Over the last 9 years I have seen ErpNext evolving from a rather primitive ERP/Accounting Package to a sophisticated full-fledged ERP system now competing with leaders in the field.
I have immense admiration for the 5-member founding team of which 4 are still active. I followed their struggle to find a financial sustainable business model while being religiously devoted to OS.
It seems they succeeded. Paying clients and Frappe workforce moved up steeply.
They deserve it.
Running a 2-person (my wife and myself) microenterprise I do everything. Running the business on a day to day basis, (sales & purchase), marketing, accounting, maintaining the website that runs under Erpnext. I am since 2011 a cloud user that frees me from all the headaches daily reported on discuss.frappe.io
It seems that we are about to move into a new era. Erpnext v13 with immutable ledgers.
I believe that there are many users who feel insecure. I never doubted migrating to the next version. Unlike many self-implementers this was never a problem. The few small hitches were immediately solved by the Mumbai team.
But this time I do doubt. Immutable Ledgers…how does this affect the way I do my accounts?
I run the administration probably the same way as many micro enterprises. Once in a while I spend a few hours doing accounts. Every 3 month I try to make accounts more or less complete and report VAT to the authorities. And at the end of the financial year I spend a full week or so comparing ERPNEXT accounts with my bank statements (manually, as integration is still a very weak point), entering the forgotten entries, calculating yearly subscriptions and cost like energy, insurances etc and enter them for the whole year on 31 dec 20xx. Repairing mistakes, wrong dates, and so on. Checks and double checks.
Negative stock is allowed so for sales I never have to bother about stock availability.
This all works brilliantly fine in v12.
But now??
Can I work the same way in Version 13. Enter or delete a sales or purchase invoice that dates from 9 month ago? I don’t know.
The implementation of the immutable ledger fits a trend. In Frappes zeal to make a more capable, more sophisticated ERP, fitting the needs of larger companies, sacrifices of end-user friendliness are made.
And this affects especially the users with a subscription. Ironically, Frappe depends on these paying customers.
Self implementers with the technical know how to modify the code will always find a solution. And are, with the exception of a few companies that contribute code, free-riders.
I will give a few examples of developments where technical constraints were given priority over end-users usability, friendliness, flexibility.
1.The layout of fields of a doc in the user interface (thus the order and position of the fields in e.g. a sales or purchase order) used to be user defined. This was difficult to maintain and thus abandoned. Technological difficulties/challenges are given priority over user friendliness.
-
The web portal is a wonderful element of Erpnext. The end user could format the layout of the fields in the web interface. This caused issues and was thus abandoned . An end-user can not modify the webforms. Save has been disabled! Leaving the subscription user with a semi-functional module.
-
The workflow of the webshop/cart is fully hard coded if there is no payment option. There is no control at all…not even a pop-up like…ÿou are now going to order…The team is very close to a professional webshop system. it is just a matter of adding the finishing touch and there is no need to integrate with professional shopping software. Erpnext can do it as well.
Similar for the integrated website builder.
- Over the years there have been endless discussions about the POS. Instead of making the POS as configurable as can be…the team opts (again, also in v13) for a hard-coded solution, leaving many users frustrated. The ease of hardcoding the options is preferred over the investment to make a POS system that suits say 90% of the users community.
It seems that all new functionality is moved to V13.
A recent remark that the “disable comments” for Blog articles as shown in manual is not available was replied with: “this functionality is moved to v13” .
Today I reported that the header info on a page is not working. Again the same reply…v13.
Also in version 12 there are functionalities that hardly work. The implementation (import of manual) of the CoA is a nightmare.
The import of a bank transaction file that can be linked to sales, purchases, a voucher is not or semi functional. In India cheques may still be used, but in Europe people under 30, do not even know what a cheques is.
I seems that ErpNext is hardly debugging v12…but repairs are made under v13.
And thus the users are more or less forced to move on.
I wonder (but do not know…) whether ErpNext would be more successful in attracting new paying customers if the present v12 is more flexible, repairing the many dead-ends, adding end-user flexibility and critically look at the shortcoming than moving on to V13 adding (again) limitations …this time the immutable ledger.
But above all I hope that the team will come with clear advice to the user community.
What to expect when moving to version 13. What is meant with Immutable Ledger. What is no longer possible. I have read the full thread, but to me the consequences of the immutable ledger to me as an end user are still very foggy.
If I Google “Immutable Ledger” I get only returns referring to blockchain technology. If I google “Immutable Ledger ERP” all the first returns point to ErpNext. So it seems other ERP vendors do not use this concept or term. It is ErpNext / blokchange jargon
Paying customers are all still on version 12. Bugs in v12 are moved to v13.
This is not fair
Best regards Robert
