One of the neat things about the open source world is the ability to get your hands on an early release of new software. I'm happy to announce that the first beta of version 4.10 is now available for download and testing... and it's loaded with new features and fixes.
And that's not even the biggest news. There are two more major items coming. The first is probably our most-requested new feature — a user-customizable graphical dashboard reporting tool. You can't see it just yet, but there are a lot of "guts" for the dashboards in this beta. There are so many new features and fixes in this release, we thought it made more sense to break it up like this. Stay tuned, we'll be talking a lot more about this.
A sampling of what you'll find in 4.10 beta:
- Major enhancements to VAT support (#26693)
- By popular demand, a new, clean "simple sales order entry" form (#26833)
- Management of the super-cool xTuple Workflow system in the Desktop client (#25907)
- Multiple performance enhancements to sales order entry (including #27109, #27110)
- Ability to set a form assignment keyed on Transfer Orders (#10577)
- Allow packing list Batch to filter out holds and future scheduled orders (#7175)
- Improved credit hold management in Sales Orders (#15171)
- Porting the 1099 package into the core (#11207)
- Add ability to modify instructions in Routing (#3569)
- And the winner for oldest issue (going back to 2004!) ... Add ABC Class reporting (#2583)
The other major item is a new mobile inventory client — built with the Qt tools, not browser based, so it will run natively on mobile Windows, Android, and iOS tablets and phones. That's technically a separate piece of client software, but we're still counting it as part of the 4.10 release. And it's tightly integrated with the xTuple Workflow system mentioned above — you'll be hearing a lot more about this too!
We thought it was long past time to get the "first look" of this exciting new release out to the community, and get your feedback. We, of course, do all kinds of rigorous testing throughout the software development cycle (both automated and manual), but there's no substitute for taking new code out for a spin with your own data. (That is, a backup copy of your own data! Please don't use this, or any other beta software, in your production system.)
Thanks, as always, for your support of the world's #1 open source ERP!
Ned Lilly
In October 2001, Ned co-founded xTuple, originally called OpenMFG, with the aim of bringing the worlds of open platform software and enterprise resource planning (ERP) together to solve the unmet needs of small- to mid-sized manufacturers. In 1999, he was a co-founder of Great Bridge, an early business built around the PostgreSQL database which is also the core technology for xTuple today. Great Bridge was incubated inside Landmark Communications, a mid-sized media company where Ned directed corporate venture investments, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and startup activity. Prior to Landmark, Ned worked for a regional technology group in Washington D.C. and had a brief first career in political media — television, radio and a non-partisan news wire. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.A. from George Washington University.