Getting Started with SAP Business One

There are two types of users in SAP Business One: superusers and normal (or end) users.​

Superusers have access to everything, therefore, they typically view the full menu. ​

End users are restricted to certain actions and menu items due to license type and authorizations. ​

Therefore, end users typically see a subset of the options tailored to their role.

We will look at some ways to tailor the cockpit and menu for users to make working in SAP Business One more efficient and enjoyable.​

• In SAP Business One, a company is represented as a database.
• When you log into SAP Business One, you choose the company to log into.
• Why would a small business have more than one company? Perhaps the company has two legal entities within their business, a situation that requires maintaining separate databases.
• Besides specifying the company, you enter a user and a password to log in.
• The next time you log in, you will be directed to the same company database. If you wish to log into a different one, choose Change Company in the login window.

• After you have logged in, the user name and company appear at the top center of the SAP Business One screen.

  Clicking it opens the Choose Company window directly for changing the user or switching the company.

• You can also access the Choose Company window from the Administration menu.

When you first log in to SAP Business One, your cockpit will likely be empty and the main menu will be hidden.

Along the top you will see a menu and toolbar.

Instructions in the center of the screen tell you how to add widgets to the cockpit. We will talk about that later.

Before we get to that, let's talk about basic navigation.

To open the main menu, you can use the icon on the top left of the screen. This icon allows you to toggle between opening and closing the menu.

You can hide the toolbar to increase your working area if needed.

When the menu is open, you can drill into each menu item. The highest level of the menu lists SAP Business One modules, from there you can drill into submenus and down into the transactions themselves.

Or you can use the menu search field to find menu items quickly.

For example, you could type "item master" to quickly find the Item Master Data transaction in the menu. As you type, the menu item is found. You can then click on the menu item to open it.

Additionally a menu bar displays at the top of the screen. The menu bar contains the Windows standard menu (File, Edit, Window, Help) as well as generic SAP Business One functions.

A row of toolbars displays under the menu bar. Each toolbar is a collection of icon buttons that grant you easy access to commonly-used functions. The functions represented by the buttons are also available in the menu bar.

Active functions for the selected form appear in colour, and inactive functions gray out.

This graphic shows only two of the toolbars available to you. You can choose which toolbars will be displayed or hidden. To hide or show a toolbar, right-click in the toolbar row and check or uncheck the appropriate toolbar.

You can choose whether to export Word and Excel files to a local folder or to use the SAP Business One Office 365 Integration feature.

The Office 365 Integration feature allows you to export documents, reports and queries to Microsoft OneDrive as Word or Excel files, and

view them online. You can also design your own export templates.

For more details refer to the user guide: How to Work with SAP Business One Office 365 Integration.

Online help can be accessed several ways. The Context Help icon is found on the right edge of the toolbar. This icon will give you context-sensitive help about the particular screen you are on. Another way to access context-sensitive help is to press the F1 key.

By highlighting a field and pressing Shift + F1, you can get Field Level Help.

The System Messages Log displays up to the last 50 system messages that appeared on the application window for the current user since the last login. The window displays errors, warnings or information messages. This pane appears at the bottom part of SAP Business One application, but you can close it, move it, and re size it as required, like any other application window.

A hyperlink to relevant help files may appear in the row. Click on it to read more detailed information about the message. When available, the system message will display an eight or nine digit unique identifier. You can use this ID as a search key in the online help.