SAP Business One Interview Questions and Answers

SAP Business One (or SAP B1) is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software platform specifically intended for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). SAP Business One was designed with the idea that smaller companies need ERP software to help manage their business, but not the kind of ERP that large and complex organizations need. It has functional modules for finance, customer relationship management (CRM), warehousing and production management, purchasing and procurement, and reporting and analytics. It provides managers with access to critical real-time data, enabling you to make quicker, better decisions to help grow your business.

SAP Business One software is created specifically for small and midsized businesses. It’s a single, powerful application that can help you better manage practically every aspect of your daily operations. It’s affordable, easy to use, and quick to implement. SAP, a world leader in business management software for over 30 years, has performed more than 30,000 SAP Business One installations worldwide. Some important points of SAP Business one are

• It is very easy to use and learn
• It is affordable for SMEs
• It is designed for small and mid-sized businesses
• It is not a restricted or ‘cut-down’ version of SAP ERP.
• Its provides fully integrated functionality across all your business functions
• It is from the world leader in business applications
• It gives you a fast return on your investment
• It grows with your business
• SAP Business One is Global
• SAP Business One’s future development is assured

SAP Business One some Features are:

• Accounting and financial management
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Supply chain and warehouse management
• Manufacturing Production management
• Purchasing and procurement
• Reporting and analytics
• Integration solutions

SAP Business One offers extensive customizability options. The SAP Business One Software Development Kit (SDK) provides programming interfaces, sample code, documentation, and a variety of utilities enabling customization of program functionality.

SAP Business One Event Logger is a tool provided by SAP for keeping the track of events. Both SAP Business One and event logger should be executed simultaneously. Event logger will give you detailed list of events that fired while operating SAP. Event logger is very useful tool while developing add-ons in SDK.Coding can be done as per the events that are shown in event logger. For developing robust applications in SAP Business One SDK, event logger is useful tool since entire programming in SAP Business One SDK is event driven.

• Accounting
• Bank Transactions
• Business Partner Management
• Receivables Management
• Payables Management
• Sales and Distribution
• Purchasing
• Reporting
• Production
• Fixed Assets
• Material Requirements Planning
• Outlook Integration
• Service Management
• Sales Opportunity Management
• Stock and Warehouse Management
• Client Relationship Management (CRM)
• Human Resources Management

SAP Business One’s software provides many benefits including:

• A single application, SAP Business One is an exhaustive business management solution which takes care of your business’ diverse functions such as finance, sales, purchasing, manufacturing, inventory control, and human resources, among others.
• Enterprise Search: Find any data instantly. Enter an invoice number and the system will show you where it appears in any transactions
• Industry specific solutions: SAP Business One has the largest ecosystem of 3rd party providers that have built solutions in their open and extensible architecture to cover nearly any industry in any country. No solution comes close to the vastness of this well tested, certified and regulated community.  Focus on your business and save time
• Clear, instantaneous insights & alerts: create up-to-the minute dashboards and business critical alerts
• Personalized/ Customer relationships: improve your employees’ productivity with a role-based user experience, built-in learning, analytics and collaboration. When different people assist you customers but know all the past conversations, emails and business transactions that took place, your customers feel like you care about them
• Support multi-currency transactions: multi-currency transaction and report capabilities
• Increase your bottom line: When a system is integrated across modules, including ones that many competitors expect you to bolt another solution on for, such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) it reduces redundant data entry, complex or manual reporting to combine data, errors and delays.

The Value 0 (Zero) is returned when any method of a DI API object executes successfully.

The following are the different types of Data Sources:

Data Tables

DB Data Sources

User Data Sources

DTW (Data Transfer Workbench) is one of the most popular content in the context of SAP Business One. Whenever we talk about ERP Usage in an organization, that organization must have some legacy system from which they would like to import their initial data; or might be they are introducing a new web portal and need to export data from ERP. This import and export of data seems easy to hear, but it’s incredibly complex and difficult if not done properly.

Company object represents SAP Business One database. It is used to establish a connection to a Microsoft SQL Server database.

The different parts of DI API are

COM Interface: The COM Interface provides the interface to the add-on application.

DI Core: The DI Core, which is the main component of the DI API, performs all the data logic operations.

Data manager: The Data Manager stores temporary object data, converts object data to internal data formats, retrieves data from the database, and controls the database transactions.

Schema Generator: The Schema Generator creates XML schemas based on object interface descriptions. The schema generator also creates object validation lists.

SAP Business One is implemented as a two-layer architecture. The system is based on a Microsoft SQL Server database where data is stored centrally. The business logic is mostly processed on the client software (fat client).

Account Payable: Accounts Payable (AP) is recorded in the AP sub-ledger when an invoice is approved for transactions where the company must pay money to vendors for the purchase services or goods. Accounts payable are amounts a company owes because it purchased goods or services on credit from a supplier or vendor. (Payable always a liability) Accounts payable will decrease a company’s cash is affect in a Business. Causes this Transaction: It purchasing goods on credit.

Accounts Receivable: Accounts Receivable (AR) records any money that a company is owed because of the sale of their goods or services. On the company’s balance sheet, accounts payables are recorded as liabilities while receivables are recorded as assets. Accounts receivable are amounts a company has a right to collect because it sold goods or services on credit to a customer. (Receivable always an asset) Accounts receivable will increase a company’s cash. Causes this Transaction: It selling goods on credit.

Transfer rules: It is mapping the fields in the data source to the info objects in Info source or target fields. It help you to distinguish which all fields in the data source are required in the info objects in the Info source.

Update rules: Update rules to update something. Here it revolves around a source (info source) and a target (data target). Update rules are used to update the data targets. You have to create update rules if you supply a data target from an Info-Source with flexible update.

The Material Requirements Planning (MRP) module enables you to plan material requirements for a manufacturing or procurement process based on the re-evaluation of existing inventories, demands, and supplies on changing planning parameters (such as lead time determination, make or buy decisions, and holiday planning).MRP calculates gross requirements for the highest bill of materials (BoM) level, based on existing inventory, sales orders, purchase orders, production orders, forecasts, and so on. It calculates gross requirements at the lowest BOM levels by carrying down net parent demands through the BOM structure. Dependent levels might have their own requirements, based on sales orders and forecasts. The MRP run also takes into account predefined planning rules such as Order Multiple, Order Interval, Minimum Order Quantity, Inventory Level, and so on.

Matrix: matrix is the historical item of SAP B1. (You see in marketing documents where you enter positions). It is very good for data editing

•  It is robust, can be managed fully (validations, data editing etc.).
• Column visibility and edit purposes can be managed by Form Settings
•  Use this 80%, especially when save data into the database (UDO, UDT, UDF, ETC).
• Effective for Udo’s
• Filled automatically by SAP b1 when your navigate

Grid: Grid is a newer object in SAP B1, is it very good for visualization (you see in MRP Wizard, expand / Hide)

•  It is Very fast, can be loaded from data table
• It can be hierarchical (expanding / Grouping/ etc.).
• You can load the data using a SQL Query.
• You cannot modify udo data (just for viewing) – can’t link to UDO

DBDataSource is used for storing data from database. DBDataSource is linked to database table and it represents tabular data. DBDataSource is used by all system forms. You can get DBDataSource as follows – Here I have assumed that I have opened the form of Sales Order and I want to get the database details of the sales order. The table name is ORDR. Dim objDS as

SAPbouiCOM.DBDataSourceobjDS=                 SBO_Application.Forms.ActiveForm.DataSources.DBDataSources.Item (“ORDR”)

Screen painter is used for developing form in SAP Business One SDK. Screen painter is provided as add-on by SAP and it can be used to designing and developing forms. The files created by screen painter has srf extension and these files should be renamed to xml for deploying then in SAP Business One.

BubbleEvent specifies whether the event will be processed by SAP Business One or not. If BubbleEvent=True, then SAP Business One will process the event else the execution will terminate

In SAP Business One, DI Server is DCOM service that runs on the SAP Business One server and accepts XML data packed in SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

The Data Interface API (DI API) is part of the SAP Business One Software Development Kit (SDK). The DI API contains objects and methods that enable developers to read, write, update, and remove data objects on the database level.

With the DI API, business partners can: Link their existing solutions “as-is” to SAP Business One, Extend the functionality of SAP Business One for missing industry-specific functionality, and Adapt the functionality of SAP Business One to fit their customers’ needs.

• Articles
• Blogs
• Tools
• Code Samples

If we remove Event Filters, then the all the events will fire. While programming in SDK, the unnecessary events should be neglected since it will decline the performance of the application. When Event Filter is applied to the SAPbouiCOM.Application object, then the events will fire as per the requirement of the user and thus enhancing the performance of the application.

SAP Business One Event Logger is a tool provided by SAP for keeping the track of events. Both SAP Business One and event logger should be executed simultaneously. Event logger will give you detailed list of events that fired while operating SAP. Event logger is very useful tool while developing add-ons in SDK.Coding can be done as per the events that are shown in event logger. For developing robust applications in SAP Business One SDK, event logger is useful tool since entire programming in SAP Business One SDK is event driven.

Interop.SAPbouiCOM.dll and Interop.SAPbobsCOM.dll are the two dll’s used in SAP Business One SDK. Interop.SAPbouiCOM.dll is used for accessing the user controls that are displayed over the form. Different controls such as label, combo box, matrix etc. can be accessed using Interop.SAPbouiCOM.dll. Interop.SAPbobsCOM.dll is used for accessing objects that are used in SAP. For eg, item object can be accessed as, Dim objItem As SAPbobsCOM.Items

Administration Module: Configuration is performed here.

Financials Module: Various accounting & financial activities are conducted here.

Sales Opportunities Module: Here existing customers and potential accounts are structured and tracked.

Sales Module: Here orders are entered, shipped and invoiced.

Purchasing Module: Here purchase orders are issued and goods received into inventory.

Business Partners Module: Business Partners (customers, vendors, and leads) are contacted and maintained here.

Banking Module: Here cash is received and paid out.

Inventory Module: Inventory is valued and managed here.

Production Module: Here bill of materials is defined and manufacturing is tracked.

MRP Module: Here purchase and production planning takes place.

Service Module: After-service products are managed here.

Human Resources Module: Here employee information is kept.

Reports Module: System-default and user-defined reports are generated from here.