Tag: Canada

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working Capital is an area of business that requires solutions that revolve around timing. Timing is everything when it comes to the fundamental problem of managing and solving the cash flow conundrum!Let’s examine some of those solutions using the example of a company trying to grow… which is what it’s all about is it not?!

This is when what we could call your ‘ cash flow cycle ‘ needs to be both understood… and addressed. That’s because the concept of timing has just kicked in … your have produced your goods or provided your services and a specific amount of time has lapsed as you now generate revenues via invoicing… and wait for payment. It’s no secret that that whole cycle varies between each company and industry. But whether your cycle is 30 days or 120 days the effects of that timing require certain activities to be financed.

The timing around this cycle, as well as the solutions that your bring to bear makes or breaks your overall liquidity and solvency – aka ‘ Survival’!Example of the need to finance that cycle are should be quite clear – your firm must buy supplies or inventory, at the same time taking on payables. Wages and salaries must be covered and then you’re in the waiting game when it comes to delivery and acceptance of your goods and services, as well as final payment from your clients based on your credit terms. It’s therefore no secret to the business owner to see that using our example it can easily take those 30-120 days for a dollar to in effect flow through your company.

Again… it’s ‘ timing’!When you look at your balance sheet you see that the ratios of current assets and liabilities have also changed dramatically. You’re unfortunately less liquid and this can only be solved by financing the shortages you have carried. Of course your customer could pre pay you in advance for orders, or pay you ‘ cash on delivery ‘ but that’s not the perfect world we dream about.Financing business cash flow is all about monetizing and managing your assets.

Solutions in Canada include:

Receivable financing
Commercial bank lines of credit
Asset based lines of credit
Sale lease backs
Tax credit monetization
Purchase Order and Supply Chain financing

Utilize one or a combination of solutions to manage the ‘ patterns’ of financing that your business needs. Seek out and speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor who can assist your with putting together a solution that addresses the timing of cash flows and capital in your business.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No matter what the size of business and all the elements it deals in are, it is never quite easy to take care of all the aspects of a business. There can be challenges of all sizes that keep on bothering the business owner. There are several different impediments that keep on appearing in front of the business owner as potential troubles. Usually a successful business owner stands out among the rest because he usually takes care of all sorts of business innovation procedures that he might need to follow for the perfect solution to the problems arising at the time of running his business.

There are a few particular ideas pushing the business forward for a very steady and steep growth that ensure ultimate success to the owner. There are a number of different ideas for noticing a perfect growth of the business. The success can is materialized by people of very efficient and innovative brains. A fast and effective problem solution to a business problem is essential for a small business as there is no room for failure.

In most of the cases, small business require completing all required business processes within a stipulated short time with a very tight available budget. The promotion and marketing processes are two very big problems which a business with very limited resource often focuses on. Both the print and electronic media are quite expensive aspects for any sort of marketing process. Internet is indeed a very effective option for any business process. Internet is definitely an effective process for reaching out to a targeted group of audience for the business process. There can be numerous opportunities that are used as the best online advertising procedures. The business owner might need to select one business that suites that particular business process. Any good business innovation center in Canada can assure you of effective solutions that work well for any kind of business.

There are a number of different small businesses that engage many employees for completing their tasks. It is useless having too many employees recruited to the company for doing certain kinds of jobs if their efficiency level is not up to the mark. So, work cannot be done effectively within a very short period of time. Having too many inefficient people n board can be very detrimental to the business system.

It is always quite important employing the most trustworthy and quite efficient employees for making sure that money spent in the process of offering salary to all the employees can be valued perfectly. That is why, any business owner or the managing group of the business require becoming extra careful for the process of recruiting all employees of the organization. The process might seem to be too difficult, which can only be resolved by a business innovation centre in Canada that can help in planning for the recruitment process of the eligible candidates. The growth of the business always depends on the right decisions made regarding this.

Rickey is associated with the business Process Logix for many years now. He is a passionate writer too. His articles focus on the work process of internal Auditor Training in Canada

Government business financing in Canada – While many entrepreneurs have heard of Canadian govt loans they have not fully understood his business finance offering. Let’s ‘ unbox ‘ the program and discuss the merits and applicability of this loan to your business – and that applies to start ups, franchises… in fact any business tha is under the pre-requisite 5 Million in revenues. Let’s dig in

Established by the federal gov’t many years ago the Small Business Financing program is dedicated to helping new , young, and growing businesses access the financing they might otherwise not receive.

The uniqueness of loan is that the majority of the loan is ‘ guaranteed’ to Canadian banks which offer the financing. At the end of the day it’s the govt commitment to encourage Canadian banks to lend to new and smaller businesses. Naturally one of he benefits to the government is the overall economic stimulus in employment, taxes, etc.

In recent years upwards of 7000++ businesses access the loan annually – for billions of dollars. The accessibility of the loan is augmented by the fact that Canadian ‘ bricks and mortar’ branches are on every main street in Canada. (Truth be told the challenge is not finding the right bank, it’s finding the right banker).

The ability to get approved for a govt small business loan in Canada provides realistic access to capital for businesses who otherwise cannot qualify for ‘ traditional ‘ loans. Yet the actual offering of the program is just that – a traditional term loan at attractive rates, great amortizations, and even the ability to pre-pay without penalty.

Many businesses who utilize the loan are either new, or in some cases purchases of businesses, including the very popular ‘ franchise ‘ segment.

The requirements of the loan are pretty basic – the owner must have reasonable good personal credit history, and must be able to contribute a minimum of 10% or more of permanent capital to the financing in question. The loan can only be used to finance 3 separate asset categories – equipment, leasehold improvements, and real estate. (The latter, real estate is rarely used in our experience as commercial mtges are more suited to this type of finance need).

As important to understand what the loan does to is what it doesn’t offer. You cannot use proceeds to refinance existing loans or for working capital/line of credit needs.

Other key aspects of getting approved include a good business plan, a cash flow forecast, and basic info on your business location, previous business experience, etc.

If you’re looking to ‘ unbox ‘ government business financing in Canada seek out and speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor who can assist in making Canadian govt loans a realistic part of your new or existing business venture.

Stan Prokop