Small businesses are not really small. They have a lot on their platter, especially if they are trading-focused. Since they are in a growth phase, each aspect of trading demands undivided attention. For instance, sales & purchase (core trading) is perhaps the most crucial aspect. If you look closely, trading directly affects the business as a whole. Without a steady stream of sales, an MSME can’t stay afloat. And, without an organised purchase and inventory management mechanism, it’s impossible to serve the customers optimally, resulting in lost sales. Big businesses gracefully manage this complex aspect of trading by deploying robust ERP solutions. However, most MSMEs can’t afford a full-blown ERP solution.
On top of that, most ERP solutions are too complex for a small business. SAP acknowledges this fact, which is why it offers an ERP solution that is tailor-made for trading businesses in the MSME category.
SAP Business One Starter Package Will Make Your Life As An Trader A Lot Easier
Entrepreneurship is a difficult journey, albeit a rewarding one. The first few years are extremely crucial. These initial years will decide if the MSME or startup can grow from micro to small, and then, small to medium. A small business focused on trading has to face countless challenges during the initial years.
When It Comes To Trading, Small Businesses Face Many Challenges:
- Cash flow is one of the biggest problems for a small business. “Where is the cash going?” “How many customers owe me money for more than 10 days?” “How much money do I owe to vendors?” These are some of the important financial aspects that a small business should have a bird’s eye view on. However, startups and small businesses do not always have the necessary bandwidth to comprehensively monitor these financial aspects or adhere to a fixed budget.
- Then there are the hassles related to Purchase. The head of a small business is already saddled with the uphill task of making the business grow. If he gets engaged in all the purchasing related work, the business development will take a backseat. Purchasing involves much nitty-gritty. From clerical works like creating invoices, requisitions and entering purchase data to the system to selecting the best vendor and negotiating with them – there are too many steps. Delegating the purchasing work comes with a separate set of challenges like dark purchasing, overspending, and lack of transparency, to name a few.
- Inventory management is one of the biggest reasons for MSME trading companies getting overwhelmed with confusion and loss of revenue. During their initial years, many MSMEs fail to create a proper inventory management system, which directly affects their success in trading. Over-ordering leads to cash flow problems, and under-ordering leads to sub-par customer service and delivery delays.
- Lastly, compliance can be a real headache for an MSME trading company. In the ever-changing tax scenario, calculating how much GST to pay can steal much of the productive hours.
Can SAP Business One Starter Package Address These Pain Points?
The answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’ SAP Business One Starter Package can solve all these trading problems an early-stage startup or an MSME faces. Here’s how –
Starter Package Provides An Integrated Platform Where Sales and Purchase Are Connected
The primary purpose of ERP is to stitch various aspects of a business together. SAP Business One Starter Package ensures a seamless trading experience for an MSME by bridging the gap between various departments. With this ERP tailored for startups and small businesses, you can create Item Master Data, which will be the building block of a unified sales and purchasing system. When you create a sales order, you just have to put the item number, and the invoice will be populated based on the information stored for that particular product. From unit price to tax rate – everything will be auto-populated
Benefits:
- Employees won’t waste their productivity filling up invoices.
- Since every piece of information is right in front of the screen, there will be zero back and forths between the Sales team and the Inventory team or the Purchase team.
Say Goodbye To Cash Flow Issues With SAP Business One Starter Package
As we said, the cash flow issue is one of the biggest challenges for a trading-focussed startup. With SAP Business One Starter Package, an MSME can have a bird’s eye view of cash flow. Just like Items Master Data, SAP Business One Starter Package lets you create Customer Master Data (or Business Partner Data). This master data is connected with the sales and accounts module. So when you sell a product to a customer, the system will generate an A/R invoice which will be reflected in the master data for that customer. If a customer partially pays the amount, the master data will deduct the payment from the A/R and reflect the remaining amount as ‘Balance Due.’
Benefits:
- Accounting becomes hassle-free for a small trading business even without huge manpower. SAP Business One Starter Package links all the invoices generated with the accounting module and ensures automated transaction data storage.
- You can create a Dashboard that shows A/R overdue, and for how many days they have remained overdue.
- Like the Business Partners Master Data, SAP Business One Starter Package lets you create vendor master data that keeps track of all the vendors who owe money to your small business. And you can create a dashboard out of this data as well. So both A/R and A/P are extremely easy to keep track of.
SAP Business One Starter Package Takes Care of Inventory Management
There are three ways in which the SAP Business One Starter Package comprehensively manages the inventory of a small trading business. First, like other modules, in SAP Business One Starter Package, the inventory module is beautifully connected with other modules. This means that you can easily see the inventory situation just by looking at the Item Master Data. Also, when an item gets delivered, the inventory value gets deducted accordingly – without any manual intervention.
The reverse happens in the case of a purchase from the vendor. Secondly, you can create a maximum and minimum stock threshold for each of the items. This is a great way to keep a check on over-ordering automatically and to avoid empty inventory situations. Thirdly, with SAP Business One Starter Package, you can delegate the responsibility of purchasing from the vendor to your employees without fearing Dark Purchasing or overspending. This ERP system lets you set the maximum number of units that one can purchase at one go.
Benefits:
- Automated inventory management. No need to manually keep track of the inventory situation.
- The days of over-ordering or under-ordering are over. Purchasing happens in sync with sales.
- You can delegate the responsibility of purchasing without the fear of unauthorised purchasing.
- You will also get alerts if the stock of an item reaches the threshold level fixed by the business.
Starter Package Is An ERP Platform That’s GST Ready
Small trading businesses can’t afford to spend too much time calculating GST. They need a system where sales and purchase take place with GST calculation happening out of the box. SAP Business One Starter Package comes with ready-to-use GST fields in the software. You can set up the GST rate for all the products in your Item Master Data. And when the time comes to generate a sales invoice, the system will automatically include GST with the total price.
Benefits:
- Easy compliance with the tax regime
- No wastage of time calculating GST on products
SAP Business One Starter Package Protects Your Business From Financial Shock With Budget Management
You can set up budgets for all your GL accounts and other aspects of your trading business with the SAP Business One Starter Package. For example, you can control the total amount to be spent as travel expenses. You can set up a budget for purchasing activities and GRPO and accounting.
Benefits:
- You know exactly how much money will be spent and on what in a specific month.
- Adhering to a tight budget makes sure that a startup stays afloat.
Compete With Large Competitors Confidently
With SAP Business One Starter Package, the trading part of your small business achieves a coherent construct – inside it operates. It ensures that even with relatively less manpower and fund constraints, an MSME can compete with large businesses. A startup is already agile. With SAP Business One Starter Package, it can smoothly carry out its trading activities. That’s why visionary MSME businesses have deployed this versatile cloud-based ERP. They are already in the growth phase, and when they outgrow this ERP, they can easily upgrade to the main version of SAP Business One. So business disruption is out of the question.
Join the bandwagon of visionary business owners. Implement SAP Business One Starter Package and stay ahead in trading
