With Ingredient Declarations in SAP Business One, you can build product specifications based on a product’s recipe or formulation. If the composition changes, you can also have the corresponding ingredients, components, allergens, nutritional values, and other product data recalculated. This ensures that recipes, product specifications, and labels remain consistent with one another.

This functionality isn’t just relevant for food companies. Manufacturers in the chemical, cosmetics, animal feed, dietary supplement, and life sciences industries also work with raw materials and composite products. The data they need to record varies by industry, but the underlying question is the same: how do you ensure that product information matches what is actually being produced?

Within SAP Business One, this additional functionality is provided by the integrated ProcessForce add-on.

Why Separate Product Specifications Can Quickly Lead to Problems

A change to a recipe or formulation often affects multiple departments. When you replace a raw material, adjust a percentage, or add a new ingredient, the information on product specifications, safety documentation, customer documents, and labels may also change.

Is this information tracked in spreadsheets, separate documents, and various software systems? If so, the same change must be processed in multiple places. As a result, the production department may already be working with the new recipe, while sales, quality control, or logistics are still using an older product specification.

With SAP Business One, you can manage recipes, raw materials, inventory, production, and product information all within the same environment. The current recipe thus serves as the basis for the information you use internally and share externally.

What information can you include in an Ingredient Declaration?

The term “Ingredient Declaration” primarily brings to mind the list of ingredients on a food label. However, the functionality has a broader range of applications. In the chemical industry, for example, it can refer to the composition and classification of raw materials. Cosmetics manufacturers use INCI names, while food manufacturers must record allergens and nutritional information.

Depending on the product and industry, you can work with, among other things: ingredients, raw materials, and subcomponents; their order and percentages; allergens; nutritional values; alternative names; classifications; codes; certifications; origin data; and product claims.

This information is recorded for the raw materials and recipes on which the final declaration is based. As a result, you do not need to re-enter the data for each finished product.

Compound raw materials are also included

A raw material is not always a single, distinct ingredient or component. Manufacturers often work with premixes, concentrates, intermediate products, base mixtures, or semi-finished products, which themselves consist of various components.

SAP Business One can track the structure of a recipe across multiple levels. This allows the underlying components of a semi-finished product to be included in the product specification of the finished product.

Consider, for example, a food manufacturer that uses a spice blend. The components of this blend may also need to be included in the final ingredient list. In the chemical industry, a base mixture may contain various substances that must be listed in the end product’s specifications.

You can also calculate each ingredient’s contribution to the total product. This allows you to list ingredients or raw materials in the correct order and include percentages when necessary.

Product specifications that update automatically based on the recipe

The data that is calculated depends on your system configuration and your industry. A food manufacturer can calculate nutritional values per 100 grams or per serving. For allergen management, you specify for each raw material which allergens are present or may be present. You can read more about this in “Keep Allergens Under Control with SAP Business One.”

In other industries, however, the focus may be on the ratio of raw materials, alternative product names, classifications, or customer-specific product information.

When a recipe changes, you can rebuild the corresponding declaration. This does not mean that every change must appear immediately on a label or document without being reviewed. The responsible employee can first review and approve the new calculation. This allows you to combine automated processing with review by quality assurance, product development, or regulatory affairs.

The reliability of the results depends on the data you enter. If information about raw materials is incomplete or outdated, this will affect the final product specification. Effective master data management therefore remains a key component of the system setup.

A Single Data Source for Production, Specifications, and Labels

The data from an Ingredient Declaration can be used for product specifications, customer documents, and labels. When combined with label management software, the required fields can be placed directly on the label from within SAP Business One.

This is particularly useful for manufacturing companies with many product variants, customer-specific configurations, private labels, or multilingual packaging. The data is managed centrally, while you can present it in various ways.

Ingredient Declarations also integrate with other parts of the production process. For example, with Batch Management in SAP Business One, you can track which batches of raw materials were used in a specific production batch. This allows you to record not only the ingredients listed in the recipe but also the raw materials that were actually used.

For products with a limited shelf life, you can combine this with shelf-life management in SAP Business One. This ensures that product information, batch registration, and inventory management remain part of the same process.

Which manufacturing companies might find this useful?

Ingredient Declarations are ideal for manufacturing companies that work with recipes, formulations, or composite products. The added value increases when you manage a large number of raw materials, product variants, semi-finished goods, or customer-specific specifications.

For food manufacturers, the focus is often on ingredients, allergens, nutritional values, and labeling. In the chemical industry, the focus may be on raw material compositions, classifications, and technical product specifications. Cosmetics manufacturers, on the other hand, have to deal with INCI names and specific requirements regarding product information.

Although the industry varies, the process is similar: data is recorded at the source and carried through from the recipe to the final product. This prevents each department from having to maintain its own version of the product information.

Setting Up Ingredient Declarations in SAP Business One

A well-designed system doesn’t start with the final declaration or label. First, it must be clear how your organization manages raw materials, semi-finished products, recipes, formulations, and product data. It must also be determined who is authorized to modify, verify, and approve data.

Logres helps manufacturing companies set up SAP Business One for the process industry. In doing so, we focus on the interrelationships between recipe management, production, inventory, quality, batch registration, and product specifications.