OpenERP can build a new breed of business applications, more modular, more customer-friendly, fully web-based, which others cannot due to the heritage of their legacy systems.
OpenERP is a comprehensive suite of business applications including Sales, CRM, Project management, Warehouse management, Manufacturing, Financial management, and Human Resources, just to name a few. More than 1000 OpenERP modules are available from the OpenERP Apps market place (http://apps.openerp.com/).
The key to continued business success is effective and integrated Accounting & Financial Management, and that is precisely the main topic of the book you are reading. OpenERP’s Accounting features are flexible and highly developed to assist you in managing all aspects of financial management.
OpenERP offers you integration with your sales & purchase cycle, so that invoices can easily be generated for the accountant’s review according to various criteria. This way, the accountant can skip most of the encoding and dedicate himself to Financial Analysis and Reporting. OpenERP’s management dashboards and extensive Analysis reporting allows the financial staff to keep a clear view on Customers and Suppliers, as well as on the company’s financial status.
OpenERP’s Accounting is totally integrated into all of the company’s functions, whether it is general, analytic or budgetary accounting. OpenERP’s accounting function is double-entry and supports multiple companies, as well as multiple currencies and languages. Moreover, the application offers a lot of accounting features to both accountants and non-accountants.
Accounting that is integrated throughout all of the company’s processes greatly simplifies the work of entering accounting data, because most of the entries are generated automatically while other documents are being processed. You can avoid entering data twice in OpenERP, which is commonly a source of errors and delays.
So OpenERP’s accounting is not just for financial reporting – it is also the anchor-point for many of the company’s management processes. To learn more about accounting integration with other business applications of OpenERP, we refer to our books about Logistics Management, Manufacturing and CRM.
Integration with other business applications also heavily reduces the manual encoding of supplier and customer invoices, because they can be generated automatically from purchase and sales orders.
The specific and easy-to-use Invoicing system in OpenERP allows you to keep track of your accounting, even when you are not an accountant. It provides an easy way to follow up your suppliers and customers. You could use this simplified accounting when your (external) account keeps your books, but you would like to keep track of payments. No accounting knowledge is required!
Of course, OpenERP also allows accountants to do their job in a flexible, convenient way. Through Journal Items, entries can be recorded quickly, because the system will automatically propose counterpart accounts.
OpenERP provides integrated analytical accounting, which enables management by business activity or project and provides very detailed levels of analysis. You can control your operations according to actual management needs, rather than based on the charts of accounts that generally meet only statutory requirements.
OpenERP now also allows you to keep track of your Cash Moves through the new OpenERP Cash Box, which allows you to enter incoming and outgoing cash transactions. The balance of your cash box will even be checked against the number of coins in it!
Asset management through predefined depreciation rules, directly from the invoice: a great way to keep track of your investments. Asset entries can automatically be posted in the corresponding journal and according to the accounts specified. Analyse your assets by grouping and filtering relevant data in various ways. Of course, with the Asset Management application you can depreciate according to the pro rata temporis rules.
Budgets can be managed in OpenERP as well, both on general accounts and analytic accounts. You can define your own budgetary positions to tell the system for which accounts you want to keep a budget, giving you the freedom to keep budgets on any kind of account. Associated graphs and budget reporting allow you to get a good view on what is to come.
Multi-currency principles in OpenERP will be described in a dedicated chapter. Invoice your customers in various currencies and clearly distinguish between exchange rate differences and write-off entries.
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