Open Source ERP

1. Integrated ERP & CRM Solution
   Compiere’s ERP software gets the right information to the right people at the right time. This allows your company to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, helping ensure the success of your enterprise in a rapidly changing global marketplace. ERP solutions allow you to rapidly access the most current information with precisely the level of detail you need to make the right decisions for your company.
   
2. Open Source ERP & CRM Software
   Compiere is a Open Source ERP software application with fully integrated CRM software solutions. Compiere is a fully integrated business solution for small-to-medium enterprises worldwide. Compiere is based on business process rather then departmental boundaries. Hipergate is an open source web based application suite. It's mission is to cover a full range of technical requirements in any organization. All applications are addressed from a browser, without needing any other additional software in the client computer.
   
3. ERP5 Community
   ERP5 is a full featured high end Open Source / Libre Software solution published under GPL license and used for mission critial ERP / CRM / MRP / SCM / PDM applications by industrial organisations and government agencies.
   
4. Open-Source ERP Gains Users
   Jorg Janke did not set out to write open-source ERP software. But like many small startup application vendors, he found the traditional path to success blocked by sales and marketing costs. Janke says he has no idea how many companies are using the software, called Compiere. But for the part of his business that keeps him afloat—paid support contracts—the response rate so far is worse than what spam gets. Of more than 600,000 downloads of Compiere, 50 customers have signed support contracts. And those contracts start at $1,500 for 10 people per year—a pittance compared with the license fees charged by commercial ERP vendors, which charge anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of those fees per year for maintenance and support.
   
5. Open-Source ERP Makes Headway in U.S. Market
   An open-source business-application vendor is ramping up its U.S. partner push as it seeks small to midsized customers. Compiere plans to recruit 20 to 30 U.S. integrators and VARs this year. The company already has about 15 U.S. companies on its partner roster. Compiere provides its open-source enterprise-resource-planning/customer-relationship-management system free of charge. It offers presales consulting, implementation services, and support through its network of partners.
   
6. Open source ERP
   The goal of ERP isn't simply to provide a unified application interface for every aspect of a company's business process -- it also tries to include the inherent data-mining capabilities that go along with it. But while JD Edwards, Oracle (Profile, Products, Articles), SAP (Profile, Products, Articles), and others have invested significant resources in building ERP software that's customizable enough for any business, these companies have also forced the price of the software to heights many businesses just can't afford.
   
7. Open Source ERP Soultion
   If you are new to Open Source, you might be curious why Compiere would choose to release code for a software product without charging an expensive licensing fee like traditional ERP vendors do. Compiere does it because Open Source is great for our customers. It gives them reliable code driven by consumer demand and frees them from the hassles and expense of vendor lock-in.
   
8. Open source gaining traction in ERP market
   A growing number of companies are looking into the possibility of deploying mission-critical Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications on top of the open source Linux operating system, according to technology professionals and industry analysts. While ERP on Linux is still far from the norm, industry watchers say it is on the radar screen of technology decision makers eager to avoid vendor lock-in and reduce the overall cost of historically expensive ERP implementations.
   
9. Open Source ERP Gains Momentum
   The latest release, version 1.3, adds credit card processing, a new reporting tool, and integration with contract logistics providers such as UPS and Federal Express. Those new features are being added to OpenMFG's existing functionality, which includes MRP, inventory management, master scheduling, order management, capacity planning, accounts payable and receivable, part definition, and costing and general ledger. The faster new-release cycle is made possible in large part by OpenMFG's modified open source development model, said CEO Ned Lilly in an interview with Managing Automation.
   
10. Open-source ERP vendor Compiere gets $6 million funding
    The vendor makes the open-source integrated ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) Compiere software that can be used on-premise or can be hosted. In a different take on the traditional open-source model, the company focuses on developing and supporting the software, leaving product distribution to its 70-plus global partner network. There are currently about 240 paying Compiere customers, along with more than 1 million downloads of the open-source software.
    
11. Open Source ERP For SMEs
    In this article, I would like to review CK-ERP, an Open Source ERP/CRM system, ideally suited for use by SMEs. It has a total of 19 modules including accounting ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivables, Purchase Order, Sales Order, Quotation, Point of Sale, Human Resource, Payroll and contact management. It operates as modules running atop phpGroupWare. This makes it possible for the software to be easily installed on Internet if employees are in various locations or on the Intranet for more secure transactions.
    
12. Compatible Sequoia Open Source ERP Released
    Sequoia Open Source ERP, a PostgreSQL-compatible open source ERP suite, made its first stable release, v0.8.1. This release offers a full suite of eCommerce, Point Of Sales, Product Catalog, Customer, Order, Inventory and Warehouse, Manufacturing, and Content Management Applications. It has been tested in both Windows and Linux using MySQL 5.0.13RC and PostgreSQL 8.0.4.
    
13. The open source ERP alternative
    Compiere, in Italian, means to accomplish, fulfill, deliver. The seven-year old open source ERP, which provides integrated customer relationship management (CRM), partner relations management (PRM), supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and online analysis processing (OLAP) for free, may sound too good to be true.
    
14. The Case for Open-Source ERP
    To Chen, principal of Open Source Strategies Inc., a Los Angeles-based consulting firm, open source's flexibility lends itself to ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions. Open source puts ERP source code in the hands of companies, which can freely modify it to meet their specific needs. With ERP customization is close to inevitable. Chen pointed out that as many as 80 percent of ERP deployments in some market segments are custom-developed systems. And commercial ERP products from the likes of Oracle and SAP are rarely implemented without significant adaptation.
    
15. An Overview of OpenPro Web-based business applications
    Leading industry analysts consistently rate OpenPro Software eBusiness Applications first in vision, technology, functionality, and market share in every ERP category. OpenPro Software eBusiness Applications provide the only solution that allows organizations to manage, synchronize, and coordinate all customer touch points over the Web, in the call center, by field sales and service personnel, and through channel partners.
    
16. Openmfg Launches Hybrid Open Source ERP Suite
    OpenMFG LLC will launch this week a hybrid open source enterprise resource planning(ERP) suite. The developer says it has integrated credit card processing, financial reporting and integration with package delivery services. OpenMFG's ERP platform is built on Linux operating system, PostgreSQL database and OpenRPT report writer. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and commercial UNIX systems.
    
17. Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning ERP - Compiere
    The goal of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications is to provide a unified interface for business aspects such as accounting, inventory management, point-of-sale, inventory, logistics, and customer relationship management. Open source extends the value and protects your investment by giving you control over the destiny of your software and and preventing planned vendor obsolescence. If your ERP vendor is acquired, will you be forced into a migration? Compiere, an open source ERP, provides enterprise quality and stability, at an affordable price. Mandriva along with its partners, Audaxis and Possibility Forge, are bringing affordable, open source ERP to small and medium businesses.
    
18. Open Source Accounts and ERP Software
    Accounting Software was often one of the first pieces of application software purchased by any business or organisation. Often it was even the reason for first pc purchases. Strange then at times it appears not a popular area for open source. It may be understandable with the industry built around supporting accounts software currently that there are not too many solutions. But after further investigations there are actually some very interesting and exciting open source alternatives.
    
19. Open Source ERP Makes Inroads
    ERP systems based on open source technologies appear to be gaining momentum, judging by the success of Norfolk, Va.-based OpenMFG, which recently released the fourth upgrade of its product and announced plans to double the frequency of new releases. The four-year-old company has 40 customers, most of whom are small manufacturers. OpenMFG's CEO predicts its product will catch on with larger enterprises that are uncomfortable with the frantic pace of acquisitions in the ERP space. Having full access to source code is "an insurance policy" that will appeal to them, he says. OpenMFG's software is built atop the PostgreSQL database management system, the Linux operating environment and the Qt framework for C++ development environment.
    
20. ERP Opening To Open Source
    Most people familiar with ERP know of PeopleSoft, and its co-founder Dave Duffield. Probably far less know the name Michael Frappier of SQLFusion. They both want to make the stratospheric reaches of ERP more attainable for small to medium businesses. That looks like a possible future of ERP. If the likes of Duffield and Frappier can drive the construction of effective ERP solutions on the software-as-a-service model, and monetize them with implementation and support revenue, they could pose a challenge to the likes of the Microsoft Dynamics line. And maybe even Ellison's Oracle, too.

SME Open Source ERP

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software has traditionally been used by large corporations to integrate and automate diverse departments across the enterprise.
For a long time, smaller companies purchased individual accounting and payroll packages and then migrated to expensive ERP solutions as they grew. They did not have many options as ERP solutions were costlier and required magnitude and many employees to justify their use.
Now, with many Open Source software coming out, it is possible for SMEs to go in for ERPs at an earlier stage. There are several in the market including Compiere, ERP5 and Fisterra. Companies have to carefully study individual requirements and test out these softwares to determine suitability.
In this article, I would like to review CK-ERP, an Open Source ERP/CRM system, ideally suited for use by SMEs. It has a total of 19 modules including accounting ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivables, Purchase Order, Sales Order, Quotation, Point of Sale, Human Resource, Payroll and contact management. It operates as modules running atop phpGroupWare. This makes it possible for the software to be easily installed on Internet if employees are in various locations or on the Intranet for more secure transactions.
Here is a overview of its excellent features.
Customer Billing process
Any company with more than 10 recurring customers should seriously consider using an ERP (such as ck-ERP) to keep track of payments, work orders and related accounting. ck-erp has ck-Quote (a Quotation module), ck-so (Sales order module) and ck-ar (Accounts Receivable module) to keep
* Sales reps can key in Work Quotations for customers. The CK-Quote module allows for easily configurable Quotation templates which can be printed or emailed to customers.
* Sales reps can easily convert the Quotations to Sales Orders when work commences. A Sales order serves as a formal record of a work order and the terms and condition under which the work is executed sent to a customer. This direct conversion from Quotation to Sales Order eliminates a lot of extra work typing out docs. However, it is possible also to manually enter Sales Orders.
* At the time of billing, Sales Orders can again be converted to Invoices. It is possible to create Invoices with or without Tax. Here again, print and email friendly Official invoices can be generated. It is also possible to Bulk-Dispatch several invoices at the same time.
* Want to check out how promptly a customer pays? Simply check the Billing history which says when a customer was invoiced and how quickly he has paid you. You can also check Billing histories of each Sales order.
* Once a customer has been invoiced, it is a easy matter to record payment receipts. A single invoice can have several payments. For instance if a customer is invoiced for $1000, he can pay in parts. It is an easy matter to enter part payments against any invoice. You can also check out the pending payments - invoice wise, customer wise and even company wise. An aging report shows you how much dues you have to get.
* All invoice and payments get automatically integrated with the General Ledger, making accounting very easy. It is possible to view related Journal/Ledger entries for each invoice
You can easily enter customer records and configure various types of tax. The accounts receivables include Accounts Receivable Aging reports, Customer Invoice Aging reports and Detailed list of Tax collected.
If you are a Manufacturing company with thousands of customers, you can consider middle agents like Distributors or C&F agencies as customers and keep track of their payments using the same software.
The system is multi-currency and multi-user, allowing each module multiple access levels.
Inventory and Purchase process
Many companies, especially trading and manufacturing companies are generally swamped with purchase inventory and vendor information. Keeping track of vendor payments and paying bills in time before credit collection agencies call is a major source of tension. Here is what you can do with ck-erp's purchase modules - ck-po(Purchase Order module), ck-ap(Accounts Payable module) and ck-inv(Inventory module) . Lets see how a purchase process works.
* Enter purchase orders to keep track of the service contracts and products you have purchased.
* The moment you receive the purchased products or service, you can add it to your inventory using ck-inventory module. Marking goods receipt, automatically updates the inventory. You can view your Inventory Balance and In/Out History for each product that you have in the Inventory. This feature is very useful for Traders and manufacturers. The inventory is integrated with the General Ledger, so that increases in the inventory also updates the Asset value of your company.
* When you receive an invoice from the vendor, you can convert the Purchase Order into a Vendor Invoice. Maintaining vendor invoices on the system, reduces your dependency on the email or paper invoices your vendors keep sending you. You can easily manage vendor payments and due dates with this system.
* When you make payments, Record full or part payments made against Vendor invoices.
* You can view at any time, reports on unpaid invoices and aging reports on the total amounts due per vendor or per purchase order. The ERP gives you an amazing degree of clarity on outgoing dues.
* You can maintain Vendor database and configure various kinds of taxes.
* The Inventory lets you maintain product names and numbers, Bin/Location information, photos, reorder levels, unit and weight information, and 3 different price informations.
* Inventory adjustments, Assembly information and Alternate Part/Service information are some other features of ck-inventory.
Accounts
The accounts section has practically everything one would want.
The core General Ledger module has the basic Double Entry accounting system with Ledger and Journal. The interesting aspect of the General Ledger is that it is the base for the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory, Bank and the Payroll modules. The entries from all these modules ultimately reflect in the General Ledger.
The accounting system has multi-currency support. The admin can set Standard Remarks for the invoice, purchase orders, Quotations and so on. The admin can even setup Multiple Ledgers for various divisions.
A Bank Reconciliation module allows you to reconcile bank statements with ledger entries.
On the flip side of the Accounts module is the fact that it does not have the yearly Opening and Closing balances. This makes it difficult to reconcile yearly accounts. A major flaw, which one can hope will be corrected in the near future.
Point of Sale(POS)
If you are a supermarket with multiple cashier desks and high cash transactions, you could use this module. Again the Point of Sale module is integrated with the General Ledger.
The ck-pos module lets cashiers enter Cash Sales, with or without tax. A good feature of the POS system is that it allows Credit Sales as well. Useful when customers insist on Purchase on Credit, for example in high value goods. Any Credit Sales entered by the cashiers have to be approved by Manager.
The Manager interface to the POS, ck-pos-m allows a manager to remotely control all the cashier operations from his office.
* Cashboxes can be setup for each POS counter and each shift. The manager can setup staff to work at each counter.
* The Manager can for instance view Shift End cash balance per Counter per shift. . The Manager can for instance view the Shift End cash balance at Counter 2 at the end of yesterday's morning shift.
* Managers can setup special price plans
* Managers can add Reduction Charges such as special student discounts, senior citizen discount or Add-On Charge such as Sunday Surcharges or service charges.
* Managers can configure various payment options for non-cash options such as Cash Coupons, Exchange Coupon, Cheques and Credit cards.
* Taxes such as VAT, GST, PST can be setup.
* Sales reports
Human Resource Management
HR management software of some sort is required if you have more than 10 employees, and better still if payroll is integrated with the General Ledger. CK-ERP has excellent HR management features.
* Manage employee database including name, staff grades and roles, photo, address, email, phone and emergency contacts. A good feature in the HR software is that you are not limited by the number of phone fields. You can enter unlimited records per employee.
* Employees have their own Staff Self Service , something like a ``My Account'', which lets them Apply for Leave, enter Time sheet and attendance details and even request for Expense reimbursement. As soon as someone applies for leave or for expense reimbursement, their supervisor gets an email notification for approval.
* Timesheet and attendance management. Timesheet can be linked to achievements. For example if you are a