Our client is using Xero with Zoho for Inventory. Zoho is not up to the task and we are looking at implementing Inventory, BOM, Purchase Ordering and Works Orders in ERPNext but they wish to keep Xero for financials.
Xero has just released Custom Connections (https://developer.xero.com/announcements/introducing-custom-connections) alongside standard OAuth 2.0 flow. We are systems implementers and not developers and are looking for the best way forward for a full integration of Customers, Suppliers and Nominal Codes allowing Invoices to be posted between applications. To put it plainly, we are trying to keep costs to a minimum ideally without excessive monthly recurring costs as these seem to build up rapidly on top of each other.
Even if customers and suppliers are posted in both systems and a Xero Account Code field in ERPNext ties the accounts together, allowing visibility of Xero terms and account balances.
All Sales orders will be posted on ERPNext and dispatch notes and purchase ordering will be in ERPNext.
Final Sales Invoices and purchase Invoices will be posted back to Xero with ERPNext managing Un-Invoiced Goods received.
Even with decades experience of ERP and MRP Systems Implementation and current user of Xero, this will be our first ERPNext implementation so all comments welcome.
The phrases that jumped out at me in your post are “full integration”, “not developers”, “costs to a minimum”, and “first ERPNext implementation”.
I don’t mean to be negative, but this sounds like a nightmare for everyone involved.
Thanks Peter. It’s not negative, its realistic. We are considering alternatives for now, namely getting completely standalone systems up and running with duplicate databases as required, keeping the financials and Manufacturing separated. I would however love to know about possible solutions.
I’m not one for duplicate databases that can diverge but needs must for now. We are party to a number of clients who’s businesses have grown but they do not want to go for a full on ERP solution or understand that they need one, having copious spreadsheets to run their businesses so we need to manage them up. Fortunately we are on site doing the data keying so we need to implement robust systems to their advantage at a manageable cost.
Integration is a key strength of Frappe. It has robust event hooks, webhooks, Oauth, a rest api, etc.
The problem is that manufacturing and accounting have tight and complex interactions. Coordinating these interactions between two different systems is possible in principle but would require an enormous amount of very technical work.