We would like to put together a list of popular questions from prospects and customers. Andrew Karasev who is our SAP B1 technical consultant will try to answer them in this small paper. If your question is not listed feel free to call us or better email us. See coordinates below:

Q. We are small company and need reliable accounting software preferably on SQL platform. However we believe that SAP is rather for Fortune 500 and outside our ERP budget. Is it about right?
A. We heard this opinion multiple times especially when we call to prospects. SAP offers the whole spectrum of products and Business One is actually for small and midsize companies. Plus it is hosted in Microsoft SQL Server and scalable. You can initially purchase so-called Starter Pack with reduced price where functionality is restricted (for example you cannot program in SDK). And as you grow you can convert to regular one

Q. We acquired licenses five years ago from local consulting firm. They did initial basic implementation. However we now need some integration programming as well as minimal technical and functional support. Unfortunately our original VAR indicated that they are not interested to go onsite for small consultations. Also they do not carry Software Development Kit programmers in staff
A. This is common situation. Local resellers are good in generic sales cycle and basic implementation. We would recommend you technology consulting firm with Software Development Factory and Technical Support Call Center. There is no need to travel onsite as programming and support could be done via web sessions and remote connection to your server

Q. We are on outdated version 2005A and we know that it is no longer supported directly by SAP. Our reseller indicated that we have to either upgrade to 8.82 or if not then they are no longer interested in supporting us
A. We may also think that you do not have annual contract with SAP as you decided not to renew it. Consulting firm had to ask you sign release form so they do not have to pay annual contract on your behalf. We recommend you to appeal to nationwide consulting organization which has technical support call centers. Old version is supportable but support is limited. For example it might be difficult to move license server to new computer as license is coded against mother board MAC number

Q. We plan to find contractor who will be programming in SDK integration with external database. Our concern is about future version updates. Do you have any advice?
A. We would recommend you to have access to source code. Version upgrade requires code recompilation with possible revision as some method might become deprecated

Q. As we can judge you have offices in Chicago and Atlanta. We are in Indianapolis and we need programming work as well as version upgrade
A. Our specialization is secondary ERP consulting market where typical requests are related to software development or updates. We support even our local customer via web sessions. So we do not see the problem of being couple of hundred miles away

Q. We are multinational corporation with several facilities internationally in China, Brazil and Russia. But we are reasonably small and do not need upscale accounting software. Business One seems to be available here in the United States as well as in all the countries where we have subsidiaries. Our concern however is about additional third party module which we might need for specific country compliance
A. Understood. SB1 is available in Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Chinese user interfaces. There are nuances in each country. For example in Brazil you will likely need SPED (Public Digital Bookkeeping System) add-on. In Russian Federation it is often in use in tandem with 1C Bukhgalteria to cover complicated fiscal reporting. General recommendation however is to host all international companies on the server in your headquarters and open client interface via Citrix

Q. We are about to do data conversion from our old accounting to Business One. However we realized that it is very difficult if not close to impossible to export historical records from Great Plains Accounting 9.2 for DOS
A. GPA DOS is hosted in Btrieve database. It was acquired by Pervasive Software about ten years ago and rebranded as Pervasive SQL 2000. Data export could be done in Pervasive SQL Control Center. We recommend export with precise SQL Select statement where you only specifying required fields

Q. We need ongoing integration with external Sales application where we need automatic invoice feeding. Data Transfer Workbench seems to be too generic and not ready for ongoing integration. Our programmer indicates that he doesnt want to learn SDK but being SQL DBA he is ready to program Stored Procedures to do the job
A. In our opinion this approach is not optimal. Table structure is the basement for business logic and feeding data directly may compromise data integrity. We recommend you to revisit DTW. Please read about scheduled integration and probably ODBC data sources

Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, [email protected] We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, Atlanta Georgia, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA and Canada nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). We are working on Brazilian ERP consulting market in Sao Paulo since 2004