ERPNext vs Odoo

ERPNext User Forum
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@Inquiry_gbowen

Thanks for your feedback. We have been around in the industry too for 7+ years. There is a big gap between pure accounting apps like Quickbooks etc v/s an SAP or Oracle. Most apps that cover that this gap, would be ERPs in my view, but of a different variety.

ERP is a very fragmented industry and in the mid to low segment, Sage is the biggest player. but no single player owns more than 15% of the market.

The reason in my view is that even though ERPs are expensive they are not that expensive when you consider all expenses of a company so there is no real incentive to disrupt this market.

IMO you are wrong about the features. The real problem is “selling”. Selling to the $5MM + market would require “Sales” and that implies long cycles of 6 months to a year that will add on cost to the product + require huge investment. And again it becomes a self-defeating game.

We have figured that the only market that is interested is the new age / startup / SMB market that wants control + open source.

You are right in saying its a long painful path staying low. But I guess we are doing good work and having fun and I think everyday the community grows. As long as that keeps happening, we are happy with what we are doing. Even though we may not make as much money immediately.

Have not seen good new entrants in a while. Please indicate who those would be?

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22

ERPNext +
I think ERPNext is more simpler in looks and understanding.
Easier customisations for people not familiar with coding and programming.

ERPNext -
Manuals are not updated.

Odoo +
-I find the POS module in Odoo pretty good.
-Also E-commerce integrations and hardware integrations in Odoo is better in Odoo.
-Barcodes to identify Product, Packages, Boxes, Pallets, Quantity based barcodes. Overall good for Stock maintaining and stock movement.

I also suggest that we should have better Warehouse Management features and also a better POS Screen.

Also I feel that ERPNext team has be doing good work. But it get much much better.

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23

Odoo was in the Bossie Award 2015 … not ERPNext :cry:

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Yes, not being a developer per se …Github and their push and pull is a bit daunting. A wiki would be a lot easier for me.

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Definitely. And moving issue tracking to JIRA would give users a way to vote for what’s most important

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Options for free & open source ERPnext self-hosted documentation Wiki:

DokuWiki (GPL), MediaWiki (GPL) and some alternatives

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I was on odoo and I switched to ERPnext.

Much cleaner look
Muck easier to understand

Documentation is not perfect, but look at odoo doc and you’ll find that the erpnext doc is way better.

Customisation is also way easier that odoo.
Everything you try in odoo, simply never work the first time. There is a lot of customs apps but none is supported on the online 2 users free version.

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Correct. Shows also the relativeness of these award. The reviewer changed. Less Erpnext minded, or may the verdict are correct. Cannot judge…

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@becht_robert @Francois_Ifitwala Yeah too bad about the BOSSIEs I think they lose their credibility. esp when they include xTuple (which is one of the most “commercial” open source ERPs out there).

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Reading the comments on the Bossie’s page, quite a few are related to that same issue with xtulpe. Weird!

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although this topic hasn’t been descussed recently, i want to add my experiences with both odoo and erpnext.

odoo was recommended to us as a 12-person distributer of ecological chemicals. we needed sth like warehouse, production jobs, some basic HR and an easy to-use crm with customer portal.

we invested quite a lot of time in odoo. it worked, but we did not have any “fun” or something like a good a feeling when working it. it feels very laggy, looks like 2001 software and simply doesn’t feel intuitive.

then a friend of mine found erpnext (by absolute coincidence). we got it up and running in less than an hour. import of data was no problem at all.

our employees love it, they even use it on their iphone (simply in the browser).

the result: better customer care, more motivated coworkers and less costs in infrastructure.

we customize openerp in live running environment without having to fear data loss.

im very happy to have found this solution!

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33

Hi everyone,

I am new to erpnext and considering whether to move from Odoo to here.

a) It seems POS is really lacking here. So it means it won’t work with any POS hardware for now? receipt printer, barcode scanners, etc? or work inside ipad which works with these hardwares. Like Odoo they uses Posbox. Wonder what’s the equivalent in ERPNext?

b) Is there any BI solutions for ERPNext? As in Odoo, often times I may need to use jaspersoft to talk to Odoo (via postgres db). I would prefer to have a good solution part of ERPNext. What is your recommended practice?

c) Can ERPNext work on commercial DB? I am often ask by big companies for Odoo. Unfortunately postgres doesn’t suit big enterprises who care a lot about oracle and microsoft sql server. If not, can it work at least with enterprisedb?

d) For ERPNext can it install well on redhat OS? similar to above, some companies are quite concern about here.

e) For private modules created for ERPNext, do I need to share it with the community? Just say some company engages me to work on an ERP for their company. They would be concern sharing the developed modules to the community.

f) Can ERPNext work with asterisk server? In Odoo, there’s a module by akretion. If not is this something easy to build?

g) In Odoo v9, their pnl and balance sheet allow drill down. Similar to what accounting software e.g. quickbooks and myob can do out of the box. That’s the killer to be honest. How about ERPNext?

h) Does ERPNext core team offer any commercial support? I am thinking to engage when comes to project implementation where some customers prefer some level of assurances from the principal team. Is there such thing?

i) I noticed ERPNext has a SaaS model. If I plan to setup 1 for myself, is there any guides to make this worked? In Odoo, unfortunately the only place to find such info is from slideshare (if not mistaken). The rest I have to crack my head to figure out. If ERPNext can offer the scripts used, would be super awesome :slight_smile:

j) If I want to build a hybrid mobile (ionic framework) with a whole new interface and talking to ERPNext, is that doable? In Odoo, I have to use XMLRPC or wrap it with a REST web services. Is there anything way easier to do it with ERPNext?

k) Will ERPNext forever be open source? I believe Odoo started that way too, but eventually turn into more commercial driven. Well it makes a lot of sense as they have investors and also need to sustain their cash flow. How about ERPNext in next 10 - 20 years down the road?

Thanks.

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Considering MIT license licensing - Meaning of MIT license - Software Engineering Stack Exchange says

  1. You can sell the software.
  2. You are not compelled to provide source code.
  3. Anyone who receives source code may do as the license permits. This does not extend to binary distributions.

There is PnL and Balance sheet, Cash Flow is done!. Reports have expandable tree view, checkout ledger by clicking account.

https://community.erpnext.com/service-providers

checkout Bench - Multi-tenant platform to manage Frappe / ERPNext

https://frappe.github.io/frappe/user/guides/integration/rest_api.html

Frappe Framework https://frappe.github.io/frappe/license.html MIT
ERPNext https://frappe.github.io/erpnext/license.html GPLv3

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35

Hi,

I have been in FOSS ERP for 5-6 years. been research on most FOSS ERP in the market.

I admitted that, so far, I only found good solutions, but not yet the “Right” solution.

I have deep 3 years with Adempiere and 3 years with Odoo. I wanted to share some experience about it. I hope it will be useful.

To me, Adempiere is the real serious ERP. It is a deep solution with great accounting engine. But it is more as old age solution not quite flexible enough to do fancy other things. Not easy nor attractive enough for small business.

For Odoo, it is a nice business suite, modular, modern and beautiful. It has almost every business features you can think of, but it also quite shallow for many things. At first, it is almost a perfect solution. But its lack of decent accounting engine like Adempiere make it short (for being an ERP).

As a teasing word. Adempiere is good for accounting but not for every other things. Odoo is good for every other thing except for accounting. -_-"

I also agree with some comment that, Odoo has so many modules but none work right at the first time. After long years with it, I think root of the problem stem from its too much of modularity concept. Accounting also fall short because of this, I think.

While in Adempeire, it concepts around DocType, which is correct for an ERP. The system allows us to setup 70+ default accounts from the beginning. And its accounting engine can smartly decide which account to use for different cases. You set it correctly first time, after that rest assure everything will be fine. I think that’s what ERP should be.

In Odoo, it concept around journal booking. There is no real default account setup page that can cope with all situation. Again, I think because its too much modular that it not allow to have such setup from the beginning (of course, because it not even know what modules will be installed). Technically understandable. But the result is, we can’t rest assure about its account posting. Our accountant has to verify every use case, and if not correct, we code to fix it.

Don’t get me wrong that I don’t like the solution, I think it is best solution to do the work so far. I am now currently very focus on Odoo, and we are going to have a big project replacing SAP for one of our customer.

I do think FOSS ERP has opportunity even for big market. Many big company want to leave proprietary and come to FOSS. The thing is, not many CIO dare to risk with it yet. And without serious Accounting Engine at the core, it will be tough. (in v9, Odoo declare that accounting is not its core, but customer, sales and marketing is… my godness !!)

From the impression I have with ERPNext. I admit that I like it. I like the community, I like the look and I like many concept of it. I don’t have deep experience with it yet, but I am “feeling” it somehow :blush:

I also come across the word “DocType” which is good sign. And have seen a default accounting setup in company page (around 10+ accounts, not much but ok). I have impression that it could fill the gap of both Adempiere and Odoo. You have given me a good hope of finding the “Right” solution. :smile:

Lastly, I also like to congratulate your work. You have done amazing job. May be functionality wise does not match the more mature one. But if the direction is right, the future is yours.

Cheers,
Kitti U.

PS: By the way, what is the direction of accounting in ERPNext, is it like ADempiere or Odoo, can anyone explain?

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@kittiu Thanks for sharing your experience and welcome to the forum!

I hope ERPNext is the “right” solution for you, but don’t want to set expectations too high.

Accounting is something we have been working hard to improve all the time, would love to have feedback and discussions on how we can move this forward.

FYI: Accounting & Billing are the top 2 used features of ERPNext

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I also concern about accounting. After using ERPNext for quite sometime… I think ERPNext is on the right track.

Its ‘perfect’ If you use it for single instance of company, cost center, warehouse. Once Company default accounts is setup then everything is in place.

I think it needs improvement for accounts default setup for multiple companies, cost centers, warehouses to handle various business scenario… The point is…at the end good erp would need to minimize user input, fasten the input process etc even for those who dont understand accounting hence it will prevent wrong posting…

Idempiere is very good on this but its too hard to implement for small businesses…

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Adempiere / iDempiere Accounting Engine is around document type. There is a big library containing logic of the posting for different doctype.
Our accountant who is also a CPA, working with many ERPs, she confirm it is correct.
I am not accountant myself. I think you can play with it and port out the logic behind its trunk? Not sure if that possible?

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Hi Rubash,
I only have experience in Gnucash and ERPNext.
I have implemented ERPNext into one of our subsidiary company.
One of the main reason the accoutnants in the mother company are still reluctant to do the switch from Pastel (Sage) to ERPNext is the efficiency of doing JV.
See this discussion here

Not everything some old ERP are doing is bad. Yes some of the UI is quite old-dated, but these ERP have been in business for a long time and they do know a trick or two about efficiency and how accountants works. Batch entries being of these things. Obviously I did not manage to convey that in the above post.

For a company that process around 100 JV daily, the ability of doing batch entries is a requirement.
Let’s say we have 50 expense vouchers to enter and they are all related to the same account (let’s say a fuel account). At the moment we have to create 50 different JV each with its date and reference numbers. Doing one JV does take time on ERPNext, the ability to do a batch entry for all of them can gain significant amount of time.

I would also echo @kittiu comment about > accounting engine can smartly decide which account to use. The CFO of our mother company mentioned that it was too risky and error prone to let our young accounts that do all the entries and decide which account is debit and which one is credit. Yes they are accountants and they should know which one is which, but you would be surprised at times :wink:

All that said, I do use ERPNext everyday. All constructive criticism I hope :wink:

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Is Data import tool helpful?

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I guess it could but not very practical. It should be something done from the inside ERPNext without having to download .csv file then reupload them.