[ILUG] OpenERP demo server

[Colin Rooney]

Yes, it is a java enterprise based application so might be heavier ok.
 Out of the box it comes with JBoss Application Server but it can be
configured to run on just Tomcat.

Originally it was a swing UI app and the web UI is a new addition.
Some people prefer the swing, some the UI - I think it nice to have
the choice and both look pretty much the same.  The system is based on
something we call the Application Dictionary.  In it you define the
tables & columns, windows, tabs & fields; when I change a definition
in the Application Dictionary both my UI will change automatically.
So they are two views of the same thing.

re: project management
It is there.  I don't rate the module much but the basics are there.
And Sales/Purchases can be attributed projects/tasks as can issues
from inventory.  Pretty basic stuff though nothing fancy at all.

re: CRM
CRM as in the Sales Force Automation sense isn't great I agree but
there is an Australian company (Adaxa)  involved with the project that
has done some work in this area, including integrating Adempiere with
Asterix.  With pop screens and extending the Application Dictionary to
define field types as telephone numbers so that when a field of this
type appears on screen a little phone icon appears - clicking calls
the number.  That is not in trunk as yet but eventually it will be.
The current version has a rudimentary functionality called Requests
that allows for the tracking of different types of customer requests
(or requests from any party related to the business really).  It's
basic but does include routing of the request based on rules as well
as escalation when timelines are not met.

re: Adempiere appears to be not as powerful as openERP from what I see
Ok, well I too had a quick look at openERP and again after a quick
look so perhaps I am missing something fundamental ... but it still
seems to be broad but shallow in terms of functionality.
By that I mean... well perhaps I could ask about some functionality
Adempiere has.

Let's start with sales...
I see in the sale menu the product & a price.
What if I sell to whole & retail and so have different prices does it
handle that? What about the same product in different currencies?
Simply using exchange rates is not sufficient as other costs can be
different too so the price in the two area might bear little
relevance.  Can I generate prices? Say markup all products of a
specific category or/or from a specific supplier by 43% and round that
to the closest .99?
What if I got an letter from my supplier and they will change their
prices in two months - so I will change mine in two months.  Can I
prepare these changes (in the purchase & multiple sale price lists) so
that on the date in question the new prices will be applied to sales &
purchases?
On the topic what options do I have for product costing? Standard,
Average, Lifo, Fifo? (I think Fifo might not be allowed here!)
How are the costs of sales determined? does it use the perpetual
inventory approach common in large organizations?
That question reminds me about stock valuations... and hence physical
stock counts.  I assume it can do a simple stock count but what about
a Cycle Stock Count?
Can I indicate on the sales that sales (or all sales to this customer
for that matter) should only be shipped when the whole order is ready?
Can I define limits under which an item cannot be sold? or only when
approved by the supervisor of the user entering the Sales Order?
I assume I can ship to one address and invoice another - but can I
invoice another customer?  i.e. sell good to a subsidiary but invoice
their HQ which might be a different company!
Can I apply volume discounts to a product?
What about a promotional items? buy 2 of x and a 1 Y free!
Can I generate a PO from a sales directly or generate consolidated
purchase orders that will combine the needs of all sales (as well as
possible warehouse replenishment rules) to generated 1 PO per
supplier?
Is there any dunning functionality?  And related to that can I
automatically modify a customer terms as their lack of payment is
escalated?
Can I log expenses? can I allocate them to a customer/project? can I
generate, if required, invoices a customer to be reimbursed for these?

I'm just touching the top of the iceberg here with regards to
Adempiere - but these are examples of things that when I briefly (and
I stress that) looked at openERP before I didn't see.

re: FrontAccounting
Interesting that is a new project for me - when I was recommending
something simple (without accounting) previously I usually point
towards vTigerCRM

Anyway, good luck with the localization project.  I don't know python
so can't help but I'll keep on eye on it :)

Cheers

Colin

On 28 September 2011 11:32, Bernhard Rohrer <graylion at sm-wg.net> wrote:
>  OK, I had a look at the live demo of Adempiere and it appears to be not as powerful as openERP from what I see. The interface is actually somewhat less cryptic, but I am missing project management and a lot of functionality in the CRM, but these are the areas that i of it but all the basics are there.


On 28 September 2011 11:32, Bernhard Rohrer <graylion at sm-wg.net> wrote:
>  OK, I had a look at the live demo of Adempiere and it appears to be not as powerful as openERP from what I see. The interface is actually somewhat less cryptic, but I am missing project management and a lot of functionality in the CRM, but these are the areas that i
On 28 September 2011 11:32, Bernhard Rohrer <graylion at sm-wg.net> wrote:
>  OK, I had a look at the live demo of Adempiere and it appears to be not as powerful as openERP from what I see. The interface is actually somewhat less cryptic, but I am missing project management and a lot of functionality in the CRM, but these are the areas that i have looked at most in OpenERP.
>
> As for migration, yes OpenERP SA will sell you scripts, but there are also community scripts available.
>
> cheers
>
> Bernhard
>
> ----------------original message-----------------
> From: "Bernhard Rohrer" graylion at sm-wg.net
> To: "Colin Rooney" colin.rooney at gmail.com , ilug at linux.ie
> Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:53:44 +0100
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
>> Interesting :)
>>
>> Now OpenERP is certainly not for the smallest companies any more - you can use it,
>> but if you are a 3 employee shop and intend to stay that way FrontAccounting is
>> probably better for you.
>>
>> I'll admit that I never had a closer look at Adempiere, but given that it is based on
>> Compiere and hence java it does not strike me as lightweight.
>>
>> OpenERP has the multilanguage UI and can defo do up to serious mid-size business.
>> It just got selected by Danone for some of their smaller companies where SAP would
>> be overkill. What I like about OpenERP is that it has bucketloads of extensions
>> and is lightweight and written in python.
>>
>> My reasoning for Ireland is that we can probably cover every Irish company with
>> openERP. And let's face it, a slick UI is important in order to sell the product,
>> especially to small companies. As are lots of contributions for specific uses. I
>> had a short glance at the Apache project but no further. Will remedy that for both
>> products.
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Bernhard
>>
>> PS: This discussion is certainly staying interesting ! :o)
>>
>> ----------------original message-----------------
>> From: "Colin Rooney" colin.rooney at gmail.com
>> To: ilug at linux.ie
>> Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:13:04 +0100
>> -------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>>> Unless someone advises us otherwise, can we proceed on the basis that
>>>> OpenERP is "as good as it gets" - compared to other "Cloud" systems...
>>>> Eg, Xero, KashFlow, FrontAccounting, FreeAgent/Iris Openbooks,
>>>> GNUCash,
>>>> xTuple, LedgerSMB, TurboCash, SQL-Ledger, SageOne, PostBooks,
>>>> OpenBravo,
>>>> Adempiere, WebERP, GnuAccounting - to name but a few ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>> Firstly let me say I was one of the founders of Adempiere so I am bound
>>> to be biased!
>>>
>>> But I like to think I am always open minded so I've always kept an eye
>>> on what the other open ERP projects do. Now, admittedly, it's been a
>>> while since I looked in detail at openERP but the last time I did I
>>> found its list of functionality broad but shallow in comparison to
>>> Adempiere.
>>>
>>> I also remember a discussion of Adempiere Vs. OpenERP, years ago, in the
>>> Adempiere forums and one of the points that came out were there were
>>> 100s of plugins for OpenERP but on close inspection many "plugins" were
>>> adding additional fields... something that takes a couple of minutes in
>>> adempiere and is managed via an Administration UI.
>>>
>>> But I admit that their UI is a lot slicker... now the Adempiere UI is
>>> easily translated and this ability is one of the reason behind the
>>> simplicty. When I say translated, one installation could be used in
>>> multiple languages at the same time... a German using a German UI and an
>>> Irish with a English UI for example. There is also a mechanism to have
>>> the data translated, and documents can be translated and they are
>>> printed in the language defined for the person who the document is sent
>>> to. So it's not just the UI that is translated.
>>>
>>> Another reason is the Adempiere UI is dynamic, depending on your user,
>>> role, the function you are doing or just other field value entered, the
>>> UI can change to add and/or remove fields.
>>>
>>> Now none of that is important to a small or micro businesses in Ireland
>>> [unless you wanted to make like easy for foreign staff perhaps :)] I
>>> know, but was just explaining the reasoning.
>>>
>>> Of course the slick UI of openERP has come from a lot of investment from
>>> the company behind openERP. Adempiere is purely community driven so the
>>> big, costly, advances are slower to be contributed. They do happen though.
>>>
>>> Now, Adempiere was forked from Compiere, in 2006, another commercial
>>> open source project which has now been sold and is gone!
>>>
>>> One of the techniques Compiere used to raise revenue was it charged for
>>> migration. I'm sure we're all aware that in open source it's important
>>> be able to keep up to date but frequent updating of your core ERP system
>>> is not the norm. It touches so many aspects of a business that once
>>> installed & working people try to touch it as little of possible - less
>>> risk!
>>> But, as anybody who uses open source will know and in particular open
>>> source with a public internet face - security issues means you must
>>> continuously keep up to date.
>>>
>>> Adempiere releases LTS versions and patches are retrofitted to those for
>>> a number of years. And if and when you do decide to migrate it is free!
>>> What is the migration policy for openERP? I think it was like the
>>> Compiere model the last time I looked, i.e. you must buy a support
>>> package to get access to migration scripts.
>>>
>>> Now I know Adempiere is not perfect - but at least it belongs to
>>> everyone and not to a "for now" benign company. I think we've seen a few
>>> examples of the risks this poses in the FLOSS world in recent years.
>>>
>>> Now to muddy the waters even more and say if I couldn't use Adempiere
>>> (and sometimes even when I could) I would lean towards the Apache Open
>>> for Business [OfBiz] project. Again completely open with zero risk of
>>> it becoming closed. The Apache license might even suit some over the
>>> GPL of Admepiere. Adempiere has great a functional design - but OfBiz's
>>> technical design is superb, if somewhat complicated at first glance.
>>> When I consider this project is probably 10 years old the design has
>>> stood the test of time and its SOA like architecture proved to be way
>>> ahead of everyone else - if e-commerce was an important aspect of an ERP
>>> implementation I would be leaning strongly in this direction.
>>>
>>> So I say, look closely at the functionality of openERP & Adempiere...
>>> and in particular at the depth of the actual functionality as opposed to a;
>>> Sales Check,
>>> Purchases Check,
>>> Accounting Check,
>>> type of comparison.
>>> I would be surprised if the openERP could do all Adempiere can. It's
>>> all in the details!
>>>
>>> Mind you if the target were very small companies then perhaps openERP
>>> provides all that is required and anything more complicated is a
>>> hindrance rather than an advantage!?
>>>
>>> Finally, I've said here before I know Admepiere pretty much inside out
>>> (though I've, sadly, not done much work with it in over a year at this
>>> stage) and I know the technical aspects of OfBiz well too - so if anyone
>>> is interested in knowing more I would gladly share what I know to do my
>>> bit to help promote more these truly open projects here in Ireland.
>>>
>>>
>>> Colin
>>>
>>>
>>> On 19/09/11 16:34, Michael Kennedy wrote:
>>>> On 19/09/2011 13:23, Bernhard Rohrer wrote:
>>>>> actually I would do all my accounting in OpenERP, since it allows
>>>>> for cost accounting and project based accounting and cash flow
>>>>> forecasts and a lot of other things that I really really want.
>>>>
>>>> Super...
>>>>
>>>> Unless someone advises us otherwise, can we proceed on the basis that
>>>> OpenERP is "as good as it gets" - compared to other "Cloud" systems...
>>>> Eg, Xero, KashFlow, FrontAccounting, FreeAgent/Iris Openbooks,
>>>> GNUCash,
>>>> xTuple, LedgerSMB, TurboCash, SQL-Ledger, SageOne, PostBooks,
>>>> OpenBravo,
>>>> Adempiere, WebERP, GnuAccounting - to name but a few ;-)
>>>>
>>>> Eg, does OpenERP handle all our basic VAT needs - perhaps with add-ins...
>>>>
>>>>> _but_ we also need a way to dump all that info so the accountant can
>>>>> properly massage it and present it to revenue
>>>>
>>>> Technically, that should be simple...
>>>>
>>>> 1. We need a mechanism to get at the data in OpenERP. It's very likely
>>>> that OpenERP has "export" facilities - which allow the user to dump all
>>>> the requested data from the OpenERP DB into some standard format, such
>>>> as CSV, Excel, etc. If not, I expect the DB structures inside OpenERP
>>>> are "standard" (I've not checked - perhaps MySQL, PostGreSQL, etc) - in
>>>> which case it should still be easy to extract whatever we need... If
>>>> neither option is available, then, in an emergency, we could
>>>> "reverse-engineer" the internal filing systems, but that's getting
>>>> serious!, and surely not necessary.
>>>>
>>>> 2. Then, we need to identify which "Accounting/Auditing" systems are
>>>> used by the Accountants, and what "Import" facilities are available -
>>>> perhaps CSV files; perhaps databases from "sister" bookkeeping
>>>> systems.
>>>>
>>>> 3. Finally, we'd need to re-jig the OpenERP data into the latter. That
>>>> should be a simple task, if both of the data-formats are well defined.
>>>> (I can certainly handle that aspect - if needed).
>>>>
>>>> M.
>>>>
>>>>> ----------------original message-----------------
>>>>> From: "Michael Kennedy" Info at kennedysoftware.ie
>>>>> To: "Harry Duncan" usr.src.linux at gmail.com
>>>>> CC: ilug at linux.ie
>>>>> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 11:58:38 +0100
>>>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> I worked on a project where we implemented the ROS XML schema's
>>>>>>> previously, for something like VAT it is simple and quick but
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> larger forms it is quite tedious eg corporation tax and income
>>>>>>> tax.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, your experience ties in exactly with what I would expect.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And, just on the VAT support, an important aspect would be the
>>>>>> internal
>>>>>> VAT features in the app (rather than the extracts for Revenue). Eg,
>>>>>> how
>>>>>> to handle changes in VAT-rates, support for the Cash-Accounting
>>>>>> schemes,
>>>>>> support for exempt customers or suppliers, exported
>>>>>> goods/services, etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I would question though the value in having a completely
>>>>>>> integrated
>>>>>>> solution, I've been doing a demo test of openerp for a business
>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>> the goal is not to provide a full integrated accounts system but
>>>>>>> rather to use OpenERP for supply chain through to sales and as a
>>>>>>> sales
>>>>>>> support tool, dump invoice lists out of openerp for the
>>>>>>> accountant
>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>> import into their book keeping to handle all the tax compliance
>>>>>>> stuff.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There are distinct advantages from a revenue audit
>>>>>>> perspective to
>>>>>>> not
>>>>>>> having a totally integrated solution/ Seems that it is an
>>>>>>> expectation
>>>>>>> of revenue that they can now take a complete dump of your
>>>>>>> accounts
>>>>>>> system to electronically analyse and they have put quite a bit
>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>> money into software for this purpose. If you run a fully
>>>>>>> integrated
>>>>>>> system you're a lamb to the slaughter and will be the largest
>>>>>>> repayer
>>>>>>> of bank bailouts for years to come, keep your accounting
>>>>>>> practices
>>>>>>> business unit focused and you're back to the playing court
>>>>>>> where
>>>>>>> you
>>>>>>> provide complete accounts and they do the footwork with a
>>>>>>> calculator
>>>>>>> in an audit.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Very good points, Harry. Thank you.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also, the Accountant probably already has Accounting systems
>>>>>> with
>>>>>> whatever features (s)he requires - auditing/accounting
>>>>>> features,
>>>>>> links
>>>>>> to ROS/CRO, etc, etc, (eg, Apex). In that case, the requirement
>>>>>> would
>>>>>> be
>>>>>> to automate the transfer of the data/transactions from OpenERP to
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> A/c system, rather than to have to manually re-key the data. That
>>>>>> should
>>>>>> be quite easy, technically:
>>>>>> - get the data out of OpenERP, perhaps in a CSV or "Excel" format
>>>>>> - re-hash that into the structures needed for the Import options of
>>>>>> the accounting systems.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Another colleague of mine who downloaded the OpenERP package
>>>>>>> later
>>>>>>> than me was contacted by a partner in Kerry. They clearly got the
>>>>>>> lead
>>>>>>> from the OpenERP guys, but aren't listed on the site yet.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I also did not notice any mentions of Irish agents, etc, in my
>>>>>> OpenERP
>>>>>> searches.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But, in case it's a whole waste of time, first we'd need to
>>>>>>>> ensure
>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>> there's no other similar FOSS "Cloud" system out there with
>>>>>>>> these
>>>>>>>> features
>>>>>>>> already implemented!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Not an issue. Everybody knows somebody who's had a hotmail /
>>>>>>> yahoo
>>>>>>> /
>>>>>>> gmail account hacked / hijacked. Translate that scenario to a
>>>>>>> cloud
>>>>>>> accounting solution. Until cloud solutions are based on
>>>>>>> strong
>>>>>>> token
>>>>>>> based authentication businesses would be mad to expose
>>>>>>> themselves to
>>>>>>> that degree.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Oooppss... I misled you - I was referring to the VAT features, etc,
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> OpenERP. I meant that we should try to check if someone had already
>>>>>> implemented the VAT stuff, ROS interfaces, etc, in OpenERP (but is
>>>>>> not
>>>>>> here on ILUG), or if these features are already in some other
>>>>>> FOSS/Cloud
>>>>>> systems similar to OpenERP.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> - Mike
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Irish Linux Users' Group mailing list
>>>>>> About this list : http://mail.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug
>>>>>> Who we are : http://www.linux.ie/
>>>>>> Where we are : http://www.linux.ie/map/
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> --
>>> Irish Linux Users' Group mailing list
>>> About this list : http://mail.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug
>>> Who we are : http://www.linux.ie/
>>> Where we are : http://www.linux.ie/map/
>>>
>>
>> --
>> -------------
>> Bernhard Rohrer Consulting
>> 529 Howth Road
>> Dublin 5, Ireland
>>
>> +353 87 7907 134
>>
>> --
>> Irish Linux Users' Group mailing list
>> About this list : http://mail.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug
>> Who we are : http://www.linux.ie/
>> Where we are : http://www.linux.ie/map/
>>
>
> --
> -------------
> Bernhard Rohrer Consulting
> 529 Howth Road
> Dublin 5, Ireland
>
> +353 87 7907 134
>
>