SAP Business One features Blanket Agreements
SAP Business One constantly provides many welcomed features and enhancements including Microsoft Excel Entry of serial batch numbers and Advanced GL determination with user-defined fields to name a few.
Originally introduced in SAP Business One version 8.82, blanket agreements are used to manage long-term business transactions with customers and allow users to maintain relevant information for each party involved. Blanket agreement enhancements in SAP Business One are available in several areas throughout the application including sales and purchasing.
Better Control, Flexibility, and Productivity
Among the many new enhancements made to the blanket agreements from SAP Business One version 9.3 onwards are functions that make the capability more flexible including the ability to:
- Determine exchange rates
- Update the plan after creation
- Add ‘committed’ and ‘ordered’ on details tab
- Control deviations from the plan
- Control payment method and terms
- Start date edit until linked documents
- Option to auto assign blanket agreement
- Manage customer/vendor reference No.
- Display doc status in document tab
- Manage a Project code in blanket agreement
Before looking at some of these new blanket agreement enhancements, here’s a refresher on setting up, and adding a blanket agreement in SAP Business One.
Set-Up for the Blanket Agreement's New Enhancements
Before making use of the new enhancements to the blanket agreement in SAP Business One version 9.3, there are a few settings that must first be enabled. These settings are primarily located in two areas.
The first area is in Administration > System Initialisation > General Settings then under the BP tab. Here users will find the line item, ‘Blanket Agreement.’ Users will need to ensure that the checkbox options are selected including 'Allow Multiple Blanket Agreements for Same Period,' and 'Enable Updating Unit Price/Planned Quantity/Planned Amount in Blanket Agreement with Linked Documents.'
The second area users will find blanket agreement settings is under Administration > system initialization > Document Settings. The ‘Blanket Agreement’ line shows two check-boxes: 'Block Multiple Blanket Agreements for Same A/P Document' and 'Block Multiple Blanket Agreements for Same A/R Document.' From an administrative perspective, it is important that users familiarise themselves with these settings, and indeed all other settings found here, to obtain the maximum benefit from SAP Business One.
Adding a Blanket Agreement
Under 'Sales – AR > Sales Blanket Agreement,' users will find the new enhancements. Clicking on the 'Sales Blanket Agreement' will prompt a new form where it is possible to draft a new sales blanket agreement. As per usual, it is possible to specify things like start and end date, exchange rate, as well as tying the blanket agreement to a specific project. Users can also define if it is a general or specific agreement, specify the payment terms to be something different from what the customer pays otherwise, as well as set the shipping type.
Under the 'Details tab,' users can add the planned number of items and the unit price that the customer will pay for each unit. These parameters are conditional on the customer purchasing this number of units. Once the user clicks 'Add,' and sets the agreement status as ‘Approved,’ the blanket agreement will be created. If there already exists a blanket agreement in the system adding any more will first require that the settings are configured to allow for more than one blanket agreement at a time (see Set-Up for Blanket Agreement).
As previously mentioned, updates to a blanket agreement plan are now also possible following the initial creation of a blanket agreement rather than having to create a new one. By changing the status to 'On Hold,' user have the added flexibility to change parameters of the agreement such as the planned amount, unit price, or exchange rate if a customer wishes to renegotiate the terms of the agreement following its initial creation. Once updates are made users can then change the status back to ‘Approved’ and then by selecting ‘Copy to,’ copy the sales blanket agreement to a sales order. This same flexibility is now available for purchased blanket agreements as well for cases where the user wishes to set up an agreement with a supplier and track performance throughout the course of the year.
Benefits of the Blanket Agreement Enhancements for SAP Business One
In summary, blanket agreements have been considerably enhanced from SAP Business One version 9.3 release onwards with many user benefits including:
- Exchange rates can now be an agreed blanket agreement term.
- Increase flexibility and productivity; a user can update the blanket agreement terms instead of creating a new one.
- Easily track committed/ordered quantity/amount in blanket agreement which is not delivered yet.
- Better control over the purchasing process by blocking deviations from blanket agreements.
Come and discuss with the Cloud Factory team to see how we can help transform the future of your business systems with SAP Business One and the very latest release!
Call 1-800-155-999 for more detail or book our workshop by clicking below.
