😩 Tired of Too Many UDFs in SAP B1?
Here’s How to Manage Them Easily
Are you feeling overwhelmed by too many User-Defined Fields (UDFs) in your SAP Business One forms?
Whether you’re new to SAP B1 or have some experience but still unsure how to handle UDFs properly — you’re in the right place!
Stay with me — I’ll walk you through the step-by-step process to understand, manage, and organize UDFs effectively.
📌 What Are UDFs in SAP B1, and Why Do We Use Them?
User-Defined Fields (UDFs) are custom fields created in SAP Business One when the standard forms and built-in functions don’t fully meet specific business requirements.
Before creating a UDF, it’s important to:
Analyze your need carefully
Confirm that your requirement cannot be fulfilled using existing fields or features
💡 Important:
Creating UDFs involves technical and logical understanding of SAP B1. It’s not recommended for end users to create UDFs without proper knowledge or guidance. Always involve your SAP consultant or administrator.
📄 UDFs in Marketing Documents
In this guide, we are focusing on UDFs in Marketing Documents, such as:
Sales Orders
Purchase Orders
Deliveries
A/R & A/P Invoices
Goods Receipt/Issue
Returns, and more
Although they’re called “Marketing Documents”, this doesn’t refer to marketing in the advertising sense — rather, these documents are part of the sales, purchasing, and inventory transaction cycles.
🧠 Note: When you create a UDF for a marketing document, it automatically appears in all related documents — even if it was only needed for one form like a Sales Order. Standard behavior of SAP B1.
😕 The Problem: Too Many UDFs, Unsorted and Confusing
You might open a document like a Sales Order and see dozens of UDFs — many of which are irrelevant to your task. Often, they’re:
Not in the right order
Unclear in purpose
Taking up unnecessary space
This can be frustrating, especially if you only need a few fields for your workflow.
✅ The Solution: How to Organize and Filter UDFs
If you have the authorization, you can organize it yourself.
Here’s how:
Open a marketing document — for example, a Sales Order.
Go to > top menu bar > click on “View”, then select “User-Defined Fields”.
You can also use the shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + U
The User-Defined Fields (UDFs) will appear on either the right or left side, depending on your layout settings.
To organize or sort your UDFs by category:
Go to the “Tools” menu
Select “Customization Tools” → then “Settings”
A small window will appear
In that window, locate the “Field Column” for Category
Enter or assign a value like “Sales Order”, “Sales”, or any category you prefer for each UDF
Now return to your Sales Order form.
At the top of the UDF section, click the “All Categories” dropdown.
Select the category you defined (e.g., Sales Order), and you’ll see the UDFs sorted and filtered accordingly.
Go ahead and take a look at the video I shared.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal experience as an SAP Business One Consultant and are intended for informational purposes only. They do not represent SAP SE or any official SAP documentation. Always consult your SAP partner or certified professional before making any business or technical decisions. Information provided is accurate to the best of my knowledge at the time of writing and may change with future updates to SAP B1. Use any scripts or examples provided at your own risk. Always test in a development test environment before applying to live/production systems.