APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW

This document discusses what each opentaps module does at a high level. Please refer to
individual application manuals for details.
Change Log

May 8 2006

Updated based on Jacopos comments for manufacturing

May 1 2006

Updated for opentaps 0.9

2006 Open Source Strategies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Opentaps is an suite of applications designed to help manage all aspects of a business
organizations activities, from customer acquisition to order entry to warehouse, inventory, and
manufacturing to invoices, accounting, and financial statements. It can bring together online and
physical stores, integrate your direct sales force with your warehouse and manufacturing
information, and provide up-to-the-minute financials results.
All of the applications except the Point Of Sales terminal can be accessed from a web browser.
When accessing opentaps through your browser, you will see a series of tabs for the applications:

This document will discuss what each application does.

ACCOUNTING
The accounting manager is used to manage accounting related information, including invoices,
payments, and chart of accounts. Its sub-tabs perform the following functions:
[Agreements]: manage agreements between different parties
[Billing Accounts]: manage billing accounts, which can be used by customers to charge
purchases for later payment
[Invoices] and [Payments]: manage invoices and payments from customers and to
vendors
[Transactions]: transact with credit card payment processors or gateways, including
authorize, capture, and view results
[Chart of Accounts]: view an accounting chart of accounts
[Fixed Assets]: manage settings for fixed assets such as machinery or plants
[Tax Authorities]: configure sales and use tax authorities and their rates
[Companies]: configure accounting and invoicing preferences of different companies,
including default currencies
CATALOG
The catalog manager is used to manage products and stores. Its sub-tabs are:
[Main]: brings up a search screen to look up catalogs, categories, and products. These
screens allow you to create products, set their prices, view their inventory, and put them
into categories and catalogs for sale online.
[Features]: set up product features, such as size and color.

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APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW

[Promos]: set up promotional rules, such as free shipping for orders over $100 or buy 1 of
X get 1 of Y for 50% off. You have a lot of flexibility to create very complex promotions
with the built-in promo engine.
[Price Rules]: set up rules for product pricing. You can set up pricing which is specific to
particular products, categories, and customers or dependent on quantities, etc. Like
promos, price rules can be very flexibile.
[Stores]: configure stores policies, fulfillment email, tax, and shipping rules. The system
allows you to set up multiple stores with their own policies.
[Thesaurus]: set up keyword synonyms for the search function in the online store.
[Reviews]: manage product reviews written by your online store customers.
[Configurations]: set up and manage configurable products, such as PCs or industrial
machinery, using the product configurator.

CONTENT
The content manager allows you to manage content which can be dynamically generated. The
more important sub-tabs are:
[WebSites]: configure the settings, including URL and port settings, of the websites
served up by the system
[Surveys]: create and view responses of online customer surveys
FACILITIES
The facility manager is used to manage warehouses, inventory, and shipments:
[Facilities]: create or update facilities, view inventory, transfer inventory, record physical
inventory variance
[Facility Groups]: define groups for associating facilities together
[Shipments]: create and view incoming and outgoing shipments to the facilities
FINANCIALS
The financials module performs general ledger posting for other applications in the background
and offers the following user screens:
[Receivables] and [Payables]: Accounts Receivables (AR) and Accounts Payables (AP)
reports, including statements, balances, and invoice aging
[Transactions]: review, create, and post general ledger transactions and manage
accounting time periods
[Reports]: financial reports, including trial balance, balance sheet, income statement,
cash flow statement, inventory valuation, and tax summary
MANUFACTURING
The manufacturing application is used to control manufacturing processes and is broken out into
the following sub-tabs:
[JobShop]: Manage production runs or work orders to manufacture products, including
starting production runs, issuing raw material, recording steps, and issuing finished
inventory
[Routing] and [Routing Task]: Create and manage tasks for production runs

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APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW

[Calendar]: set up calendars with capacity information for fixed assets. This information
is then used to determine the availability of fixed assets when production runs are
created.
[Bill Of Materials]: set up bill of materials for manufacturing
[MRP]: MRP stands for material resources planning. This tab can be used to create
requirements for purchasing or production automatically based on the analysis of
materials needed to fulfill incoming orders.
[Shipment Plans]: are used to schedule multiple orders into a Shipment before they are
produced and then shipped out.
[Approve Requirements]: is used to select requirements created by MRP or other
processes and approve them en masse. Requirements for production would lead to
production runs automatically. Requirements for purchasing can be included in
purchase orders during order entry.
[Reports]: view results of MRP analysis

MARKETING
The marketing application is used to track marketing campaigns, such as advertising, direct mail,
affiliates, and pay-per-click campaigns. Its sub-tabs are:
[Data Source]: configure sources which could be associated with customers
[Marketing Campaign]: set up marketing campaigns
[Tracking]: set up specific affiliates or PPC campaign tracking codes
[Segment]: used for segmenting customers or prospects
[Contact List]: create a mailing list of parties (customers, employees, etc.) for email or
other communication campaigns
[Reports]: conversion and order reports for the campaigns and tracking codes
ORDER
The order manager is used to create quotes and orders, including both sales and purchase
orders, and manage returns and inventory requirements. Its sub-tabs are:
[Requests]: requests are used to track customers requests for quotes and other
information.
[Quotes]: create and manage customer quotes, including sending them as emails and
PDFs
[Order List]: show a list of orders by status (created, approved, completed) or type (sales
or purchase)
[Order Entry]: create purchase or sales orders. Can also be used to create a shopping
list of items for later re-ordering.
[Returns]: create and manage returns from customers. (Currently return to vendors is
not supported yet.)
[Requirements]: create and manage inventory requirements due to orders.
[Order Tasks]: used to show tasks to be performed for orders
[Reports]: reports on sales and purchase orders by product, channel, store, customer,
etc.
PARTY

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APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW
A party is any organization and person, and parties can be customers, vendors, or employees.
Note that one party could take many roles in the system, such as Customer and Supplier, at the
same time, and any party be related to any other party in any fashion.
The [Party] application can be used to manage parties, their roles, relationships, security settings,
and communications between them. Its tabs are:
[Find]: lookup parties by name or user login, or with address and telephone number
information
[Create]: create new parties such as customers or employees
[Comm]: view and manage communication events between parties
[Visits]: view visit history of parties during their past online sessions
[Classifications]: create classifications of parties

[Security]: manage security settings for parties. Each party can have multiple user logins
with unique security groups of operational permissions assigned to each login. For more
information, please see: http://www.opensourcestrategies.com/ofbiz/security.php

SHARK
Shark is used to manage XPDL workflows using the Enhydra Shark (shark.enhydra.org) workflow
manager. Note that the Shark integration is not actively maintained, so Shark is turned off by
default in opentaps, and you might not see this tab.
WEBTOOLS
Webtools is used to monitor and manage the server and troubleshooting and maintenance. It can
be used to do the following:
View and clear cached data
Change debugging log message output for troubleshooting
View data through [Entity Data Maintenance] and access the database directly with
[Entity SQL Processor]
Import and export data (XML Data tools) in the entity XML format
Schedule jobs
View services (business logic components) available with [Service Reference]
Create and edit time periods for organizations
WORKEFFORT
The workeffort application is used to manage tasks, calendars, and timesheets.
ECOMMERCE
The ecommerce application is an out-of-the-box online store which does not show up on the tab
bars. It is designed to be a consumer-facing online store which supports online ordering, crosssells and up-sells, promotional offers, shopping lists, customer and order history information, and
advanced features such as customer uploaded content and in-store gift cards.
Multiple stores, each with their own catalogs, products, pricing, shipping, and tax policies could
be set up and run off different ecommerce webapps on different servers. The stores and their
products are configured in the Catalog Manager application.

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APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW
The ecommerce application can be used as is, customized to your look-and-feel requirements,
or used as a template for creating your own store. This is what the out-of-the-box ecommerce
application looks like:

POINT OF SALES
The Point Of Sales is designed to run as an independent terminal to take orders in a retail store
with a touchscreen terminal, a scanner, a POS printer. It can run either with an embedded
database and periodically synchronize product and order data with a department, store, or
corporate server or directly use a database at another server. This is what the POS terminal
screen looks like:

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APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW

CRM/SFA
The CRM/SFA application is designed for sales and customer service representatives. Key
functions of the CRM/SFA application are:
Manage leads, contacts, and accounts
Create sales teams for accounts
Qualify and convert leads into accounts and contacts
Create sales opportunities and track them through closing
Create quotes
Enter and view sales orders
Manage and log activities such as meetings, calls, and emails
Generate sales forecasts.
Special permissions can be configured for the CRM/SFA application. This is what the CRM
application looks like:

2006 Open Source Strategies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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APPLICATIONS OVERVIEW

2006 Open Source Strategies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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