Business Central consultant in Portland for makers and shippers

Footwear and outdoor apparel on Business Central

Portland is a world center for athletic footwear and outdoor clothing. Around the famous names sit many smaller brands and their suppliers. A growing brand often sells through wholesale accounts and its own web store at once. That means two price structures, two order flows and one pool of stock.

For Portland brands, we set up customer price groups for wholesale. Then we link the web store through the Shopify connector and use item variants for sizes and colorways. Contract factories overseas run on purchase orders, prepayments and item charges for freight and duty. So you see the landed cost per style.

Oregon has no sales tax, but your customers' states do

Oregon does not charge a state sales tax, which keeps local selling simple. But Portland firms sometimes forget tax setup until they ship to Washington or California. Then they find they owe tax there. Business Central needs tax areas and tax groups in place before the first taxable invoice posts.

We set up a non-taxable area for Oregon customers and taxable areas for the other states you sell into. We also mark items and customers correctly. If you sell into many places, we help you weigh a connected tax service against keeping the rates up yourself in Business Central.

Electronics and equipment makers in the Silicon Forest

The suburbs west of Portland hold chip plants and the equipment, test and component firms that supply them. Smaller makers in that chain need multi-level bills of material and component swaps. They also need engineering changes that keep track of which revision shipped to which customer.

With the Premium license, Business Central offers production BOM versions, routing versions and planning. We set up version control on BOMs, serial tracking on finished units, and subcontracting for steps that outside shops do. For formal engineering change control, we compare add-ons with you and explain the trade-offs.

How our Business Central consultants work with Portland teams

Our Business Central team works from our office at 217 N Central Ave in Phoenix, Arizona. We are part of Sataware Technologies, headquartered in Woodbury, Minnesota, with a development team in India. Every workshop and training session is a video call with a shared screen, booked in Pacific time. Portland teams tend to be at ease with that, since many already run hybrid offices.

To keep remote work productive, we keep sessions short and focused on one process at a time, such as order to cash. After each session you get written notes and a list of decisions. Then we update the sandbox so your users can try the process themselves.

Craft brewers, roasters and the river port on Business Central

Portland's breweries, coffee roasters and food makers work in small batches. Assembly or production orders turn ingredients into finished goods with lot numbers attached. Expiration dates then support first-expired-first-out picking. Brewery needs such as excise reporting usually call for an industry add-on, and we help you compare them.

The Port of Portland, on the Columbia and Willamette rivers, moves vehicles, grain and bulk cargo. Importers nearby deal with foreign currency and customs costs. Business Central handles vendor currencies, exchange rate changes and item charges. We set these up so an importer sees the true cost per shipment.

Business Central in Portland: FAQ

Where is your Business Central team based?

Our team works from our office in Phoenix, Arizona, and we serve Portland companies by video call and shared screen. We schedule sessions in Pacific working hours. For an in-person meeting, contact us to arrange one.

Since Oregon has no sales tax, can we skip tax setup in Business Central?

Only if every customer is in Oregon. Once you ship to other states, you may owe tax there. So Business Central needs tax areas and groups. We set up a non-taxable Oregon area next to taxable ones. That way, the first out-of-state order posts with the right tax and no surprise later.

Can Business Central run a brewery or roastery?

It covers purchasing, inventory, batch production, lot tracking, sales and finance. But excise reporting, keg tracking and recipe tools for brewers are not standard. Because of that, many breweries add an industry solution. We help you judge whether you need one, and we show you how it fits with the core product.

Does Business Central work with Shopify?

Yes. Microsoft provides a Shopify connector inside Business Central. It syncs items, prices, stock levels, customers and orders. First, we set up the mappings. Then we test the order flow in a sandbox. Only after that do we connect your live store, so a mistake never reaches a real customer.

What is the first step with our Business Central consultants?

Contact us with a short note about your business and your current software. We then set up a video call to learn your processes. After that, we send a written outline of what a Business Central project would involve for you. You decide what happens next, and nothing starts without your say.

Related pages for Portland businesses

Portland projects tend to mix ecommerce, light manufacturing and import buying. The pages below cover those areas in more depth and show how our Business Central consultants work with Portland teams by screen share. The locations hub also lists the other cities we serve. For the product detail, see Microsoft's guide to manufacturing in Business Central.