Invoicing system / invoiceplane / CRM - discussion and feedback

Another option?

Dolibarr ERP & CRM

Potentially Dolibarr could take over a lot of functionality, there is a ticket module and a IMAP email fetcher for it (both GPL V3 but for sale, €171). The stable install is packaged as a .deb. Their forum looks like a blast for the past after getting used to Discourse!

webERP

I want to hide under the duvet after looking at some of the code [1] - a massive sprawl of global variable style, jQuery in php strings, lots of commented out code, and all seemingly untested code that handles payments :confused: … and 880 issues in the tracker.

To be fair I didn’t look at the code the other projects.

[1] https://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr/blob/develop/htdocs/stripe/payment.php#L455

That really doesn’t surprise me, I fear webERP might be the same…

Odoo

Looks interesting, but I noted there are 900+ issues and 1k+ pull requests(!).

ERPNext

This looks like the most promising option so far, see the ERPNext for Services page. But 1.6k issues but the install looks OK and it has a basic command line interface.

Video on how to set it up for different VAT rules for different countries:

Loads more on their YouTube video channel.

Here they differentiate themselves from systems such as Odoo and Dolibarr:

100% Open Source

Unlike other open source business platforms, ERPNext is fully Open Source, because unlike them, we don’t think sustainability and open source live at odds.

Most open source platforms in the ERP / CRM / E-Commerce space are open core . These communities makes money from closed extensions and services to monetize their efforts. We believe this is not only wrong, but not sustainable.

https://erpnext.org/open-source

One the list of ERPNext Service Providers there is one based in the UK:

Ooh erpnext does look pretty good. And python backend too. Tests. Modern libraries. Docs looks good too and lots of screenshots.

Supports gocardless too which is a nice low fee way to take payment.

(I originally sent this via email but it didn’t appear :confused: )

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Thanks for testing that, I’d forgotten to do so, it is fixed now, see this thread.

It has good solid activity over the last 7 years and still looks like a modern product, so that’s good going!

Maybe we try setting up a demo instance to play around with?

I’m a bit confused that the install instructions don’t have any mention of which version you get, maybe it does something clever…

Odoo also looks quite good, but slightly less shiny (not very objective judgement…).

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Good idea, I’ll create a VM for this at some point today, do we want to follow the manual install instructions or do we want to use the Docker version?

Switched to irc for discussion :slight_smile:

Agreed, but they used the model of a Free and open source core product but commercial, non-free apps, see the app pricing page, I’m not opposed to paying for software but it would add up, for example we might need:

  • CRM 16.0 EUR / month
  • Website 16.0 EUR / month
  • Invoicing 8.0 EUR / month
  • Sales 8.0 EUR / month
  • eCommerce 8.0 EUR / month
  • Accounting 16.0 EUR / month
  • Timesheet 8.0 EUR / month
  • Email Marketing 8.0 EUR / month
  • Subscription 16.0 EUR / month
  • Helpdesk 16.0 EUR / month

That would come to €120 a month / €1,440 a year…

IRC, good plan :+1:

A couple of forum posts about erpnext + UK tax:

I just found Ansible Playbooks for ERPNext and loads of Ansible Roles, I need to spend some time looking through these, we might not need to reinvent the wheel… however I’m not so keen on things like their MariaDB tasks, and Nginx tasks which don’t use the Stretch packages, they use upstream ones, it looks it is written for Jessie.

I also found a ERPNext Administrators Guide (but most of it is still to be written), here is the install documentation and a list of packages needed from this guide,

Here is the ERPNext manual and here is the Bench quick reference guide.

I created a GitHub issue for it ----> https://github.com/frappe/erpnext/issues/16025

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@Jonathan found this article:

So that might give us some breathing space…

“Small businesses will not be ready for this significant change to their practices if it is introduced on 1 April, particularly with Brexit taking place three days earlier,” said Lord Forsyth. “The government must delay its introduction.”

I have a new ERPNext install up and running at erpnext.webarch.co.uk and expect that it’ll be ready for some more testing next week, I’m very hopeful that we will be able to use ERPNext for:

  • Invoicing
  • Ticketing / issues
  • Timesheets
  • Generating our website
  • Online ordering and payments

But we need to play with it some more before committing to it…

We have some issues to work through on GitLab:

I expect that by the next management committee meeting, which is on 12th December 2018, we will be in a position to make a decision regarding the use of ERPNext.

Looking at the services offered by nube.coop they have a open source CRM offering, Tryton:

Tryton

https://coopiteasy.be/gestion-de-cooperative/ is building ontop of odoo … tools to provide a internal IT systems for coops I think

Also a Making Tax Digital seems to be on the odoo roadmap