Recently we have used Embedded ERP module in one of my Website. So I thought to write my experience with the module and share it with everyone.
What is Embedded ERP?
When you are having an large Warehouse for your e-commerce website and you are following a business process to deal with your available inventory like Managing Inventory locations, Inventory in Different Warehouse, Who are the suppliers, Purchase Bills for the Inventory Items, Their current Stock etc., then it is essential to have a system which manages all these process in a methodological way. So in case of Magento, Embedded ERP is the module which integrates all above Warehouse related process with Magento backend and provide you a way to manage your Warehouse online. Module is owned by boostmyshop.com and Standard extension for the Magento community edition can be purchased for around €590 (Price may change as per vendor).
Functionality Provided by Embedded ERP
Once you install module after purchasing, below are the functionalities added to your backend.
- Inventory Management: Converts your Magento Inventory to the Warehouse based Inventory. Inventory completely depends upon the Stock movements. All stock movements are recorded in mannered way. Displays Inventory based on placed orders and available quantity.
- Warehouse Management: Adds ability to add multiple warehouses and Stock count shows available item in each of the warehouse. Rules are set to choose warehouse for an orders and orders are automatically assigned to the warehouse based on rule priorities.
- Purchase Orders: Adds ability to the create purchase orders for the Inventory items. You have option to choose Suppliers for whom Purchase orders need to be generated. You can supply tax, calculate profit based on the cost, add discount provided by your supplier and much more.
- Stock Inter transfer: If you have multiple warehouse and you are Transferring Inventory from one warehouse to the another, that can also be tracked using inter transfer.
- Stock Reconciliation: Allows you to adjust stock based on actual inventory in your warehouse by scanning Inventory with scanner and compare it with back end inventory.
- Order Preparation: Add Functionality to Mass Select orders for processing and creating packing slip, packaging slip invoice.
- Order Planning: Add functionality for planning activity for processing order. It is optional and can value can be set from the configuration.
Embedded ERP module Analysis and User Experience
Magento Inventory is completely replaced by the Embedded ERP and a new Menu item is generated to view the Inventory related information of the products. Inventory detail page display stock availability, stock reserved, warehouse wise stock values, purchase orders, suppliers, sales orders etc and give option to create new stock movement, assign new warehouse, assign new suppliers etc. Interface is easy and all fields are self explanatory. One of the good feature of the module is order processing become easy as you can select multiple items and process them simultaneously. Though they have added some new tabs in the order detail page which requires you to understand them before get used to them. But from documentation you can get idea of some of the field. If stock is not found for any order then it will be moved to stockless orders so you have to add stock and assign warehouse and then dispatch orders manually again.
Purchase Order, stock Transfer and Stock reconciliation functionalities require some time to get used to of it but once you are aware of these functionalities, it is easy to use them. One more feature of the Embedded ERP module is supply needs. If stock is over and any new sales order is placed then supply need for that much quantity is automatically generated. So you can find out stock needed for the warehouse from the supply needs. Also module has organizers for all the functionalities. So you can create and assign tasks to the different user for different functionalities.
Limitation of the module
Though some of functionality provided by module is fantastic, it has some limitation which require to customize the module which we can hope they will overcome in their future versions.
- Embedded ERP does not maintain stock added through the Product Import of Magento. As everything in the Inventory must have to be maintained through stock movements, Stock imported through import does not create any stock movement. So it will automatically remove all the stocks added through product imports.
- Inventory are not maintained when order is refunded. When you will generate credit memo for the Order, it's stock does not maintain by the ERP so item is not added back to the Inventory. So for this you will need to customize module.
- No reporting provided for the item sold by particular warehouses. Currently they do not have any reports which gives you report on item sold by particular warehouse. It is one of preferable functionality when you are having module with so many functionality. So either you need to have customization or have to wait for the Embedded ERP to provide reporting in their future upgrades
- They could have add more rules for the Automatic warehouse selection after order purchasing, like Warehouse selection based on location ( Shipping address).
So based on user experience and functionality of Embedded ERP, At the end I am happy with what they have provided and it is value for money
