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 integrate the open source TimeTrex payroll package with the open source PostBooks® ERP (enterprise resource planning) application.
Granted, some of this ground had already been covered by two xTuple University videos. One, by Mike Atherton, explains how to set up a web-enabled server. The other, by David Beauchamp, provides details on the TimeTrex/PostBooks® integration, which David also authored the integration package for. However, Seth's forum post — which he later converted into a contributed article for xTupleU — managed to combine both strains from these videos into one thread, providing a set of complete written instructions for anyone who prefers consuming information in that format.
In this season of giving, I decided to sit down with Seth (virtually-speaking) and learn more about him and his reasons for "giving back." What follows is the transcript of the interview we conducted over email.
Q: Can you tell us about the company where you work, The Hyde Company? Your website says you specialize in wireless messaging solutions for carriers. Can you describe what that means in more detail?
The Hyde Company specializes in installed messaging solutions for wireless service providers. We are a SMS (text messaging) and MMS (picture messaging) vendor for cellular telephone companies. Feel free to read more about us on our website: http://www.hydeco.com
Q: How do wireless end-user customers interact with your solutions?
Whenever someone sends a text or picture message from their cellphone, the message travels from the phone, through the cellular network, and into a product like our SMSC or MMSC for processing. A short message service center (SMSC) like ours is necessary to allow people with cellphones to send and receive text messages. If everything is working properly, people texting on their phones never notice our products exist.
Q: What is your role at the company and how — if at all — were you involved in the company's search for an open source ERP solution?
Technically my role is "Programmer Analyst," but we all wear many hats here. I was involved heavily in our search for an open source ERP product like xTuple. There were closed source solutions available, but we decided that a cross platform, open source solution with the option of paid vendor support would work best for us.
Q: Can you give us some background on your company's decision to embrace open source ERP? Were you using a different ERP system previously, or something else?
We were using an accounting package that had been written in-house that was starting to show its age. We needed to migrate to something a bit more modern and with fewer barriers for use.
xTuple PostBooks® allows us to avoid vendor lock-in in many ways. We aren't locked into using a specific operating system, since both the client and the server work on Windows, Linux or macOS. Unlike many free and open source software (FOSS) solutions, xTuple offers support even for people using the free Community edition.
xTuple even gives us the freedom to avoid vendor lock-in from xTuple themselves by making the product open source. If xTuple were to make business decisions that the community vehemently disagreed with, the community would be able to fork the product and leave xTuple behind (a la OpenOffice vs LibreOffice and MySQL vs MariaDB). I don't expect or want this to happen, but having that type of control over vendor lock-in while also being offered support is almost unheard of.
Q: I understand The Hyde Company is currently live in production on xTuple PostBooks®. Do you have any "lessons learned" or suggestions to share from your implementation?
If you're thinking about using xTuple for your business or at home, give the free trial demo a try. You can play with it as much as you want, and even have it working exactly the way you want before purchasing it. I really embrace this model for demos, since it is very similar to the model we at The Hyde Company use when selling our Spatch SMS and MMS products.
Q: How long have you been live on xTuple PostBooks®? How are things going so far?
We've had xTuple installed and running since October 2016. We're currently using both systems side by side and if everything continues to go well, we will stop using our old system on January 1st 2017.
There were a few hurdles certainly, but the community is great both on IRC and on the [xTuple] forums.
Q: Do certain departments use the ERP more than others?
Currently just our accounting staff and those who want to run accounting reports. We certainly aren't using xTuple to its fullest extent, yet.
Q: Is your company using all the available modules? Which modules would you say get the most use, and why?
At the moment we are only using the accounting modules, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Accounts Receivable. It is possible that we might end up using the Sales or CRM modules in the future.
We're also using the Payroll add-on freely available from the xTuple Marketplace.
Q: What is the current status of your TimeTrex integration? What made you pick TimeTrex over other options, and what is it replacing?
We're currently using TimeTrex to generate payroll, pay stubs, and print pay checks. TimeTrex appears to give us massive flexibility for future corporate changes, but we're currently using just the most basic of its features.
There doesn't seem to be much to offer in the way of FOSS payroll solutions. While evaluating xTuple, I learned that TimeTrex existed and that there was a method for importing TimeTrex data into xTuple.
Q: We appreciated the article you contributed to xTupleUniversity describing how to install and connect TimeTrex and xTuple PostBooks®. What prompted you to share this information with the xTuple community?
Since we're using the free Community edition of xTuple PostBooks®, I wanted to contribute a little back to the community. I also wanted to document the process thoroughly for our internal use, in case we ever needed to go through it again.
While searching for a payroll and accounting package for our company, pairing TimeTrex with xTuple seemed to be the best FOSS option, and I hope that others will find benefit from the article.
Q: Does your company use any other open source tools besides xTuple PostBooks® and TimeTrex? If so, what are some examples and in what ways do you use them?
We certainly do. We use a number of Linux flavors at the office, but primarily Gentoo. All of our servers and most of our desktops are running Linux. Our xTuple PostBooks® server is running under Ubuntu as a guest on a qemu host running Gentoo. I'm not sure there is space to list all of the FOSS products we use daily: sendmail, apache, postfix, jabber, thunderbird, samba, git, gcc, ssh, openvpn, mariadb, libreoffice, firefox, etc.
If you are a business that is open to using FOSS products, I'd suggest taking a look at xTuple PostBooks®.
Q: Do you have any final thoughts you might want to share with people who are considering a switch to open source ERP?
We literally have this solution up and working, legally, with no money out of pocket. As our company grows, we have the option of buying a license for more users. I consider this a win/win situation.
I also look forward to dabbling with xTuple for my personal finances at home. It works on the operating systems I use, regardless of what they are.