Streamline Your Sales Documents with the Document Generation Wizard in SAP Business One

Mass processing has become a vital aspect of modern business processes, especially when it comes to invoicing. Instead of individually generating invoices, businesses now prefer mass processing to save time and reduce manual errors. Enter SAP Business One‘s Document Generation Wizard, an innovative feature designed to optimize and help to streamline your sales documents and invoicing for your customers.

Streamline your sales documents and consolidate

Imagine the ease for customers who receive a single consolidated invoice for multiple orders, rather than being bombarded with multiple invoices for each purchase. This is the precise advantage offered by the Document Generation Wizard. It consolidates open sales orders or deliveries, making payments smoother and more convenient for customers. Of course, this is only for the customers that you wish to do this for, we understand there are customers of yours that will require some unique cases.

How Does It Work?

SAP Business One utilizes wizards, such as the Document Generation Wizard to streamline and simplify complex processes within its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It brings together the necessary data in SAP Business One and organizes it to provide you with a guided experience while minimizing errors and completing your daily tasks faster.

To start the streamline of your sales documents launch the Document Generation Wizard by navigating to Sales – A/R module and opening the Document Generation Wizard.

Step 1 – Select or Create Parameter Set to Streamline your sales Documents

When you run the Document Generation Wizard you can decide to establish a new parameter set if there is a new scenario that you need to create documents for or alternatively you can select an existing parameter set to save yourself time. We would suggest that you streamline your sales documents in a unique scenario to help keep your team organized. We will choose to run an existing parameter set to invoice all deliveries that were created today.

Step 2 – Document Type Selection

In this step you will define what documents you are creating and the attributes those documents should have.

1. Target Document
   • Select the type of sales document you want to streamline. You can create Sales Orders, Deliveries, Returns or AR Invoices depending on the scenario you are trying to accomplish.
2. Posting Date
   • Select the posting date that the new documents should be posted to.
3. Items vs Service Document
   • You can also choose if you want to create Item Type or Service Type documents and whether or not you want to summarize them onto the target document from the base document.
4. Exchange Rate
   • If the documents are foreign currency do you want the exchange rate to be pulled from the base document or do you want to use the current rate.

Step 3 – Base Documents

Use this window to define base documents that you want to process. Choose the appropriate document types and other selection criteria:

1. Doc Types
   • Select which base documents you want to create the target documents from that you selected in Step 2. The options in Step 3 are based on that target document selected in Step 2.
2. Posting Date
   • Select which dates of base documents you want to consider. We want to invoice deliveries that were posted today so we are choosing current posting date but you could select a range of dates.
3. Expanded Selection Criteria
   • You can select additional criteria here that is relevant to your business process. For example you may want to invoice customers who have a specific payment term on the same day their delivery leaves your warehouse or perhaps you have a user defined field on your document that identifies a specific criteria for your billing.

Step 4 – Consolidation Options

You can decide whether you want a single base document to create one target or if multiple base documents should be merged into one target document. There are various options for consolidation:

Step 5 – Customers

Select the customers who you want to perform this action for. Depending on your scenario and criteria you have selected in Steps 1-4 you may only want to apply it to customers of certain groups or properties.

Step 6 – Messages and Alerts

The wizard provides options for scenarios where data might be missing, such as exchange rates, alerts for credit limit deviations or low inventory levels. You can either skip to the next document, customer or ask for confirmation before proceeding.

Step 7 – Save & Execute Options

The last step before document creations you have a few options:

1. Execute – Create the documents but don’t save the parameter set
2. Save Parameter Set and Execute – Create the Documents and save the parameter set for future use
3. Save Parameter Set and Exist – Do not create documents and save the parameter set for future use

If you choose to save the parameter set give it a name and description.

Step 8 – Summary Report

Upon completion, you receive a summary of all the newly generated documents. You also have the option to save these as drafts, allowing a review before finalization.
In our example we can see A/R Invoice No. 801 consolidated 2 deliveries 2805 and 2806.

Before you streamline your sales documents…

Given the Document Generation Wizard‘s capacity to refine sales documentation process creation, it’s crucial to approach this tool with caution. These documents often have a significant accounting and inventory impacts, making reversals challenging. Refining Sales Documentation Process

Important Reminder ! If you are going to run a particularly large or unique scenario for the first time ensure you’ve backed up your database before executing a mass document generation. If things don’t go as planned, restoring the database is more manageable than reversing multiple entries manually.

Talk to our experts for help

The Document Generation Wizard is a remarkably powerful tool to streamline your sales documents and offering exciting possibilities to enhance your business processes. To fully harness its capabilities, it’s beneficial to gain a comprehensive understanding of its features. We recommend working alongside ca implementation partner or engaging in extensive testing within a controlled environment to make the most of this innovative tool.

Embrace the advantages of automation and mass processing with the Document Generation Wizard, a fantastic asset for your business. It’s an opportunity to apply the wisdom of the adage, “With great power comes great responsibility.” By doing so, you’ll be well-prepared to utilize its powerful features effectively and responsibly.

Want to learn more about why SAP Business One is the best ERP for small and medium enterprises? Reach out to us directly by logging a ticket or contacting us now!