Can SAP Business One Support Catch Weight Management in the Food Industry?

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Food manufacturing and distribution companies frequently ask if enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions support catch weight management. For generic ERPs, the answer is “it depends.” For SAP Business One, the answer is a definitive “yes.”

What is Catch Weight?

‘Catch weight’ is a food industry term that means the approximate weight of a product and is used for managing products with variable weights. Catch weight products use two units of measure: an inventory unit and a catch weight unit. The inventory unit is the unit of measure by which the product is sold. The catch weight unit is the unit by which the item is weighed and invoiced.

When Does Catch Weight Matter?

Managing inventory like peanut butter is easy and fast. Whether a customer buys a jar of peanut butter or five cases doesn’t matter – there’s no change in the weight or price of the peanut butter.

However, some companies manage products with weight variability, such as blocks of cheese, cuts of meat, and bushels of produce. Usually, the cost of this type of item changes based on weight – the heavier it is, the more it costs. The difference may not seem significant, but slight changes in weight can quickly affect profits.

You can imagine the challenges this creates for food wholesalers and customers. A wholesaler may sell products by the case, but retailers often sell variable-weight products based on weight. Even if two cases hold the same item – mangoes, for example – one case could have bigger mangoes and weigh more (and vice versa). This affects the cost of goods sold as well as overall profits. And because consistency in size is nearly impossible, consistency in the calculation between buyer and seller is a must.

To deal with this industry concern, food distributors use catch weight for products with variable weights.

Can ERP Support Catch Weight?

Not every ERP solution has catch weight functionality, but SAP Business One’s integrated solution handles catch weight management for you.
Using SAP Business One and the Produmex integration, food, life sciences, chemicals, bulk raw materials, and similar industries can use a weight scale interface that allows you to track stock in two units of measure. The weight settings are easy to set up, and SAP Business One calculates them throughout your supply chain process.

The benefits of having catch weight management built into your ERP system are substantial:

• Automatic capture of weight data

• Management of dual units of measurement

• Automatic linking of weight data to goods receipts and deliveries

• Prevention of manual data entry errors

• Optimized use of materials and waste reduction

• Automatic linking of weight data to production orders and batches

• No loss of profits due to inconsistent measurements between seller and buyer

Nothing helps more than seeing something in action, so we put together a 15-minute step-by-step demo of how catch weight management is possible with SAP Business One. Using the example of ‘wheels of cheddar’ with two units of measure (piece and weight), Vision33 walks you through the process from receiving through shipping using the catch weight functionality in SAP Business One.