ERP for wholesale: stock, order picking and the web shop in one system
SAP Business One brings purchasing, warehouse, sales, business partners and finance together in one database. As a merchandise management system for wholesale it holds stock, prices and customer data in one place – rather than in spreadsheets alongside the system.
For warehouse processes with scanners, Produmex is added; for over-the-counter sales, SAP Customer Checkout. Your web shop exchanges item, customer and order data with the ERP automatically – and you maintain it in one place only.
SAP Business One in wholesale
SAP Business One is an ERP solution for midsize companies. It brings finance, purchasing and procurement, sales, business partner management, inventory management and stock control, banking, service and reporting together in one system. For a trading company that means an item has one master record, a customer has one history and stock has one value – and all three are available to every department in the same version.
For wholesale, init consulting AG recommends SAP Business One in combination with Produmex for warehouse management, order picking, shipping and barcode scanning and – where goods are also sold over the counter – with SAP Customer Checkout as the point-of-sale solution.
Whether one or both extensions make sense is decided by actual need. A trader with two bin locations and picking by word of mouth does not need a warehouse management system. A trader with 15,000 items, batch tracking and scanners at goods receipt certainly does.
- Core system
- SAP Business One
- Warehouse and logistics
- Produmex
- Branch and counter sales
- SAP Customer Checkout
- Documents and incoming invoices
- B1ECM with ELO
- Database
- SAP HANA or Microsoft SQL Server
- Deployment
- cloud or on-premise
- Access
- Windows client and web client
- Typical company size
- 5 to 250 users
- Published wholesale references
- EuroSand, HEGGEN, KLW, LKE, Schmitz-Mertens
- Partner status
- SAP Gold Partner since 2006
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How one trader rebuilt the way it works
Cetex Rheinfaser GmbH talks in the video about introducing SAP Business One with init consulting AG. The video is in German.
- The company Cetex Rheinfaser (from 0:38)
- What they needed from an ERP system (from 1:11)
- SAP Business One in practice (from 1:37)
- How the implementation ran (from 2:04)
- What improved (from 2:21)
Four points where wholesale regularly gets stuck
These patterns come up again and again in first meetings with wholesalers. They are not evidence that your business works this way – but they are a good place to check.
Stock in the system and stock on the shelf are two different numbers
Goods receipts are posted late, picking errors only surface at the customer, stocktaking differences are written off instead of explained. Purchasing then plans against figures it does not trust itself – and puts too much in the warehouse to be safe.
Item data is maintained in several places
Prices in the ERP, descriptions in the shop, availability in a spreadsheet, customer terms in the head of a sales rep. Every change has to be repeated in several places. Whatever is forgotten is noticed either by the customer or by nobody.
Margin only becomes visible afterwards
Purchase prices, freight, duties, discount scales and cash discounts sit in different systems or spreadsheets. What an order actually earned can only be said at the month-end close – too late for a pricing decision in a live conversation.
Being able to answer depends on particular people
Where is the delivery, what did this customer last order, why is this invoice still open? If the answer depends on who happens to be in the building, that is not a staffing problem but a data problem.
The industry solution for wholesale: one core system, two extensions
The recommended bundle for wholesale and retail consists of SAP Business One, Produmex and SAP Customer Checkout. It is a guideline, not a fixed-price package. The actual cut is set by your main process, your bottleneck and your number of users.
SAP Business One
The core system – part of every project
- Sales: quotation, order, delivery and invoice as one continuous document chain
- Purchasing and procurement, including purchase order handling
- Business partner management with contact history and customer sales reports
- Inventory management and stock control
- CRM and sales management
- Finance, fixed assets, bank statement processing, banking
- Service and customer care
- Reporting and analysis
Database either SAP HANA or Microsoft SQL Server. Run in the cloud or on your own premises.
Produmex
When the warehouse is the bottleneck
- Warehouse management for SAP Business One
- Warehouse management with a bin location structure
- Order picking
- Shipping processes
- Barcode scanning at goods receipt, at withdrawal and at goods issue
Worth it as soon as postings should happen at the rack rather than at a desk. With two bin locations and picking by word of mouth the effort does not pay off.
SAP Customer Checkout
When goods are also sold over the counter
- Point-of-sale solution
- Branch management
- Integration with SAP Business One
Relevant for wholesalers with a cash-and-carry outlet, a factory shop or their own points of sale. Pure drop-shipping does not need it.
Documents and incoming invoices: B1ECM
A lot of paper arrives in wholesale: delivery notes, freight papers, incoming invoices, test certificates. B1ECM is the in-house development of init consulting AG that connects SAP Business One with ELO Digital Office: documents are filed automatically out of SAP Business One, indexed and matched by barcode. The B1ECM Invoice module covers digital incoming invoice processing with workflows and approvals.
What wholesale covers with it day to day
The areas below are part of the feature scope of SAP Business One. Which of them is actually configured in your project follows from your processes – not every business needs every module.
Sales and order processing
Quotation, order, delivery and invoice are created as one connected document chain. Every document knows which predecessor it came from – and that is the basis of any answer about order status.
Purchasing and procurement
Purchase orders, goods receipts and incoming invoices run in the same system as sales. Supplier master data with terms and order history sits centrally rather than in folders.
Inventory management and stock control
Stock, movements and valuations are held in the system, not next to it. With Produmex, bin locations, order picking and barcode scanning are added.
Business partners and CRM
Contact details, contact history, customer sales reports, open items and payment behaviour sit in one place. Whoever answers the phone can give an answer, even when the responsible colleague is on holiday.
Finance and banking
Financial accounting, fixed assets, bank statement processing and payments are part of the same system. The month-end close draws its figures from the documents, not from a delivery of data.
Reporting and analysis
Reports read the data directly. For print layouts of quotations, invoices and delivery notes the Coresuite Layout Designer is available in addition.
Service and customer care
Service orders and customer care cases are managed with a link to the item sold and to the business partner – relevant wherever wholesale and after-sales belong together.
Web shop connection
Product, customer and order data is exchanged automatically between SAP Business One and the web shop. You maintain it in the ERP; the shop displays it.
Electronic invoicing
Structured invoice formats such as XRechnung and ZUGFeRD can be handled with SAP Business One and B1ECM. The deadlines are set out below.
The web shop fetches the data – you maintain it once
Anyone selling online while running an ERP maintains everything twice without a connection. The web shop solution from init consulting AG exchanges three data streams automatically between SAP Business One and the shop.
Product data
Description, item number, prices, stock and custom fields are maintained in SAP Business One and transferred to the shop. Values that change often – prices and availability – are fetched by the shop from merchandise management as they stand.
Customer data
When a customer signs up in the shop, they are created as a business partner in SAP Business One in real time. If they later change their address, the shop passes on the new details. Customer data changed in the ERP can be transferred to the shop in the same way.
Order data
Orders go to SAP Business One in real time, and the order number is created there. It goes straight back to the shop and appears in the order confirmation. The order status is maintained in the ERP and passed back to the shop.
Electronic invoicing: the duty to receive applies, the duty to send is coming
Wholesalers with high document volumes meet this sooner than most. What matters is the order – there are three stages, not one.
| From | What applies | To whom |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January 2025 | Duty to receive structured B2B invoices (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD) | all companies based in Germany |
| 1 July 2027 | Duty to send | companies with more than €800,000 turnover in the previous year |
| 1 January 2028 | Duty to send | all companies in Germany without exception |
A PDF or image file is not an electronic invoice. The legal basis is the Wachstumschancengesetz, the German growth opportunities act. More on electronic invoicing
How an implementation project runs with us
init consulting accompanies the project from the requirements review until well past go-live – consulting, implementation, training, hosting, maintenance and support all come from one house.
Requirements review
We establish the main process, the bottleneck and the number of users. Only then is it clear whether the standard is enough or whether Produmex, SAP Customer Checkout or B1ECM are added. Nothing is piled on as a matter of principle.
Concept and quotation
Processes are recorded and mapped onto SAP Business One. You receive a quotation covering licences, implementation effort and running costs. The choice between cloud and on-premise is made here.
Configuration and data migration
Company database, master data, document flows, authorisations and print layouts are set up. Item, customer and supplier masters and open items are migrated from the legacy system.
Training and testing
Your users work with real documents in a test company. Training takes place at our head office in Kösching or remotely – as a fundamentals bootcamp or on specific subjects such as logistics, financial accounting and CRM.
Go-live and ongoing operation
After going live we remain your point of contact: ticket-based support, a telephone hotline, remote access, patch management and version upgrades.
Published projects from wholesale
The reports below are published on our German website and are in German. They are agreed with the companies concerned – what follows is only what can be read there.
EuroSand GmbH – from an Access system to an end-to-end ERP
This specialist supplier of decorative scatter products previously ran its processes on an Access database and Excel spreadsheets. The solution had been adapted again and again over the years but reached its limits as the company grew: there was no meaningful reporting and no end-to-end view of the individual processes.
Management then compared products from several vendors. What tipped the decision towards SAP Business One included the reporting and the options in customer management. Customer data, contact history and sales reports – last order, open items, payment behaviour – have been held centrally through the CRM functionality ever since, which has noticeably improved the ability to answer questions in service.
What this solution does not do
We would rather answer these points here than in the first meeting.
SAP Business One is not a web shop
The shop remains a system of its own. SAP Business One supplies it with data and takes the orders – it does not replace it. Shop design, search engine optimisation and payment providers are not part of it either.
Produmex and SAP Customer Checkout are additional products
They are not part of the SAP Business One standard, they carry their own licence and implementation costs, and they are only added where the need supports them.
Not a substitute for shop-floor control
SAP Business One includes production and material requirements planning. Anyone in trade who also assembles or manufactures and needs more depth will not get by with it – beas Manufacturing is the separate extension for that.
An implementation is not a software update
Processes are recorded, master data is cleaned up, users are trained. A considerable part of that effort sits with you. Underestimating it is what pushes a go-live back.
Terms used on this page
- ERP
- Enterprise resource planning. A system in which a company's core business processes are run on one shared set of data – in trade above all purchasing, warehouse, sales and finance.
- Merchandise management
- The part of the system that follows the path of the goods: procurement, stock control, order picking and sales, together with the associated documents.
- Warehouse management system (WMS)
- An extension that controls warehouse operations down to the individual bin location and triggers postings where the goods are moved – usually by scanner. In the bundle described here that is Produmex.
- Order picking
- Assembling the items of an order from stock, for shipping or collection.
- Business partner
- In SAP Business One, the shared master record for customers, suppliers and prospects. Contact details, history, terms and open items all hang off it.
- Point of sale (POS)
- The place where a sale is concluded directly – a cash-and-carry outlet, a factory shop or a branch. SAP Customer Checkout is the matching till solution.
- Electronic invoice
- An invoice in a structured, machine-readable format such as XRechnung or ZUGFeRD. A PDF file does not meet that requirement.
What wholesalers want to know before deciding
Is SAP Business One not oversized for a midsize wholesaler?
SAP Business One is SAP's solution for midsize companies, not its corporate product. Customers of init consulting AG typically run between 5 and 250 users. Whether the system fits you is decided not by company size alone but by how many processes currently run alongside the system.
What does SAP Business One cost?
There are two models: cloud as a running fee per user per month, or on-premise as a one-off licence per user. On top of that come implementation effort, training and ongoing maintenance. A dependable figure only emerges after the requirements review – user numbers, licence type and the scope of extensions determine it. The page Prices and costs sets out the cost factors, and the project cost calculator produces a first estimate.
Do I need Produmex, or is standard inventory management enough?
SAP Business One manages stock, movements and valuations as standard. Produmex is added when bin locations are to be managed, picking routes controlled and postings triggered by scanner at the rack. With a manageable warehouse structure and picking by word of mouth, the standard is usually enough. We settle that in the requirements review, before licence costs arise.
Can we keep using our existing web shop?
That depends on the shop system and the interfaces available. The web shop solution offered by init consulting AG exchanges product, customer and order data with SAP Business One automatically. Whether and how your existing shop can be connected is something we check case by case – a blanket promise here would not be serious.
Cloud or on-premise – which makes more sense for a trader?
Both are possible, including hosting operated by us. In favour of the cloud: predictable running costs and no server operation of your own. In favour of on-premise: existing infrastructure and internal requirements on where data is held. More on the page Cloud ERP.
How long does an implementation take?
There is no blanket answer. The duration depends on the number of users, the state of your master data, the number of interfaces and how much time your departments can put in alongside day-to-day business. We give a dependable answer only after the process review – anything earlier would be guesswork.
Can our data be migrated from the legacy system?
Item, customer and supplier masters and open items are usually migrated. How cleanly that works depends on the state of the legacy data. In our experience a data migration is also the right moment to get rid of dead records and duplicate item numbers.
We have a cash-and-carry outlet. Does the till come along?
Yes. SAP Customer Checkout is the point-of-sale solution and is integrated with SAP Business One. For pure drop-shipping with no outlet it is not required.
What does mandatory electronic invoicing mean for us in practice?
Since 1 January 2025 all companies based in Germany must be able to receive structured B2B invoices. The duty to send follows on 1 July 2027 for companies with more than €800,000 turnover in the previous year, and on 1 January 2028 for everyone else. A PDF file is not an electronic invoice. We implement this with SAP Business One and B1ECM – details on the page Electronic invoicing.
Who looks after us after go-live?
The same team that ran the implementation. init consulting AG offers ticket-based support, a telephone hotline and remote access, as well as ongoing maintenance, patch management and version upgrades. To support
Let us talk about your warehouse – not about software
Bring a typical customer order, your last stocktaking difference and the list of places where item data is maintained today. After that you will know what SAP Business One covers as standard and where additional effort arises in your business.
Direct contact
- Phone
- +49 8456 2 78 04-0
- Head office
- Ruppertswies 14
85092 Kösching, Germany - Offices
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