[kokey]

Every few years, over the past 20 years, I look around to see if there are any open source contenders in the ERP space. There are usually a couple, but you never get to hear about them again. I think it's a difficult space to enter and succeed in and I think most efforts probably underestimate the complexity and isn't funded or run well enough to tackle that adequately.

[rushabh]

ERPNext has been around for a decade now and doing quite well! https://github.com/frappe/erpnext.

Founder here, happy to answer questions.

[thirdsun]

I've been interested in ERPNext for years and always kept an eye on it as an alternative or replacement for our in-house developed ERP, which currently grows in complexity and may end up at a point where it's too much of a burden for a small team like ours.

One area where ERPNext really seems to be lacking is marketing and presentation. You definitely have the features, but I don't think you're doing a good job of showcasing and documenting them, particualrly before I create an account. You try to show those features in Youtube videos, but the production value doesn't seem to be much higher than a private screencast - I'm worried that this kind of presentation actually hurts you.

Another problem is language support. Last time I checked you worked on community based translation efforts, which resulted in experimental international support. May the quality of the translations has improved since then, and of course I could (and did) help, but without proper doemstic language support (german in my case), there's no way I could use ERPNext with our non-tech, barely english speaking staff.

Other than that I've been intrigued for a long time and wish you would not delete free single user accounts so soon (do they still exist at all?) - I tend to try ERPNext from time to time, with long pauses inbetween, and often have to create a new account.

[solarkraft]

Did you underestimate the complexity? Did you limit scope to not go insane? What is the typical size/complexity of a typical using company? Could LIDL have used your software for 500M€, could they have even implemented their completely own solution for that money? Thanks!

[rushabh]

There have been a few very large implementations of ERPNext. If I were to consult Lidl, we would have done a few low risk pilots, starting with their warehouses or back-office.

I would have gone for a federated architecture where each store / warehouse would have its own system that would then be consolidated at higher levels, rather than going for a mega instance with zillions of transaction rows.

There are many interesting things you can do when you have an open source system you can work to your advantage.

[cosmoharrigan]

I was curious to learn more about the project, and would like to share some quick feedback; the first thing I noticed was that the first page of the documentation which I opened has multiple spelling and grammar errors:

“Distrobutors have large part of their net worth is invested in the stock in hand. With ERPNext, you can always keep a birds eye view on your stock availability, replineshment, procurement and sales.“ https://erpnext.org/docs/user/manual/en/stock

Second, I noticed that the CI build is failing on GitHub.

[rushabh]

If you have questions, there is a very active community at https://discuss.erpnext.com

Typo: Thanks for the report. We will get it fixed.

CI: The marker is for the develop branch. So if you are on master, its much more stable.