Open Source ERP for SMEs

By Sangeetha Naik

ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) software has traditionally been used by large corporates 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 much 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 17 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.

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