Recent economic conditions have accelerated the trend to bring open source principles to business software. Sourceforge publishes a Top 25 Projects at the end of each month, and as of August 31, the top 3 positions were all held by open source ERP programs.

The top of the list was PostBooks ERP & CRM by xTuple. This is also the product that Friendly Systems, after reviewing many of the open source ERP options for several months, has decided to become involved with.

There are two business models for open source – some make the software completely free, and others, like xTuple, have a dual license model. xTuple PostBooks Edition software is free, and the Standard and Manufacturing Editions are commercial offerings with both subscription and perpetual license pricing. The commercial editions offer additional features, but even the free PostBooks Edition is a true mid-market product. Though it has the features, such as multi-lingual and multi-currency, to be used internationally (and it is), xTuple is produced in the United States, and there is a company behind it, not just a community of programmers.

See our web page about xTuple for more information.

Sage offers many extended solution enhancements to its Mas 90 and Mas 200 software. Here are some examples:

AP Cash Basis Accounting and History Posting
AP Distribution Table in Invoice Entry: Pre-defined tables of GL acct’s and percentages to allocate expenses
AP Electronic Payment – post check entries to NACHA format files
AP Multi-Company Aging and Multi-Company Vendor Synchronization
AR Ship to Addresses (if you aren’t using the Sales Order system) to allow multiple ship-to addresses
AR National Accounts – allows Bill-To Master-Customers
AR Multi-Company AR Customer Synchronization
Bank Rec Multi Company Bank Reconciliation
Bank Rec Positive Pay Export
Custom Office: Add User Defined Fields to Inventory Lot and Serial numbers
GL Multi-Company GL Account Synchronization
Inventory – Add Batch Processing for Inventory Transactions Entry
Inventory – Enhanced Alias Item Search and Entry
Inventory – Lot and Serial number Search and Inquiry
Payroll – Tax and Deduction Liability – Automatically create AP invoices for Payroll Employer Tax checks and “Other” deductions.
Payroll – Direct Deposit Interface puts direct deposits into NACHA files
Sales Order – Authorized Purchase Control by Customer or State
Sales Order – Multiple Sales Orders on Single Invoice
Sales Order – Commissions by Line Item – Override rates on Orders and Invoices on a line item basis.

Call Friendly Systems if you have a specific situation and we will research to see if there are existing Extended Solutions that can work for you.

What is Open Source Software, and what does it mean for small and medium businesses?

“Open Source” means that the source code for the software is freely available for review and modification. Some open source software is developed strictly by a group of volunteers, but there are many major projects which have corporate sponsors. For example, Sun has long financed the development of OpenOffice, a suite of word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and database programs very similar, and mostly compatible with, Microsoft Office, and MySQL, a SQL database that is probably the most common database in use on web sites in the world.

The word most commonly associated with “open source” is “free”. Free (as in “freedom”) because you have the source code and can make (or have someone make for you) modifications to suit your exact needs. Some open source software is also free as in “free beer”. OpenOffice and MySQL both fall into this category as well. Anyone can download, install and use either of those programs without paying Sun any license fees. Sun (and other companies) offer support services for a fee.

So if you need training, or need to have someone on call if problems occur, that is available, just like with proprietary commercial software. Using open source software does NOT mean you are on your own. Nor does it mean that you should expect services for the software will be free.
What does this mean for your business?

For one thing, you could test out OpenOffice. It looks and functions almost exactly like Microsoft Office 2003, and you can have both installed on the same machine while you try it out. Unless you have very complex documents or make extensive use of macros, you should be able to switch with no problem, and stop paying Microsoft Office license fees. I have even found one case where OpenOffice actually works better than Excel 2003 in opening exported spreadsheet from Crystal Reports.

One of the largest gatherings of open source software is at Sourceforge, a website which hosts software projects for developers. You can search for software there. You can also see some of the software that we use ourselves.

How do you know item what price will be used for a customer? How can you fine-tune your pricing by customer, by volume, by season?

Each time a sales order or invoice is entered, the system checks the customer, date, item, and quantity to determine which pricing method to use.
The following hierarchy shows you all the possible mechanisms and how they are applied:
Promotion pricing if a sales promotion is in effect for the current date and the promotion price is less than the calculated price. (See the Sale Info tab in Inventory Maintenance).
Contract pricing may apply for the customer for this item.
Item pricing for this item based on the customer price level.
Item pricing for this item based on the standard price level.
Pricing for the item price code based on the customer price level.
Pricing for the item price code based on the standard price level .
Sage MAS 90/200 gives you many tools to help you refine your pricing structure! Call our support-line at 678-273-4010 ext 2 if we can help.

Friendly Systems One-Click Picking Sheet Printing enhancement for Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 lets you print a Picking Sheet for an order with just one click directly from the Sales Order Entry screen. This allows you to quickly print a picking document that can be used to get the goods out the door. The system automatically returns to the Sales Order Entry screen so you can continue with the next order. Contact us for further information at 678-273-4010 ext 4.