ERPNext

Overview

ERPNext is a full enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It brings your accounts, sales, purchasing, stock, and operations together so information entered once flows everywhere it’s needed: a sales order becomes a delivery note, then an invoice, then a payment entry in your ledger.

Main modules:

• Accounting: chart of accounts, invoices, payments, bank reconciliation, taxes, budgets, and financial statements.
• Selling and CRM: leads, opportunities, quotations, sales orders, and customers.
• Buying: suppliers, requests for quotation, purchase orders, and receipts.
• Stock: items, warehouses, batches and serial numbers, stock entries, and valuation.
• Manufacturing: bills of materials, work orders, and production planning.
• Projects, Assets, Quality, and Support.
• HR and payroll through the companion Frappe HR app, where installed.

Everything is customizable without code: add fields, change forms, create print formats, and set up approval workflows.

What it replaces

ERPNext replaces small business accounting tools such as QuickBooks, Xero, and Sage, and larger ERP systems like NetSuite and SAP Business One.

Signing in

Open your ERPNext address and sign in. ERPNext manages its own users and roles; an administrator creates your account and assigns roles such as Accounts User or Stock Manager.

First-time setup

The first administrator to sign in runs the setup wizard:

1. Choose your language, country, time zone, and currency.
2. Enter your company name and abbreviation. The abbreviation appears in account and warehouse names, so keep it short.
3. Choose a chart of accounts template for your country, or the standard one.
4. Set the start and end of your fiscal year.

Find your way around

• The search bar (the “awesome bar”) at the top is the fastest way to do anything. Type “new sales invoice”, a customer’s name, or a report name.
• Workspaces in the sidebar (Accounting, Selling, Buying, Stock…) group related documents and reports.
• Every list can be filtered, sorted, and saved, and switched to Report view for spreadsheet-style columns.

A typical sales flow

1. Create a Customer and an Item (or import them, see below).
2. Create a Quotation, then Create, Sales Order from it when the customer accepts.
3. From the sales order, create a Delivery Note when goods ship (this reduces stock).
4. Create a Sales Invoice and Submit it. Submitting posts the entries to your ledger.
5. When the customer pays, create a Payment Entry against the invoice.

Documents move from Draft to Submitted. Submitted documents can’t be edited; to correct one, Cancel and Amend it, which keeps the audit trail intact.

Import your data

Use Data Import (search for it in the awesome bar) to bring in customers, suppliers, items, and opening balances:

1. Choose the document type and Insert new records.
2. Download the template, fill it in a spreadsheet, and upload it.
3. Review the preview and errors, then start the import.

Import opening balances with an Opening Invoice Creation Tool or a Journal Entry marked as opening.

Administer ERPNext

• Users and permissions: add users under User, and assign roles. Fine-tune with Role Permissions Manager.
• Customize Form: add fields or change labels on any form without code.
• Print Format Builder: design invoices and quotations with your logo and layout.
• Workflow: add approval steps, for example purchase orders above a limit need a manager’s approval.
• Email Account: connect a mailbox so documents can be emailed from ERPNext. On Federated Core, outgoing mail is normally set up for you.

Superpanel settings

• Access: choose which groups are given the ERPNext address.
• Administrator account: Superpanel or Federated Computer support provides the initial Administrator credentials.