Updated 20141224

This page has some dated information on it. I recommend that you start by reviewing the iDempiere Quick Start Guide. Why use iDempiere instead of ADempiere.

ADempiere Resources

ADempiere, iDempiere and Open Source ERP are quite possibly the biggest discontinuous changes and enablers for producing business efficiency and insight. ADempiere and iDempiere are not for everyone; however, if it is right for your organization, you will see the world in a more meaningful way.

The purpose of this page is to help you determine if ADempiere is right for you. Enjoy! Please provide feedback if we can make this page better in any way!

What is ADempiere?

ADempiere is a nicely featured ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. ADempiere’s most desirable characteristics are:

1. It works
2. It is free
3. Everyone in your organization can use it. You are not limited by restrictive concurrent licenses.

Who Should Use ADempiere?

Here is my description of the perfect ADempiere candidate based on my 12 years of ERP experience:

1. Organizations performing wholesale distribution and light/shopfloor manufacturing ranging between $20M and $200M in gross revenue.
2. Organizations with 20 or more users. The incremental ROI for high user counts is somewhat staggering. Here is link to qualify that statement.
3. Organizations with one or more technical resources on staff that have a decent understanding of databases and programming. Having these resources helps you maximize efficiency and frees you from the financial grips of typical ERP consultants.

How is it free?

Integrators and trainers around the world help customers go live with ADempiere. With each implementation, ADempiere gets a little better. Over the last ten years, ADempiere has grown from an obscure project with an ugly website to become a system capable of shipping 20M units per month across 200K orders and managing in excess of 15M records per year to the general ledger. The website is still pretty ugly.

How it works – Important Concepts

There are two concepts that drive the 400ish windows in ADempiere. Consequently, these are the first two windows you should open when you first evaluate ADempiere.

1. Business Partner – your list of Customers, Vendors, Employees and Partners.
2. Product – your list of all things stockable, sellable, consumable, and usable.

Most of the remaining windows support the process of buying, assembling/manufacturing and selling products and services from and to business partners.

Here is a video to help with your first look.

ADempiere Review

One of ADempiere’s greatest strengths is in supporting wholesale and web distribution. Here is a review that walks you through using ADempiere to manage buying, storing and shipping products.

ADempiere Accounting

ADempiere accounting is quite capable and somewhat complex. If you are coming from a smaller ERP or accounting system like QuickBooks, Peachtree (Sage 50) Mas 90 & 200 (Sage 100), or OpenERP, you should familiarize yourself with how ADempiere accounting works. Below is a list of articles to help you minimize the learning curve.

1. ERP Accounting Tutorial helps you understand how and what accounts ADempiere uses to buy, store and ship products (wholesale distribution). If you are coming from SAP or Oracle, the accounting system should feel familiar.
2. Multiple Companies helps you understand how documents track and consolidate transactions across multiple organizations, companies, or set of books.
3. GAAP and IFRS helps you understand how to use the accounting system to support different and even multiple reporting standards.
4. Power of the Charge helps you understand how documents map to the general ledger.
5. Credit Card Management. Even though this topic is someone specific and advanced, the video gives you a feel for how AP, AR and allocations work.
6. Open Source ROI Savings helps you understand how much a 100 person company can save by considering Open Source ERP.