xTuple's Collective Brainpower Blog

Are you running your business with PostBooks® — the core of xTuple's open source ERP — the fully-integrated business management system featuring sales, accounting, operations and CRM in a single system? If you hold a one-user license, you may have noticed a license expiration message. Single-user keys expire at the end of this month, January 2018.

xTuple open source ERP+CRM 4.11.2 final release is now available for download from xTuple's GitHub repository as well as the xTuple PostBooks® project page on SourceForge. Thanks to all who contributed to make this release possible, including our CRM enhancements sponsor, Steven Buttgereit, Larry Cartee, Lee Gibson, Chris Lappe, Scott Moore, Mike Oligny, and Scott Zuke. This release includes bug fixes and features.

My first trip to Chicago and to North America's largest convention center ( McCormick Place ) and to FABTECH (or any industrial trade show, for that matter) did not disappoint. I helped manage xTuple's FABTECH booth along with several partners and our VP sales Wally Tonra. Billed as North America’s largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event, I got to hear about...

xTuple open source ERP+CRM 4.11.1 final release is now available for download from xTuple's GitHub repository as well as the xTuple PostBooks® project page on SourceForge. Thanks to all who contributed to make this release possible, including Verlin Nooner and Scott Zuke. This release includes fixes for almost 80 bugs and a handful of minor features added. Our focus has been on improving overall quality and functionality.

xTuple open source ERP+CRM 4.11.0 final release is now available for download from GitHub as well as the xTuple open source project page on SourceForge. Thanks to all in the open source community who contributed to this release, including Daniel Pocock, Scott Moore and Steven Buttgereit. This release includes fixes for almost 170 bugs and 38 feature updates.

xTuple is excited to announce the major release of xTuple ERP+CRM version 4.11.0. Read on to learn more about some of the specific features, changes and improvements that will help you Grow Your World™ using next generation business management software. The Release Notes for xTuple 4.11.0 cover the complete list of changes. This post is all about why you should care.

For companies involved in importing, the cost of freight and duty on items purchased overseas can be quite significant. In developing a fully realized product cost to maintain profit margins, their accounting department must capture every cost of doing business associated with each product. Freight and duty are such expenditures that must be rolled into the core item cost so values such as cost of sales are reflected accordingly. Processing this manually means extra work for your back-office. Automating these calculations is much preferred, much simpler, and delivers a much more accurate “landed cost” for ...

One of the smaller, geekier features in the upcoming xTuple ERP 4.11.0 final release is the ability to write scripts on (some!) xTuple ERP desktop client *widgets*. We've long had the ability to write scripts to modify the behavior of existing windows and even write new ones, but now you'll be able to change the behavior of individual widgets. Here's the deal with widgets...

The xTuple Document Tab is the very useful way to attach files to documents and transactions in xTuple. Customers are always using it for things like attaching a copy of a Purchase Order (PO) to a Sales Order (SO). Or attaching a Customer’s logo art to the Customer record. It can come in very handy for customers who are regulated, and need to attach Certificate of Compliance to Lot of an incoming purchase of a Lot Tracked raw material. How about attaching a drawing to an Item Master?

Whether you're new to xTuple or a long-time community participant, you'll undoubtedly agree that xTuple Forums are the best place to meet other users online. It's where ideas are exchanged and your most important questions are asked — and answered (or debated!). The forums are a great resource to tap into the xTuple open source ERP global community and our shared user knowledge base. Drum roll, please ... Out with the old, in with the new! We've been listening to your feedback and...

This week, Andrey Mikheychik, xTupleCommerce’s lead developer, and I will be heading to the largest annual Drupal event in the world: DrupalCon 2017, this year held in Baltimore, Maryland. Drupal, for those who don’t know, is an open source content management system (CMS) for building websites. Our team has used it as the foundation for xTupleCommerce. Andrey and I have been working with Drupal for over a decade, and we have extended the technology in some extremely innovative ways.

It's been a while since we talked in any great detail about xTuple's roadmap for the future, and I thought this might be a good time to do so. You can always look at the near-term xTuple development plan for the next couple of releases — which will include specification links to confirmed customer-sponsored features when available.

But I'd like to take it up a notch, if I could, and...

xTuple open source ERP+CRM 4.10.1 patch release is now available for download from GitHub as well as the xTuple open source project page on SourceForge. A number of bugs have been fixed since the 4.10.0 release. Thanks to all who contributed to this release.

Here at xTuple, we're often asked, "what makes you different? Why shouldn't I go with one of the big guys?" It's a fair question, and our answer has usually revolved around open source, and how it enables us to deliver a higher quality, more flexible and less expensive solution. More recently, we've started talking about how xTuple is one of a very few systems out there with a fully-integrated Customer Web Portal.

What is Industry 4.0? Since the dawn of the first Industrial Revolution (i.e., Industry 1.0) welcomed mechanization and steam power, a numbering system was been created out of necessity to delineate each "time period." Industry 2.0 came about with mass production enabled by assembly lines. Industry 3.0 saw the age of computers and robotics in manufacturing technologies. Industry 4.0 ushers in automation and data exchange with cyber-physical systems as they communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real time, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing. Industry 4.0 creates what is today called the "smart factory." According to Forbes...

That's something we say a lot here at xTuple when people ask, " Why open source ?" Yes, we're proud to call ourselves the world's #1 open source ERP software. For us, though, open source is important because it is how we're able to make better, faster, cheaper software — not because we set out to make free software for some kind of ideological reason.

Turns out we're in good company in...

Due to a recent increase in intrusion attempts on Internet-connected business databases, we are writing to strongly encourage all our users to review the security of your PostgreSQL database. The following information will guide you through the process of updating important security settings for your database server. The following steps (described in detail below) should be taken to prevent intruders from accessing your data.

If you've been running PostBooks® under a single-user license, you may have noticed a license expiration message. Yes, it's true: single-user keys that were distributed two years ago will be expiring at the end of this month. But don't worry. New keys — now set with an annual renewal — are freely available for anyone who requests one. Here's how to get your renewal PostBooks® key now. In fact, you can get free PostBooks® licenses for up to four (4) concurrent users, personalized for your company. All you have to do is ask...

If you're an active member of the xTuple open source community, or you want to get more involved, or you're new to participating in an open source community altogether, then this post is for you. Have you ever wanted to tell us that something is missing from or not quite right in xTuple ERP? You can tell us by entering a bug report or a feature request. If you have submitted a bug or feature via incidents on our Issue Tracker, did you wonder what happened next? I recently updated...

Not too long ago, Seth McClain of The Hyde Company popped up on one of the xTuple online forums , announcing that he'd documented how to install xTuple PostBooks® and TimeTrex on the same Ubuntu server. This was not your typical forum post, where a user has a question or is asking for some needed help. Instead, this was a full-blown document describing — in specific detail — how to install and...