How SAP Business One Can Get You From Quote To Cash, Faster

Regardless of the size of your business, having positive cash flow is essential and having a system in place to help your business get from quote to cash faster is vital.

Without regular and timely income, it can be difficult to pay for inventory, engage contractors or even secure new business opportunities. Unfortunately, there are many factors which can impact a business’ cash flow, like bad debts, delayed deliveries, a lack of payment options, plus having slow to pay or difficult clients. In many cases, poor cash flow also comes down to your own financial management and the degree to which you efficiently manage the ‘quote to cash’ process.

With SAP Business One, you have several built-in tools enabling you to take full control of your cash flow. Whether it’s helping you accurately record and report on orders, or giving your finance team the tools they need to chase outstanding debts, SAP Business One has a raft of tools and processes that can help businesses of any size keep cash flow on track.

Close more sales

When it comes to cash flow, perhaps the most important factor is ensuring your sales team are providing enough quotes and closing enough deals. SAP Business One allows you to track all sales opportunities and new business leads through the sales cycle, from the first initial contact, through to the job’s completion.

Your sales team can also store all critical customer data in one place by synchronising and managing customer contacts stored in Microsoft Outlook – ensuring all opportunities are followed up in a timely way. Plus, they can access the information they need via any internet-enabled mobile device; meaning they can respond to new sales opportunities or follow-up leads when they are out of the office.

Manage your orders (past, present and future)

To get paid on time, you want to be able to fulfil orders as fast as possible. This requires access to accurate information at all times for all confirmed orders, orders likely to be placed, as well as back-orders waiting to be fulfilled. By balancing and monitoring this information in real-time, you can stay on top of the order process and ensure you have sufficient inventory in place to fulfil orders as they come through. The faster an order can be processed and dispatched, the sooner you can get paid.

With SAP Business One, you can track exactly how much stock you have in your warehouse or distribution centre in real-time. You can also balance this information with goods receipts and upcoming orders, and receive accurate insights to determine how much to order to meet demand.

Control your inventory and purchasing processes

One of the most important ways to stay on top of your cash flow is to accurately manage your inventory and purchasing processes. Order too much, and you end up paying more than you need for storage, as well as placing a strain on your cash flow. Order too little, and you end up with delayed orders, which can lead to a delay in payment.

One of SAP Business One’s core strengths is its ability to help you control your inventory and purchasing at every step of the supply chain. This powerful solution helps you optimise your purchasing practices and control costs by managing the complete order-to-pay cycle, including receipts, invoices, returns, and payments.

Importantly, SAP Business One enables you to centralise your purchasing processes by giving you access to all information you need via a user-friendly interface. Simply log in from any internet-enabled device and view your account balance and purchasing information at any time. You can also see specific details of your purchases, including price lists and tax information.

Give your finance team the tools and detail they need

To help achieve consistent cash flow, your finance team require access to real-time, accurate information at their fingertips. In the past, many businesses in the manufacturing sector have invested in robust financial management solutions which unfortunately are used in a silo fashion, and don’t integrate with other core business systems.

The beauty of SAP Business One is its integration capability – with the ability to connect with existing legacy systems to provide whole-of-business insights.

For instance, SAP Business One enables you to streamline procurement processes such as requisition requests, purchase order and good receipts creation, and returns management. Plus, you can improve your inventory audits by matching documents, viewing information trails, and handling multiple currencies.

Your finance team can also easily and quickly process accounts payable invoices, cancellations, and credit memos with a purchase order reference; plan material needs; and schedule purchases accordingly.

Enable easy, fast debt collection

Staying on top of outstanding payments is a key way to stay on top of cash flow. While many businesses manage this manually – or via a specific financial management system – SAP Business One makes it incredibly easy and streamlined.

For instance, you can issue templated reminder letters to clients who are slow to pay and assign debt chasing tasks to particular team members – ensuring certain client accounts don’t get forgotten.

You can also automate the issuing of these reminder letters, as well as statements and SMS reminders to customers that their payment is overdue. SAP Business One also gives you the ability to automatically place customers’ orders on hold if their accounts are overdue.

Conclusion

SAP Business One is a fully integrated and flexible ERP solution capable of streamlining your operations “from quote to cash”. The system lets users manage orders, control inventory, collect debts, close more sales and a whole lot more, from one user-friendly interface.

Want to see SAP Business One in action? Contact us to schedule a demo here.

For more information on SAP Business One or to speak to one of our consultants call 1300 045 046 or email info@leveragetech.com.au today.