong SAP support, a wealth of training materials that are easy to obtain. SAP continuously improves on new functionality. Recently SAP added new functionality such as allowing users to define the bin location for inventory items, define dimensions in cost accounting, add resources in production module etc.
  • Availability of in depth solution via Integration with third party add-on. Add-ons are available in various areas including WMS, project management, POS, and web portals.
  • Improvement in Human Resource module. The employee master data in the Human Resource module can be linked with other modules such as Production in order to directly record time to calculate salary.
  • Improvement on technology infrastructure. The B1 Mobile and Dashboard has been causing a lot of issues at the time it is installed and during use afterwards. A user needs a technology background or help from a consultant to set it up. However after setup, the program tends to error out for any network or technology reason. The same problem happens with inter-company add-ons.
  • Integration with a third party add-on adds more problems from a support point of view, since some issues need knowledge from both sides to troubleshoot, which puts higher requirement on support.
Business with a straight process are best suited to SAP Business One. It is less appropriate if a business process needs to be redirected based on configuration; for example delivery should be based on a sales quota.
Dr. Don Maes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
As a consultant for SAP Business One I recommend, sell and implement it for many companies, the majority of which are in distribution and manufacturing. SAP B1 addresses the business processes required to manage inventory - straightforward distribution inventory, and complex manufacturing environments. Examples of companies that are using SAP B1 include: a capital equipment company in Woodstock Ontario that has BOMs that are 11 levels deep and average 3,000 components / sub-assemblies; a distribution company in Toronto with 6 distribution locations and salesmen throughout North America; a steel stamping company in Toronto making complex file cabinets and desks that are sold throughout North America; an automotive aftermarket distributor in Florida supplying parts to large retail chains such as Autozone; a manufacturer in Indiana that captures labor by operation in real time on the floor.
While these companies have different specific needs, the individual SAP B1 implementation is tailored (using SAP tools) to their individual needs.
  • SAP B1's technology is superb. SAP provides user tools to quickly add fields to a screen, re-arrange fields on a screen for optimal user interface, and create SQL queries to verify data as it is entered.
  • SAP B1 is tightly integrated. This is a product developed for this millennium - all of the modules are tightly integrated and the flow from one module to another. Even third party add-on products use the same technology platform for development -- making it seamless integration.
  • SAP B1 has integration to phone technology as an integral part of the software, allowing user's access to their data not just from their office but from anywhere they have network access.
  • The look and feel of the software is the same no matter what module you are using. Training is simplified - if you are trained on the sales order --> shipper --> invoice process, the same user could easily manage the purchase order --> PO receipt --> A/P invoice process because the screens are so similar.
  • SAP's education is superb. They have literally hundreds of hours of on-line training available for their customers. If you need to brush up on a process or train a new employee, you simply direct them to the appropriate video and they can learn at their own pace.
  • The software is robust. There are many 'wizards' included in the software. For instance their is an A/P payment wizard that leads you through the payment process.
  • SAP includes approval processes as an integral part of their software. For instance, if purchasing requests could be entered by any user but all (or some) could require approval by the head of purchasing.
  • There are alerts for out of condition processes. For instance, you can define an alert for the sale of any item below 10% margin, or an alert whenever a major client shipment is near to missing on time delivery. The alerts are all SQL queries that look for conditions that you define as requiring an alert.
  • No payroll module.
  • The initial implementation of the dashboard is overly complicated. Once it is set up it functions well, but it takes more effort than it should to get operational. And it takes lots of computer expertise to get operational.
  • Few customers use the Outlook integration with SAP. The ease of use between Outlook and SAP B1 could be improved.
  • Few customers use the CRM module heavily. Mostly this is because of the Outlook integration and the discipline it takes to use it properly.

Since I mostly implement distribution and manufacturing systems, let me address those areas. In those companies the accounting functionality of SAP B1 is very complete and there are no holes.

Inventory handling of bins, warehouses and items is superb. The system handles serial controlled items (1:1), batch controlled items (1:many) and normal stock items. The number of SKUs is not an issue - I have one customer with 150,000 SKUs. Hand held devices for data collection are third party add-ons, but there are several options available. The inventory is set up for discrete parts handling. There are few distribution industries where SAP B1 would not be a good fit.

The manufacturing functionality was weak until the latest release of SAP B1 in 2014. Now the BOMs support routers and processes - as they should have. Plants making discrete products that follow specific routing steps are excellent candidates for SAP B1. The MRP functionality is very good and allows for quick creation of POs and production orders from the results. New functionality in SAP 9.1 allows for import of transaction data to most SAP processes - so integration to data collection functions on the floor have been streamlined.

John Bird | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently utilize SAP Business One company wide for sales, financials, purchasing, and service. Business Partners are tracked utilizing B1 where we are able to attach pertinent documentation to their records as it relates to tax-ability, etc. We are also able to generate real-time reporting using the "Drag and Relate" functionality. This has benefied IT by enabling users to collect report data without burdening IT with basic reporting requests.
  • Custom reporting in SAP Business One is particularly easy due to the SQL back end. With SQL experience, and adequate documentation, it is a generally painless process extracting relate-able data and meeting reporting needs.
  • Relational documents are easily produced. Utilizing the "relationship map" on any document will show all other related documents. For example, clicking "relationship map" on a sales order will bring up the quote, purchase order, and invoice for that particular sales order.
  • Process flow is logical and understandable.
  • Forms customization is fairly easy. Utilizing Crystal Reports for many forms allows the end user to modify the forms to meet their particular needs.
  • Taxing and tax exemptions are not particularly strong. Luckily, there are 3rd party add-ons that address these deficiencies, but it would be nice to have something out-of-the box that works well.
For a small business that needs ERP software, I would recommend SAP Business One without any hesitation. I feel that it adequately meets all of our needs and does so much better than previous software we have used in the past. I also find that there is an active community of users that are ready toss ideas around and help out when you get stuck.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP is being used by our entire organization that solved a variety of business system problems such as inventory control, managing price lists, and banking. It also helped our business to better handle our G/L accounts and made account reconciliation much easier. Although we have just tapped the surface of its abilities, SAP Business One is a great asset to our company.
  • Inventory Management - provides many different entry fields to help keep track of all the inventory essentials, and makes finding a product through enterprise search very easy.
  • User Customization - SAP allows users to customize their "cockpit" to fit their specific department, which makes it easy to navigate to your most used operations.
  • Business Partners - Keeping track of each individual business partner is now much easier to maintain.
  • Posting payments - if trying to post payments for a prior date, it always puts back the actual date of the time you deposit. This makes it much more tedious if posting checks from a previous date.
  • Start-up time - start-up time can be very slow if you do not have a large amount of ram in your computer to keep up with SAP's massive size.
  • Crashing - depending on how many add-on's you have, SAP can have a tendency to crash. It should be more add-on friendly.
SAP is well suited for businesses with a large amount of inventory to track, businesses with a massive customer/vendor database, etc. However, SAP Business One can be a little pricy, and for very small companies I would not recommend it. Potential buyers should ask questions about importing information from a prior system because this process can take a long-time to switch from an older system.
February 25, 2015

SAP Business One ERP

Alberto Teran | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Business One was selected to be the ERP system to manage the sales locations in the entire company worldwide. The system is used to manage sales, finance and production at all the sales offices and it addresses the concern the organization had about standardizing their processes globally. We have integrated it with our mills so that the transfer of information is real time and minimizes data entry as well as with a data warehouse for reporting purposes.
  • Strong database structure: All documents are interconnected which helps navigate from different documents to financial or inventory information. Also it allows you to have more visibility of the complete process from quote to invoice.
  • Easy to Use: Modules are very self explanatory and windows based software, as you enter data into documents several information comes up automatically as long as it has been setup in the master data records.
  • Ability to customize: SAP Business One has the ability to be customized through add-ons on almost every module.
  • Production Module: Allow batches to be reserved for production and expand the functionality more so it is not so basic.
  • Reserve items in sales documents, more specifically Batch Number reservation.
  • When an invoice is credited, it should open the previous sales order to continue with the process rather than keeping it closed.
1. How many orders, invoices they handle?
2. Amount of Data Entry: this will allow you to know if you need EDI for your orders or not.
3. If there is a production process, are they special items for every customer or standard items? SAP Business One will work well with standard items where there is a bill of materials but it is not very friendly when using special items specifically if they are customized on a per customer basis.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used across the entire organization for Oilfield Services. It does not have the functionality necessary for the business needs, and because we are on 8.82 currently.
  • It has extensive functionality for small businesses for financials, customer relations, and basic workflow.
  • It can be customized to fit the detailed needs of your business.
  • Cost effective and easy to implement as opposed to other softwares
  • Has wide range of partners and add-ons to fit business needs.
  • P2P process difficult in 8.82 because some of the functionality not there unless you upgrade to a new version.
  • Not enough functionality for Field Services for time management.
  • No Payroll functionality in B1.
For the type of business we do in the oilfield industry, and the amount of employees and jobs that we run, the 8.82 version of B1 doesn't meet all our business needs. We would eventually need to look into upgrading to SAP All in One.
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