Business Example

Configure a system that enables you to:

• buy products from a supplier,
• stock the products in a warehouse,
• sell these products to a customer.

The system should support all aspects of invoicing, payments to suppliers and receipts from customers.

Basic Settings

For working out the business case you will have to model:

• the suppliers,
• the customers,
• some products,
• inventory for dispatch,
• a purchase order,
• a sale order,
• invoices,
• payments.

To test the system, you will need at least one supplier, one customer, one product, a warehouse, a minimal chart of accounts and a bank account.

Get your Database Up and Running with Demo Data

Use the technique outlined in Database Creation to create a new database, openerp_ch03 . This database will be free of data and contain the least possible amount of functionality as a starting point. You will need to know your super administrator password for this – or you will have to find somebody who does have it to create this seed database. You will not be able to use the openerp_ch01 or openerp_ch02 databases that you might have created so far in this book because they both contain demonstration data.

Start the database creation process from the Welcome page by clicking Databases and then completing the following fields on the Create Database form, as shown in Creating a blank database:

• Super admin password : by default it is admin , if you or your system administrator have not changed it,
• New database name : openerp_ch03 ,
• Load Demonstration data checkbox: not checked (this step is very important, but catches out many people),
• Default Language : English (US) ,
• Administrator password : admin (because it is the easiest to remember at this stage, but obviously completely insecure),
• Confirm password : admin .

Creating a blank database

Then click Create to create the database and move to the setup screen Setting up a blank database - first screen.

Setting up a blank database - first screen

After a short delay you are connected to the new openerp_ch03 database as user admin with the password you gave it. You will have to go through the Setup wizard in steps:

When you click on the button Skip Configuration Wizards, you can have the following screen. Then you can start working with this minimal database.

Starting the minimal database

If you click the Start Configuration button, OpenERP guides you through a series of steps to: Configure Your Interface - proceed with the default Simplified (the other option is Extended); and Configure Your Company Information - enter a Company Name and select a Currency for your company. Then OpenERP helps you to install various applications with different functionality through the following wizard:

Configuring a database with other applications and functionality when you select Extended view option

Fit your Needs

All of the functional needs are provided by core modules from OpenERP. You need to just decide which functionality you want in your system. Click on the Check Box of the corresponding application in the wizard Configuration wizard used to install the required applications when you select the Simplified view option.

For this instance, we need the following applications:

• Warehouse Management (the stock module),
• Accounting & Finance (the account module),
• Purchase Management (the purchase module),
• Sales Management (the sale module).

For that, the configuration wizard should be like this:

Configuration wizard used to install the required applications when you select the Simplified view option

Skip the step that asks you to Configure Your Accounting Chart. After you follow through the complete wizard, you can have a system that can perform all the required functionality.

Database with all required functionality for this example

If you want to reconfigure your system, then click on the Reconfigure link that appears in the header of Database with all required functionality for this example.