foundation/foundation/www/docs/user/manual/en/introduction/index.md

Introduction

What is an ERP system and why should anyone care to use it?

If you are already convinced you need an all-in-one system for your organization, you can skip this page.

Today, small & medium sized businesses are not so different from large/enterprises. Typically, they too face similar complexities as a large business but have limited resources to deal with such complexity.

Small businesses (like their bigger counterparts) have to

• do accounts to keep track of sales/ purchases
• pay taxes to the goverment
• pay their employees
• manage deliveries within promised timelines
• deliver quality goods and services
• communicate with customers, answer queries And generally try to keep everyone happy.

So far, large enterprises have been able to invest 100s of millions of dollars in very sophisticated systems such as SAP to bring their multi country, multi company, multi currency global businesses online into a single platform to achieve some of the basic process such as accounting, taxation, payroll, reporting, supply chain to name a few.

Small businesses, on the other hand, typically have been left out of this 1st wave of digital revolution (1995-2015) because they dont have the $ power to license, hire and customize such software to suite their needs. Systems like SAP have been NO-GO for most SMEs with a minimum CAPEX or OPEX layout of $100k (100 Thousand Dollars)

So small businesses haave continue to struggle to keep things organized. They often use a mix of apps like spreadsheets, accounting software, web based CRM etc to manage. As a consequence, they have to access different systems to understand customers, sales, cash flow or profitability. The information exists in Silos and is hard to combine to get insights.

ERPNext addresses those fundamental problems of affordability (Open source, Freely available), all transactional modules included, highly customizable and efficient in computing requirements.

What is ERPNext?

ERPNext is an end-to-end business solution that helps you to manage all your business information in one application and use it to not only manage operations but also enables you to take informed decisions well in time to remain ahead of your competition. It forms a backbone of your business to add strength, transparency and control to your enterprise.

Among other things, ERPNext will help you to:

• Track all Invoices and Payments.
• Know what quantity of which product is available in stock.
• Identify and track your key performance indicators (KPI's).
• Identify open customer queries.
• Manage payroll.
• Assign tasks and follow up on them.
• Maintain a database of all your customers, suppliers and their contacts.
• Prepare quotes.
• Tracking your budgets and spending
• Determine effective selling price based on the actual raw material, machinery and effort cost.
• Get reminders on maintenance schedules.
• Publish your website.

And a lot lot lot more.

Topics

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