SAP B1 blog

This article has a current successor: SAP Business One Help 2020

The SAP Business One Manual in detail

"Manual" is a somewhat misleading term in the context of SAP B1 Help. Anyone imagining a printed book here is mistaken. The user help for SAP Business One users is published exclusively in HTML format. The SAP Business One online help is available for several different versions. The higher-level access is via the SAP Help Portal.
For the current version SAP Business One 9.2 you find the direct access to the manual here.

The following areas are covered in the SAP Business One Help:

1. Introduction
2. administration
3. finance
4. opportunities
5. sale
6. Purchasing
7. Business partner
8. bank processing
9. warehouse management
10. resources
11. production
12. Material Requirements Planning
13. service
14. staff
15. Report selection

The contents of the SAP B1 Manual cover both database versions of SAP Business One: MS SQL and SAPHANA. If there is deviating information for one or the other technology platform, this is explicitly pointed out. Of course, all content is searchable and interlinked.

Typical ERP or application manuals usually concentrate very much on the functions of the software. Background, process and context are sometimes neglected. This is where supplementary literature can help. For SAP Business One there is also a lot that can make a good contribution to learning and understanding this business application.

The "quick" SAP Business One manual

A somewhat different approach is taken by the unfortunately only in English published "SAP Business One To Go". Published in PDF format, the 263-page manual is a kind of quick guide to getting started with SAP Business One. Anyone who wants to get a quick overview is in good hands here.

Reference book no.1 - more than a SAP Business One manual

A kind of standard work on SAP Business One is "Das Praxishandbuch für Einsteiger und Anwender" by Robert Mayerhofer. This is actually something different from an SAP Business One manual.
The handling of SAP B1 is presented in process instructions. All topics are supported with examples. To support the learning process, readers are guided through a number of exercises. The book is almost up to date and covers the SAP Business One 9.2 version. The book is available in a hardback version but also as an e-book, which is very helpful as it allows you to search through the content, just like in the SAP B1 manual.

Now in its fourth edition, "Der Mayerhofer" has become the standard work on SAP Business One and is recommended to every ambitious SAP B1 user.

That 731-page book published by Rheinwerk Verlag. (ISBN 978-3-8362-4061-1)

SAP Business One Reference Book No.2 - the English Manual

The English-language companion to "SAP Business One - Das Praxishandbuch für Einsteiger und Anwender" is "SAP Business One: Business User Guide" by six authors (Carl Britton Lewis, Andres Castrillon, Derin Hildebrandt, Ryan Howe, Keith Taylor, Bertrand Tougas). The 688-page reference work is therefore not a translation of the "Mayerhofer" but approaches the topic independently in terms of didactics and content. In contrast to the German pedant, this reference book for SAP Business One also deals with production control.

The book is also available in various e-book formats.
For those who can deal with the English language and the corresponding technical terms, it is definitely recommended.

That The 688-page book is published by Rheinwerk Verlag. published. (ISBN 978-1-4932-1499-0)

 

SAP Business One Reference Book No. 3 - Questions about questions

The "SAP Business One Complete Self-Assessment Guide" is very new on the market and only available from Amazon USA. The book is intended to help the ambitious SAP Business One user to implement the ERP independently. It is basically about analysing all conceivable prerequisites that are necessary for a successful implementation of SAP Business One.
According to the author, it helps with the important steps of an SAP Business One implementation:

• the diagnosis of SAP Business One projects, organisations, companies and processes
• Implement best practice strategies that are in line with the overall objectives.
• customise and implement the current version of SAP B1

The book contains 371 questions that are intended to put a team on the "right path" when implementing SAP Business One

Special : Crystal Reports for SAP Business One

For the ambitious SAP Business One user or SAP B1 administrator, SAP Crystal Reports for SAP Business One is recommended. The report design and report management tool supplied as standard with SAP Midmarket ERP is examined in detail here. Among other things, topics such as

• Crystal Reports Integration in SAP Business One
• SAP Business One Master Layout Concept
• Use of multilingual print documents in Crystal Reports
• Creation of own dunning documents in Crystal Reports
• Use of SAP Business One tokens in RPT reports
• Transfer of PLD documents to Crystal Reports

The book is also available as a Kindl version on Amazon.

Even more special: SAP Lumira with SAP Business One

An even more specialised topic is addressed in the specialist book "SAP Lumira with SAP Business One". It describes the possibilities of the SAP tool for visualising data in connection with SAP B1. In addition to an introduction to the SAP cloud tool Lumira, after reading the book you will know how to integrate various data sources, how data is processed for evaluation, how visualisations can be created and how they can be published.

The reference book is also available from Amazon

And if you still have questions...

Despite this wealth of material, it is unfortunately not guaranteed that all questions that an SAP Business One user may have will be answered.
But then there's also us 😉