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Know your ERP before you buy it
Practical guides from our consultants, written for business owners and managers. Use the tools, read the comparisons, and come to the first meeting better prepared than most.
Is your business ready for ERP?
Businesses rarely decide to buy an ERP. They reach a point where the old way stops working. Tick each statement that is true for you today.
Tally or ERPNext?
Tally is excellent accounting software, and many of our clients ran on it for years. The question is whether accounting is all you need the system to do.
| Area | Tally | ERPNext |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Accounting, with inventory and statutory compliance around it. | The whole business: accounting is one module among many that share data. |
| Manufacturing | Basic bills of materials and manufacturing entries. | Production planning, work orders, job cards, routing, subcontracting and job costing. |
| Sales and CRM | Orders and invoicing. | Leads, opportunities, quotations, orders, delivery and invoicing in one chain. |
| Quality and traceability | Batch details on stock items. | Inspections tied to transactions, with batch and serial traceability end to end. |
| Approvals | Limited, mostly through user rights. | Multi-level approval workflows on any document. |
| Access | Desktop application, with remote and browser access to reports. | Fully web-based. Works in a browser and on mobile, from anywhere. |
| Customization | Through TDL, by specialist developers. | Custom fields, forms, reports and workflows from the screen; deeper changes through open-source code. |
| Licensing | Paid licence. | Open source, with no licence fee per user. You pay for hosting, implementation and support. |
| Best for | Businesses whose main need is accounting and GST compliance. | Businesses that want sales, stores, production and accounts connected. |
Already on Tally and thinking of moving? See our Tally to ERPNext migration service.
What moves in a migration, and what stays behind
A good migration is not a copy of everything. It is a clean start with the data you need, proven correct before you rely on it.
Masters move
Chart of accounts, customers, suppliers, items, price lists, warehouses and employees. This is also the moment to remove duplicates and dead records.
Opening balances move
Ledger balances, unpaid customer and supplier bills, and stock quantities with values, as on the cutover date.
History is a choice
Old transactions can be migrated, but often it is wiser to keep the old system available for reference and start fresh.
Assess
We review your existing data: how much there is, how clean it is and what the new system needs.
Clean and map
Duplicates are merged, gaps are filled, and every old field is mapped to its place in ERPNext.
Trial load
Data is loaded into a test system first, so problems surface where they cost nothing.
Reconcile
The trial balance, stock value and outstanding totals in ERPNext are matched against the old books.
Cut over
On the agreed date, final balances are loaded and the business starts transacting in ERPNext.
How long will an implementation take?
Any honest answer starts with "it depends". These are the seven things it depends on. After an initial requirement analysis we give you a practical roadmap and an estimated timeline.
- Size of the organization. More companies, branches and warehouses mean more setup.
- Number of users. More people to train and more roles to define.
- Number of modules. Accounts and stock alone go faster than a full manufacturing rollout.
- Process complexity. Standard processes configure quickly. Unusual ones need design.
- Customization. Each custom report, form or workflow adds development and testing.
- Integrations. Connecting other software depends on what those systems allow.
- Data migration. Clean data moves quickly. Messy data needs cleaning first.
The go-live checklist
Twelve things that should be true before you switch your business to a new ERP. Your ticks are saved in this browser, so you can come back to the list.
ERP glossary
The terms you will hear in an ERP project, in plain language.
- AMC
- Annual maintenance contract. A yearly agreement for support, fixes and upkeep of your ERP.
- Batch
- A quantity of an item produced or received together, tracked under one number for traceability and expiry.
- Bill of materials (BOM)
- The recipe for a product: every raw material, quantity and operation needed to make it.
- Chart of accounts
- The structured list of all ledgers in which a company records its money.
- Cutover
- The moment a business stops using the old system and starts transacting in the new one.
- DocType
- ERPNext's word for a type of document or record, such as Sales Order or Item.
- E-invoice
- A GST invoice registered on the government portal, which returns a unique reference number and QR code.
- E-way bill
- The electronic document required under GST for moving goods above a set value.
- ERP
- Enterprise resource planning. One system that runs and connects the core functions of a business.
- Frappe Framework
- The open-source web framework on which ERPNext and Frappe CRM are built.
- Go-live
- The day the new ERP becomes the system of record for daily work.
- Job card
- The record of one operation on the shop floor: who did it, on which machine, and how long it took.
- Material request
- An internal request to buy, transfer or manufacture an item.
- Opening balance
- The value of each ledger, stock item or unpaid bill on the day the new system starts.
- Purchase receipt
- The record of goods received from a supplier, often called a GRN. It increases stock.
- Role and permission
- Rules that decide what each user can see, create, edit or approve.
- Stock ledger
- The running record of every stock movement, in quantity and value.
- UAT
- User acceptance testing. Your own team tests the system with real scenarios before go-live.
- Work order
- An instruction to produce a set quantity of an item, which tracks material used and output made.
- Workflow
- The defined stages and approvals a document passes through, such as draft, approved, rejected.
No term matches that search. Ask us directly.
Book a free ERP consultation
Tell us how your business runs today. We will show you where ERPNext fits, what it would take, and what it would cost.