Openbravo ERP, being a multitenant architecture application, a single client may have different organizations. The organization may be of various types like legal with accounting, legal without accounting or generic. For more details on organization types and their implications refer here.

Fiscal Calendar:

When the organization is of type ‘Legal with Accounting’, the Fiscal calendar needs to be configured in order to manage accounting. This can be managed using the “Fiscal Calendar” window. The purpose of this window is to create and maintain the calendar, years that are included in the calendar and the periods that are included for each of these years. For those wondering about the options “Close Year” and “Undo Close Year” which were part of the Fiscal Calendar earlier, these options are now moved to ‘End Year Close’ window as part of the improvements done in Open/Close periods which is described in brief at the end. These improvements are done to clearly segregate the calendar setup and maintaining open/close year transactions enabling better transaction history. These improvements are available from version 3.0 MP 22.

Open/Close Period Control:

The Open/Close Period Control window as the name suggests is used to Open or Close an entire period or open the period for certain document types. The main tab allows to control the Open and Close functionality at the entire period level while the sub tab Document Type allows to close or open a period at the document type level. The improvements made to this window from 3.0 MP22 are as follows:

1. Earlier, to close or open a period, we have to create a new row. But now all the periods of the fiscal calendars created will be prefilled. All we have to do is select and open/close the period.

2. Pictures does speak a thousand words. Now you can visualize the status of the period even without searching for the status field and then decoding it with the status values. The status values are marked in colour code to enable quick view of periods.

A period can be in any of the following status, “All never opened”,”All opened”, “All closed”, “Mixed”, “All permanently closed”. These are the colour codes and description for each of these status.

• All Never Opened, colored in gray. Recently created Periods.
• All Opened, colored in green. All the Document Types are open for this Period.
• All Closed, colored in red. All the Document Types are closed for this Period.
• Mixed, colored in orange. Not all the Document Types have the same Status value in this Period. For more information refer to the Documents Tab below.
• All Permanently Closed, colored in red. All the Document Types are Permanently Closed for this Period.

As you can see it provides a clear picture of the period’s status even without getting into its details. Similar operations are available at the document level.

For example scenarios and more detailed explanation about the Period Control, refer to our wiki here.

End Year Close:

The ‘Close Year/ Unclose Year’ which was part of the Fiscal Calendar has been refactored as a new window End Year Close. You can select any of the available Fiscal Calendars and Close or Undo Close the Fiscal Calendar. The close year process is used to close a Fiscal Calendar. This process closes all the periods of the fiscal year permanently. The standard periods need not be closed prior to running this process, however it can help to keep tracking of the periods of the year already reviewed and closed. The close year process requires that the next year exists and the first period of the next year to be open. Once a year is closed, it can be reviewed in the Open/ Close Period Control window. All the periods that are closed through this process will be marked with the status ‘Permanently Closed’. It will be not be possible to create any transactions within that year anymore. To create any transaction the ‘Undo Close Year’ process should be run.

The close year process in general creates the following accounting entries:

1. The “Profit and Loss Closing” entry.

• This accounting entry resets all “Revenue” and “Expense” Account Types and the difference is posted in the Income Summary account.
  • In other words the “Expense” accounts are “Credited and the “Revenue” accounts are “Debited” and the difference if any is posted in the Income Summary account.
  • Let’s take an expense account with a debit balance of 500,00. The P&L Closing entry creates a credit accounting entry of 500,00 in the Expense account of the example, therefore it gets a balance equal to zero.
  • If the revenue accounts total balance is higher than the expense accounts total balance that difference is credited in the Income Summary account, that means a positive result or a profit.
  • If the revenue accounts total balance is lower than the expense accounts total balance that difference is debited in the Income Summary account, that means a negative result or a loss.
• This accounting entry is posted the last day of the last period of the year being closed, that is the “Adjustment Period” or “13th Period” of the year.
• Openbravo does not create a G/L Journal for this accounting entry but just the accounting entry.

2. The “Closing” entry or “Balance Sheet Closing” entry.

• This accounting entry credits all the accounts which have a debit balance and debits all the accounts which have a credit balance. The aim of this accounting entry is to get that Asset and Liability accounts get a zero balance.
  • In order words, let’s take an Asset account with a debit balance of 8.000,00. The closing entry creates a credit accounting entry of 8.000,00 in the Asset account of the example.
• This account entry is posted the last day of the last period of the year being closed, that is the “Adjustment Period” or “13th Period” of the year.
• Openbravo does not create a G/L Journal for this accounting entry but just the accounting entry.
• This entry is created only if the Reverse Permanent Account Balances check-box is set to yes.

Finally, if a Retained Earnings account is specified for the general ledger configuration, an additional entry dated on the last day of the year is created.

This entry moves the Income Summary account balance to the “Retained Earnings” account.

3. And the “Opening” or “Balance Sheet Opening” entry.

• This accounting entry is the reversal entry of the closing entry.
  • Following the example of point 2 above the opening entry creates a debit accounting entry of 8.000,00 in the Asset account of the example. That amount is the opening balance of the asset account for the new year.
• This accounting entry is posted the first day of the first period of the next year.
• This entry is created only if the Reverse Permanent Account Balances check-box is set to yes.

For a use case scenario on how to use the ‘End Year Close’ process and its implications on the Accounting entries refer here.

A Business partner in Openbravo is any third party like customers, suppliers, creditors etc. Even employees can be business partners. These business partners are segregated through Business Partner Categories. For more information on Business Partners refer here.

More often, companies are caught up in situations where they are not able to restrict a particular customer in case the payments are long due, or stop payments to a supplier. The problem with these cases is that deciding to block a particular business partner is a management decision and most of the time it varies on a case to case basis. Though there are already notifications like credit limit provided across all financial transactions, in most cases they are not enough to restrict transaction. This is where Business Partner blocking comes handy.

Business Partner locking is a feature where the client can block a business partner thereby revoking the privileges to fulfil a set of documents related to financial transactions. The following documents can be controlled while blocking a business partner

• Orders (Purchase Order, Sales Order)
• Goods Shipment / Receipt
• Invoice (Purchase Invoice, Sales Invoice)
• Payment Details (Payment In / Payment Out)

Note that Blocking a Business Partner for a document means that it will not be possible to complete this Document, but it will be possible to create a draft. For example, if a Customer is Blocked for Sales Orders, it will be possible to create a new Sales Order for this Business Partner in Draft Status, but it will never be possible to complete it while this Business Partner is blocked.

Customer Blocking
To block a customer, navigate to the customer tab under Business Partner and check the ‘On Hold’ check box. After it is checked it will provide the configuration options mentioned above. These are the default values for the configuration options. This can also be changed to suit the business needs.

• Sales Order: Blocked
• Goods Shipment: Blocked
• Sales invoice: Blocked
• Payment In: Not blocked

Note that the document is blocked, if the check box next to each item is checked.

Customer Blocking

Vendor Blocking
Similar to the Customer, to block a Vendor / Supplier, navigate to the Vendor tab under Business Partner and check the ‘On Hold’ checkbox. These are default values for the configurations for the Vendor. This can also be changed to suit the business needs.

• Purchase Order: Blocked
• Goods Receipt: Not blocked
• Purchase Invoice: Blocked
• Payment Out: Blocked

Vendor / Supplier blocking

This way the client need not rely upon manual discretion when handling a huge volume of Business Partners which is usually the case. The Business Partner can be unblocked at any point in time, thus providing greater flexibility.

In a finance driven ERP like Openbravo, the management of the finances is one of the key requirements of the clients. In a typical scenario, there are going to be a huge number of transactions between the client and various business partners. But the client needs to be aware of the financial status of the business partner (current credit balance, transactions made, delays in payment, etc) so as to plan the resources accordingly to improve the functioning of the organization. One such required information would be the revenue generated for a particular period for a particular customer. This is provided through the Customer Statement, a new feature that will be published in the upcoming MP’s. For impatient ones, you can try it from the Openbravo pi builds..:-)

Customer Statement is the consolidation of transaction history of a customer over a particular period. Only the transactions that are posted to the Finance are taken into account. Completed but unposted transactions will not be taken into consideration. The transactions are aggregated from various sources like Payments made through Invoices, Reconciliations, prepayments etc. The report is generated across a particular period and provides all the transactions related to that Customer done in that period. Here goes the sample output of the report.

Customer Statement Report in Openbravo

The Customer Statement in general provides the following details :

• The credit/debit information with the document number for which the transaction was done.
• The dates on which the transaction was done.
• The dates on which the debit / credit from the accounts was done.
• Accounts which are affected because of this transaction and the split up of credit / debit.
• The document type of the transaction. Eg., AR Invoice, Financial Account Transaction.
• The Net financial revenue after each transaction.
• The Net financial revenue generated through the customer throughout given period. Notice that as a global standard, negative amounts are marked using brackets ().

In case the business partner is a customer as well as a vendor, the Customer Statement will show the transactions that are done as a Customer and does not take into account, the transactions that are done as a Vendor.

Lets understand this scenario by an use case. Bob is a business partner who buys from the client as well as sells few materials to the client. In this case, he is both a vendor and a customer. Now lets assume he does the following transactions in the last month.

Transaction 1 :

• Bob sells 10 units of raw materials and generates a Purchase Invoice for the same. The Invoice document number is 3000045 for the document type AP Invoice.
• Bob receives the payment for the Invoice.
• This transaction is posted to the account

Transaction 2 :

• Bob buys 20 units of products from the client.
• The client generates the Sales Invoice for the same with Invoice number 1000087 for the document type AR Invoice
• Bob makes a payment for the Invoice.
• This transaction is posted to the account

Transaction 3 :

• Bob sells 15 units to the client.
• Purchase order has been created with document number 1000034.
• The client makes a prepayment for the order before generating an Invoice.
• This transaction is posted to the account

Transaction 4 :

• Bob decides 20 units of products
• A sales order is created by the client with document number 1000056.
• Bob makes an advance payment for the order.
• This transaction is posted to the account

Now if the Customer Statement is generated, the transactions 2 and 4 will be reflected and 1 and 3 will be ignored as they are transactions done by Bob as a vendor.

Thus the general purpose of this feature is to present a clear picture on whether the business with the Customer is profitable and what are the key areas that needs to be fine tuned to increase the process adherence.

1. Create each truck as a store in the Backoffice. Trucks are in fact mobile stores, right? In this way you will be able to assign to each truck a price list,  an assortment and a warehouse. Maximum flexibility!
2. Having an assigned warehouse, will let you control exactly the stock level of each truck, either at the end of the journey if they don't have internet connectivity, or in real time if they have it, by synchronizing orders automatically with the Backoffice. This real time scenario, will let you decide to replenish a truck during its route, for example in the event of an unforseen new order or a higher ordered quantity of some products. No more stockout situations!
3. After that, you can set up a single POS terminal per truck, with its allowed payment methods
4. At this point, you arm each driver with a tablet. In the Central Office, at the beginning of their journey, they connect to the corresponding POS url to synchronize the initial master data : products, prices, promotions and customers. Better data quality for minimizing data entry errors!
5. If your customers can pay in cash, you will give some change to your drivers. By creating a deposit, you can easily register the ammount for each POS. Total control over the managed cash!
6. Openbravo for Retail is a full web application, but it doesn't require to be on-line:
• Drivers have connectivity : all the orders will be synchronized automatically to the Backoffice, which gives you real time visibility about the served orders and remaining stock on each truck
• Drivers don’t have connectivity : not a problem at all! Openbravo Web POS can be run offline. Drivers can do their job and synchronize all the information later in the Central Office
7. Armed with his tablet, the driver will start new sales, by selecting products and/or customers, creating new customers or applying automatic or manual discounts. Discounts and other options can be securized. Peace of mind about what each driver can do!
8. Do you need to provide a receipt for the transaction? The best option in this scenario would be to use a bluetooth printer.  If card payments are possible, you could use an external payment device, integrated or not with the Web POS (see Note 1). Get maximum benefit from the solution interoperability capabilities!
9. For customers who pay later, you can use the credit sales functionality
10. At the end of the journey, your drivers will be able to close the day, thanks to the Cash Up functionality, a guided step-by-step closing process that updates all your financial accounts in the Backoffice. Full integration with the financial module!
11. Now you can replenish each truck and update their stock levels in the system (by using their associated warehouse) and be prepared for the next day!
12. In case you pay commisions to your drivers, it is really simple to calculate and process them
13. If you are also interested on a graphical information about the geographical spread of your customers, a better track of your trucks routes, or just a clear information about the customer adress you can  think on integrating with solutions like Google Maps (see Note 2)

Picture 1 : Orders in a map

Picture 2 : Customer Address

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of the Openbravo 3 package for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

New things in this package is upgraded PostgreSQL from 8.4 to 9.1 means better performance.

Installation of the package is as before and is as simple as one-two:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openbravo-isv/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openbravo-3

We also paid special attention to the smooth update from the Ubuntu 10.4 package to this new one. All you need to do is

1. Update Openbravo to MP17 in a standard way.
2. Update Ubuntu to 12.04.
3. Install the new package.

In this update the database will be migrated from 8.4 to 9.1.

The commands to restart postgres and openbravo are the same, and the port used by postgres cluster of openbravo continues the same.

You can find more information in the installation and the upgrade guide here http://wiki.openbravo.com/wiki/Installation/Ubuntu

We are interested in your feedback !