SAP Business One 9.2 new features

By Claricha Joubert | July 25, 2017 | Comments Off on SAP Business One 9.2 new features

If you are already using SAP Business One or if you are looking to implement an ERP System in your business you will be very pleased with the new SAP Business One 9.2 release. This release is loaded with great new features enhancing the already brilliant SAP Business One Solution, some of the new and best features include:

Administration:

  1. Import from Excel: You can now import the following data types from Microsoft Excel into SAP Business One:
  • Price Lists
  • Business Partner Catalog numbers
  1. Logon: A message is now displayed if you try to log on to the SAP Business One client using a user code which is already logged on. You can either cancel your logon or  confirm your logon (which will lock out the other user using this user code).
  1. Approval Procedure: You can set documents to go through an approval procedure upon update if the document was not generated upon approval.
  2. Alternative Keyboard Usage: You can now use the Enter key in the numeric keypad as the Tab key to move between fields for faster data entry.
  3. Data Ownership: In SAP Business One 9.2, the range of data ownership management has been extended to business partners. This enhancement provides the ability to restrict access to the following:
  • Business Partner Master Data
  • Documents using business partners with owners

With the enhancement, you can manage data ownership with the following methods:

  • Document Only:

Permissions are defined per document

  • Business Partner Only:

Permissions to documents are decided by whether users have permission to

the business partner used in the documents.

  • Business Partner and Document:

When business partners have owners, permissions to documents are decided by whether users have permission to the business partner used in the documents. When business partners have no owner, permissions are decided per document.

 

Financials:

  1. Fixed Assets: To improve the efficiency of managing fixed assets, SAP Business One 9.2

introduces the virtual asset concept. When your company purchases identical fixed assets in large quantities, using this function can free you from manually entering large amounts of repeated information. After adding an A/P invoice to purchase a certain amount of a virtual asset, SAP Business One automatically creates the same amount of asset master data records for you.

  1. Align Posting of Marketing Document Lines with Journal Entry Lines: SAP Business One 9.2 provides you with the option of splitting journal entry postings by their origin document lines. When you choose this option, document lines posted to the same G/L account are not consolidated into one journal entry line; each journal entry line has a reference number that can trace back to the origin document line. This function provides strong support for tax auditing.

 

  1. Accounting Enhancements According to IFRS:
  • Activation of the Shipped Goods Account

For perpetual inventory companies, the Shipped Goods Account is enabled. When the delivery of goods and the issue of invoices occur in different financial periods, this account is used for postings instead of the COGS account.

  • Extension of G/L Account Levels

You can now define a chart of accounts for your company with G/L accounts up to 10 levels.

  • Rename Chart of Accounts Drawers

You can now rename the drawers in the Chart of Accounts window. And the updated drawer names can be reflected in reports and other functions application-wide.

 

Sales and Purchasing:

  1. Enhancement of Reopen Sales/Purchase Order Process: To better support real business processes, SAP Business One 9.2 now provides you with the option of reopening purchase or sales orders when you create credit memos for A/P or A/R reserve invoices drawn from corresponding orders.
  2. Electronic Document Framework: If you enable this feature, you can generate marketing documents on the A/R side in electronic format. Through the electronic file manager, you can use various file formats custom tailored to your business requirements. Electronic documents can be automatically processed and sent through the SAP Business One Integration framework. The feature is available in all localizations
  3. Gross Freight: SAP Business One 9.2 now provides you with the option to define a freight amount that includes tax, according to your business requirements

 

Business Partners:

  1. Opening Balance: In SAP Business One 9.2, you can now define the control account used for posting opening balance transactions for each business partner.
  2. Campaign Management: In SAP Business One 9.2, the campaign management function has been enhanced to let you perform the following:
  • Create and manage campaigns for vendors
  • Run existing campaigns

This allows you to run an existing campaign again, but without having to specify the same information again.

Banking:

  1. Third-Party Checks: You can now select an endorsable third-party check as a payment means in an outgoing payment, instead of endorsing the check by creating a manual journal entry.
  2. Checks for Payment: You can now set authorizations for the following actions. All mentioned authorizations are located under Checks for Payment of Outgoing Payments.
  • Update Pay To (for updating the Pay To field after checks are added)
  • Create Checks for Payment Without Journal Entry
  • Print Checks for Payment
  • Print Voided Checks for Payment
  • Reprint Checks for Previously Printed Payment

 

 

 

Inventory:

  1. Inventory Posting and Inventory Opening Balances: The valuation rules have been enhanced for items managed by the serial/batch valuation method. Valuation of inventory variances (or inventory opening balances) is per serial number or per batch instead of per bin location or per warehouse.
  2. Price Lists: SAP Business One 9.2 introduces the Prices Update Wizard. It provides multiple methods to let you update prices globally on item level.
  3. Bin Locations: SAP Business One 9.2 lets you restrict bin locations according to the UoM of items stored in the bin locations. You can choose the following UoM restrictions:
  • Specific UoM
  • Single UoM Only
  • Specific UoM Group
  • Single UoM Group Only
  1. Pick and Pack Enhancements: To provide more flexibility when picking items, SAP Business One 9.2 now lets you create pick lists without specifying any bin location for them.
  2. Item Cost: To be able to track inventory costs, SAP Business One 9.2 blocks you from changing the costs directly in Item Master Data for inventory items that use the standard valuation method. In this case, you can change the inventory cost through the Inventory Revaluation window.
  3. Extension of Field Length: In SAP Business One 9.2, the lengths of the following fields have been extended:
  • Item No: 50 characters
  • Business Partner Catalog No: 50 characters
  • Resource No: 50 characters
  • User Code :25 characters
  • Mfr Catalog No: 50 characters

 

MRP and Production:

 

  1. MRP Wizard: In MRP Wizard – Step 3:
  • When adding items, you can now select items by both preferred vendor and UDFs defined in the Item Master Data.
  • For updating selected items, a new update method and more parameters have been provided.
  1. Basic Forecast: Warehouses are considered in forecasts now. You can create and maintain forecasts for items per warehouse.
  2. Production Standard Cost Management: The standard production cost update routine enables you to optionally and periodically synchronize the budgeted standard production costs with the actual valuation cost of the item. The standard production cost rollup routine for parent items enables you to optionally roll up the budgeted costs of item and resource components into the parent’s production standard cost through all bill of materials levels. The breakdown of a parent’s production standard cost is fully visible in the Bill of Materials window. The production standard cost is used as a benchmark to compare with actual production costs.
  3. Production Order Start Date and End Date Enhancements: The following fields have been added to the production order:
  • Start Date in the header area
  • Start Date and End Date on the production order rows

The values from the Start Date and Due Date fields are copied from the header into the relevant fields on the rows by default, but a user can manage the date ranges for each component line separately. MRP, ATP and resource capacity reports are also modified to support date ranges defined for each component separately.

  1. Posting Schemas for Manufacturing: Posting Schemas for Manufacturing You can choose between two posting schemas for manufacturing in the Document Settings window for the production order:
  • Accounting with Balance Sheet Accounts Only
  • Accounting with Balance Sheet Accounts and Profit & Loss Accounts

If you choose the latter, offset accounts are used for postings related to issues for production, receipts from production, and production order.

 

Service:

  1. Addition of a Business Partner Tab in Service Call: You can now view the Business Partner tab of the Service Call window to get all the necessary details for handling the service call, with no need to navigate and search for the details in BP master data.
  2. Support of Vendors in Service Module: Prior to SAP Business One 9.2, the service module supports the customer side only. You can track services that your company provides. Now, the service module is enhanced to support the vendor side. You can also track services that your company receives.

 

Human Resources:

  1. Relationship Map for Human Resources: You can now work with the Relationship Map in the Human Resources Module. The enhancement is initialized through the right-click context menu. With the enhancement, the following options are available to display and work with:
  • View employee master data records, including embedded photos of employees
  • Visualize the manager and subordinates of each employee
  • Display teams and roles of company employees

 

Project Management:

  1. Project Management: The Project Management feature lets you manage your projects more effectively from start to finish. You can centralize all project related transactions, documents, resources, and activities. The feature helps you monitor the progress of tasks, stages, phases, and the overall project, analyse budget and costs, and generate reports on various aspects of the project, such as stage analysis, open issues, and resources.

 

Infrastructure:

  1. Browser Access: You can access on-premises SAP Business One in a Web browser.
  2. Job Service: A job service has been introduced to manage alert settings on the server side. As an administrator, you can do the following in a Web browser:
  • Start and stop the service.
  • Create and manage the technical user used to execute the alerts. This technical user is associated with a particular SAP Business One user.

Mailer settings are also managed by the job service; nevertheless, you still access the mailer settings in the SAP Business One service manager.

  1. Logging and Tracing: The logging and tracing mechanism has been changed in the following aspects:
  • Storage centralization and other unifications:

○ Log files for different components and operations are stored centrally in the same directory.

○ Log files on client workstations are transferred regularly to the shared folder B1_SHR.

○ Log files follow the same naming convention.

○ The log file format is CSV.

  • New logging and tracing objects:

○ Additional information has been added to the Microsoft SQL Server trace to help identify SAP Business One operations that trigger respective transact-SQL statements. This information may be the form ID, the business object ID, or the table name.

○ UI events are logged in the SAP Business One client log files.

  • Logger settings:

○ You can enable verbose logging to record log messages of all severities for the SAP Business One client. One click enables or disables verbose logging.

○ You no longer need to restart the SAP Business One client after changing the logger settings.

  1. Localization-Specific Online Help: The online help has been enhanced, providing to each company information related only to localization-specific features and generic features. SAP Business One launches the localized online help files according to the localization of the company database, in both new and upgraded companies. The localized online help is context sensitive and available in all languages, similar to the online help used in previous releases.

 

Lifecycle Management:

  1. Setup Wizard: The installation wizard and the upgrade wizard have been merged into one setup wizard. You can use the setup wizard to perform both installation and upgrade.
  2. Simplified CD Image: The structure of the SAP Business One product CD (installation package and upgrade package) has been simplified. However, please note that the demo databases are available only in the installation package.

 

Licensing:

  1. Logon Limitations:
  • Apply logon limitations for indirect access: Only one machine can run an add-on at any one time. An exception will occur if a second machine attempts to log on. Only add-ons within the SAP Business One client are permitted to remain working on both a locked and working machine. This is the only case where two add-on sessions can run simultaneously.
  • Apply logon limitations for browser access: It is possible to log on from only one machine or browser. A second logon attempt from another machine or browser will fail.

 

Implementation Tools:

  1. Quick Copy enhancements: The following data categories are supported by Quick Copy:
  • User group authorization
  • Data ownership (for documents and business partners)
  • Forecasts
  • Completion of the Financials module
  • Field naming and formatting
  • Multi-language translation
  • Cockpits and dashboards (only non Fiori-style cockpits and dashboards are supported)

 

Extensibility: SAP Business One is equipped with a programming API based on COM technology. You can use the functional scope of SAP Business One as supplied, or adapt it to your specific requirements. The API is delivered as a Software Development Kit (SDK), including development documentation and code samples. The SAP Business One SDK enables you to extend and change the functionality of SAP Business One to create industry and company functionality and interfaces with third-party tools.

 

Software Development Kit (SDK):

  1. UI API: Modal Form: System forms have a modal form capability. A modal form appears on top of other forms. Until you close it, you cannot use the forms underneath. This feature was available to system forms already, and now it has been extended to UI API to be used for custom forms. Add-on codes can create a modal form using either the Forms.AddEx method or the Application.LoadBatchActions method.
  2. UI API: Grid Performance Enhancements: Performance has been improved for:
  • Changing settings of multiple rows and cells in Grid/Matrix. In UI API, the
  • CommonSetting object now provides two new XML based methods,
  • UpdateFromXML and CommonSetting.GetAsXML, for batch operations.
  • Loading data in grids with data tables.
  1. UI API: Item Level Event Filter: A new optional filter type of item has been added in UI API. If used, this filter ensures that only events from the white listed items that also match the event types and forms filters will be passed through the SDK.
  2. DI API: New Services for Resources: New DI API services related to the resource module are available.

 

User-Defined-Table (UDT) and User-Defined Fields (UDF)

  1. Auto-Increasing UDT: Prior to SAP Business One 9.2, you must specify the primary key of a UDT table when creating a UDT. Now, a new auto-increment type of UDT, in which you do not need to enter a unique key, has been introduced. When you enter new data in a form, the application will automatically specify a key (hidden number). In the User-Defined Tables – Setup window (from the menu bar, choose Tools Customization Tools User-Defined Tables – Setup ), a new object type No Object with Auto Increment has been added to the dropdown list of the Object Type field. After you apply this type, the application creates a user-defined table with two fields, Code and Name. The Code field is auto-increasing.
  2. UDF Can Link to System Object: Prior to SAP Business One 9.2, when you create dropdowns you can link only to custom lists. Now, you can select from a system list.
  3. Extension of Field Length: The lengths of the following fields have been extended:
  • UDF (metadata level): Title- 50 characters

: Description – 80 characters

  • UDT (DB schema level): Code -50 characters

: Name -100 characters

 

User-Defined Objects (UDO):

  1. Store UDO Form Size Settings: Prior to SAP Business One 9.2, Header-Line style UDO forms did not remember the size and position. Now when you change the size or position, it will be remembered after you close the form and logoff. Every time you open the form, it will appear with the same size and position when you close it.

 

Remote Support Platform for SAP Business One (RSP):

  1. New Version of Remote Support Platform: Version 3.2 of the Remote Support Platform (RSP) is available. This version brings new abilities such as:
  • Ability to synchronize company database information from System Landscape Directory (SLD) in RSP.
  • Ability to heal SAP HANA database; should healing tasks be necessary, they will be delivered.
  • Ability to schedule regular backups of SAP HANA database, and delete old backups automatically.

 

In RSP Studio partners are able to approve/decline SAP RSP tasks and adjust their schedule, including patch download, for their customers.

Delivery of a technical user for RSP backend communication.

 

Posted in General