We are redesigning the Sales Order flow. This will be done from scratch, starting with customer stories, user research and process modeling. Then we´ll produce mockups that will be shared with you for feedback. The redesign will use 3.0 GUI design patterns and technology.
I´d like to ask you to share ideas, requirements, suggestions and pains here.
In a hurry to implement Openbravo? Join our new Basic Technical Training and get the job done. Here's the scoop.
The trend of moving trainings online continues throughout the whole industry. Two of our flagship courses have been available online for a while now, namely the Basic Functional and the Advanced Development Training. We've received very positive feedback about the convenience of these courses but also identified some room for improvement.
Instead of just publishing the missing link between the two online courses, we've taken the opportunity and completely revamped the former Basic Development course. Here's what's new in the new Basic Technical Training, as it is called today:
new content targeted at implementation consultants with no programming requirements
less theory, more exercises and real examples
more interactivity through live chat sessions with the instructor
available in all time-zones through multiple scheduled live sessions, forums, logs and recordings
shorter and more intense 2-week schedule
available online or as a classroom course
reduced online price of 999EUR (zone dependant)
We've listened to our partners and the students of the existing online courses and aimed at an even more attractive and convenient online format. We hope we will leave you with no reason or excuse to not learn how to implement Openbravo ERP :)
Take a look at the schedule of all the courses or read the specific course guide with more details on this new training.
We hope to see you in the chatroom! Rok Lenardic Openbravo Training Manager
Openbravo is pleased to announce the availability of the Advanced Payables and Receivables Management module.
Advanced Payables and Receivables Management offers a completely new user experience that simplifies and automates the business processes around receiving and making payment, including the reconciliation of those events with bank statements.
Some of the key features of this module include:
Easy financial account management:You can now define and administer all of your financial accounts - such as bank and cash accounts - in a single window and use that window to view and manage all of the transactions that affect the balance of those accounts.
Automatic bank reconciliation: Having an automated bank reconciliation process can save a business man-days of effort, particularly in businesses that have high transactional volumes. The Openbravo Advanced Payables and Receivables module supports both manual and automatic reconciliation of bank statements. The automatic reconciliation process allows a bank file to be imported in either a standard format or, using a customizable modular extension, in a specific format for a particular bank. Additionally, the rules for matching can be defined (using either a standard or customized modular extension) giving full control over what is considered a "match". This process also supports the concept of "strong" matches or "fuzzy" matches, allowing a user to further automate the steps that they take in either accepting or rejecting a proposed match. Imported bank statements are stored within Openbravo and can be viewed as necessary.
Make and receive payments against order or invoice: The ability to make or receive payments against order increases the flexibility of businesses to agree credit terms that appropriate for their customers, particularly in industries where cash flow is critical. Transactions against orders are automatically inherited by the resulting invoices, allowing invoices to be closed quickly and easily.
Flexible process configuration: The accounting flows associated with the process of making or receiving payment are fully configurable to match your own business needs and preferences. This includes control over whether an intermediate financial account is used (supporting "cash in transit" accounting) and which business event triggers the recognition of cash in your Openbravo Financial Account (for example, having the posting of cash from an Intermediate "cash in transit" Account to the Bank Account driven by the reconciliation process). Additionally it is possible to drive posting events based on business events. For example, if you issue sales invoices in a business scenario where customers pay "on the spot" (for example, cash sales from a warehouse), you now have the flexibility to have Openbravo automatically post a receipt of payment when closing the invoice. This can save significant time at the sales desk and reduce administration costs.
Extensible payment methods: The list of payment methods in Openbravo can be extended to support a customers business needs. A new payment method can be associated with a module that defines the format in which the payment is to be made. Openbravo includes example payment formats, but business partners can easily configure their own payment methods and associate them to payment format modules, that they can create, supporting local business practice.
Automatic Payment Proposal: In order to simplify the payment process, the Advanced Payables and Receivables Management module supports the creation of payment proposals based on a number of flexible criteria, review and adjust, and then have those payments automatically created in the configurable format associated with that payment method. Payments can be made in full or in part, or removed from the proposal completely (resulting in them being included in the next proposal).
Multiple due dates: An invoice can have multiple due dates associated with it, resulting in a payment schedule. Each payment schedule is then referred to by the payment proposal when suggesting which business partner should be paid on a particular date and the amount due.
Transparent invoice status: The status of an invoice an invoice is clearly displayed, showing the amount due and the number of payments received or made.
Fees and charges management: As part of the bank reconciliation process it is often necessary to add transactions, such as bank fees and interest charges, that appear on the bank statement that are not yet reflected in the Openbravo financial account being reconciled. This module supports the easy addition of such transactions to your financial account.
Reconciliation Statements: The Advanced Payables and Receivables Management module includes both detailed and summary reconciliation statements for review and approval.
Please note that Advanced Payables and Receivables Management module is a commercial module initially available under a Controlled Release. This new module offers significant new breadth and depth in business critical processes, and, while this module has been through our internal quality assurance program, we also acknowledge that it is possible that users wishing to take advantage of these new processes may also wish to use the solution in ways that we may not have envisaged.
As of today, we encourage all partners to download and evaluate this new functionality.
Partners interested in deploying this module for new customers are recommended to thoroughly test each customer's business processes before deploying into a production environment. Additionally, any partner planning to deploy this Controlled Release solution in a production environment is asked to inform Openbravo before doing so. Where Openbravo is informed of an implementation project in advance, then Openbravo will provide enhanced support to that partner during that implementation; informing Openbravo in advance will ensure that any issue that may arise during the implementation phase is correctly prioritized through our Support infrastructure.
Finally, we currently recommend not to deploy this module for existing production customers as the module permanently modifies core behaviour and, once installed, does not provide any roll back capability. A version of the module that provides a safe upgrade for existing customers will be available in the coming months.
A very important piece of documentation for developers working with Openbravo ERP is the data model reference description. This documentation has been available in the wiki since the launch of 2.50 but not many people are aware of it.
One of the cool feature of this reference is the fact that it is an active document that allows you to explore the Openbravo data model directly from the wiki, without the need to open additional tools such as PgAdmin.
Tables are grouped in packages of functionally related entities; for example, all the tables related to invoices are grouped in org.openbravo.model.common.invoice
Each table - for example C_INVOICE - contains a full description of all of its columns
Columns implementing a foreign key - for example C_BPARTNER_ID on C_INVOICE, provide a link that allows to drill through the key to the foreign table
Columns implementing a validation - for example PARTNER_ADDRESS on C_INVOICE, provide details of the validation logic right in the column description
Columns associated to a callout - for example TRANSACTION_DOCUMENT on C_INVOICE - provide a direct link to the source code of the Java class implementing the logic of the callout.
This is a very valuable tool that can save hours of investigation and increase the productivity of many Openbravo developers. Take it for a spin.
Do you need to enter sales orders fast? Not a problem with Openbravo ERP and the Order Multiline module by Phidias.
French Openbravo partner Phidias was challenged by a customer that required to enter up to 30 sales order lines per minutes in their Openbravo ERP installation and responded by developing the Order Multiline module.
This module adds a new entry in the Sales Management menu that gives users access to a window that has been optimized to achieve rapid data entry. From there, you can:
Enter sales orders in a single window, master detail style;
Enter a simplified sales order header;
Rapidly add sales order lines, with minimal typing and no need to use the mouse;
Select products by partially entering the product name and letting the system auto-complete them;
Remove any unnecessary order line;
Complete the sales order.
Order Multiline is licensed under GPL v.2 and is available in the Central Repository to any Openbravo ERP 2.50 user.
If you need to speed up your sales order entry, give a try to this very cool module by Phidias.
We are now looking at the first tab in the Openbravo ERP 3.0 GUI. It will contain a My Openbravo workspace. This should contain a set of portlets/widgets displaying metrics, links, applications or charts. Think of a portal similar to iGoogle, NetVibes and My Yahoo! where the user can decide what to show.
Left column is filled with links to recent documents and views. Clicking them opens a new tab and takes the user there. Recent views also have Create New links.
Below that we see two links that let you add widgets. The link Add Library Widget most likely opens a listbox with the available widgets. The link Add Feed Widget opens a dialog where the user enters a URL pointing at an RSS feed.
What´s in the widget is not really the important point now, but I have created some examples that you can find in the presentation mentioned below.
In the widget header there are two buttons: maximize and edit. Edit will pop out a little green menu that shows a number of options to move, edit and delete the widget. The first menu option Edit this widget will invoke the bigger green panel (as shown in the Invoiced widget) where attributes can be modified. In this case the user can set the time range.
Consultants should be able to create (or modify) widgets where grids are shown with a number of columns/attributes, possibly cheered up by a graph. The consultant then also determines which attributes can be set (when the user clicks edit).
As a first set, I would propose to produce at least one grid-chart widget, an RSS feed widget, alerts and saved searches.
Find a more elaborate PDF presentation and leave your feedback here.
You can now define and administer all of your financial accounts - such as bank and cash accounts - in a single window and use that window to view and manage all of the transactions that affect the balance of those accounts.
The Openbravo Advanced Payables and Receivables module supports both manual and automatic reconciliation of bank statements. The automatic reconciliation process allows a bank file to be imported in either a standard format or, using a customizable modular extension, in a specific format for a particular bank. Additionally, the rules for matching can be defined (using either a standard or customized modular extension) giving full control over what is considered a "match". This process also supports the concept of "strong" matches or "fuzzy" matches, allowing a user to further automate the steps that they take in either accepting or rejecting a proposed match. Imported bank statements are stored within Openbravo and can be viewed as necessary.
The ability to make or receive payments against order increases the flexibility of businesses to agree credit terms that appropriate for their customers, particularly in industries where cash flow is critical. Transactions against orders are automatically inherited by the resulting invoices, allowing invoices to be closed quickly and easily.
This includes control over whether an intermediate financial account is used (supporting "cash in transit" accounting) and which business event triggers the recognition of cash in your Openbravo Financial Account (for example, having the posting of cash from an Intermediate "cash in transit" Account to the Bank Account driven by the reconciliation process). Additionally it is possible to drive posting events based on business events. For example, if you issue sales invoices in a business scenario where customers pay "on the spot" (for example, cash sales from a warehouse), you now have the flexibility to have Openbravo automatically post a receipt of payment when closing the invoice. This can save significant time at the sales desk and reduce administration costs.
the creation of payment proposals based on a number of flexible criteria, review and adjust, and then have those payments automatically created in the configurable format associated with that payment method. Payments can be made in full or in part, or removed from the proposal completely (resulting in them being included in the next proposal).
Reconciliation Statements: The Advanced Payables and Receivables Management module includes both detailed and summary reconciliation statements for review and approval.
We are now looking at the first tab in the Openbravo ERP 3.0 GUI. It will contain a My Openbravo workspace. This should contain a set of portlets/widgets displaying metrics, links, applications or charts. Think of a portal similar to iGoogle, NetVibes and My Yahoo! where the user can decide what to show.
