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Apache OFBiz Complete Guide

30/01/2021 1

Apache OFBiz is an open source suite of business applications or ERP application which is flexible enough to be used for any type of industry. OFBiz also can be considered as a business automation suite as well. In this article we will cover everything that you need to know about Apache OFBiz to get started with it.

In my earlier posts I have also covered few other open-source Enterprise Applications like CMS and also Web Analytics and log analytics tools, if you are interested please have a look at those as well.

What is Apache OFBiz

OFBiz is a web framework based on Java, including an entity engine, a service engine and a UI based on a widget that allows you to prototype and create your web application quickly.

The architecture of OFBiz is highly customizable, enabling developers to extend and improve the system with custom features quickly and easily.

It’s a complete ERP package which can be modelled to work with most type of businesses. It provides all types of features which any paid ERP solutions and all other capabilities required by most of the businesses. Apache OFBiz is a very stable product and many of the SME’s are using it and many in the process of migrating to OFBiz which shows its popularity and adoption. Moreover, OFBiz also got a very active Mailing Lists and community, so if you get stuck or come across any type of issues you can post it to mailing list and you will be addressed very soon. This is what I have experience.

Apache OFBiz Modules & Features

The Apache OFBiz comes with a number of out-of-the-box (OOTB) core modules, including:

Accounting
1. Standard Double entry General Ledger
2. Supports multiple organizations, account hierarchies and segmentation
3. Accounts Receivable (AR), Accounts Payable (AP), Invoices, Payments, Statements and Aging
4. Agreement contracts and Credit management
5. Asset Management including Depreciation
6. Budgeting Management
7. Support for payment gateways and payment processing
8. Financial Reporting
9. Fully integrated with Order Management, Inventory, Purchasing and Manufacturing out of the box
Manufacturing
1. Bill of Materials
2. Jobshop, Manufacturing Routings and Tasks
3. Production Planning and MRP
4. Production and Job Costing
5. Equipment Billing
6. Raw Material Procurement
7. Manufacturing Reporting
Human Resource
1. Company and Department Structure
2. Manage Job Positions, Skills and Performance Reviews
3. Manage Recruitment Process, Applications, Interviews
4. Salaries and Payments
5. Employment Contracts
6. Employee Expenses
7. Training
Inventory Management
1. Manage and setup single, multiple warehouses
2. Inventory Locations
3. Serialized on non-serialized Inventory
4. Lot Management
5. Shipment Integration
6. Picklist and Package Management
7. Receiving
8. Returns
Catalog Management
1. Support unlimited stores, catalogs, categories, and products
2. Handles a range of products (physical, digital, downloadable products, variant, configurable)
3. Gift Certificates and gift cards
4. Price rules for customer or group-specific pricing
5. Online store promotion engine
6. Integration with major payment gateway providers
7. Fully integrated online and Point of Sales (POS) stores out-of-the-box
8. Keyword search capability in all the applications using hibernate search
CRM & Order Management
1. Lead and Sales Opportunity Management
2. Sales Forecasts Manage sales opportunities
3. Shared Sales Team Documents, Calendar and Tasks
4. Email Integration
5. Customer Service and Case Management
6. Quotes, Order Entry and Order Management
7. Manage marketing campaign including tracking code reporting
E-commerce
1. Unlimited stores, catalogs, categories and products
2. Cross-sell and upsell products
3. Supports physical, digital, downloadable, variant and configurable products
4. Gift Certificates and Gift Cards
5. Pricing rules and Discounts
6. Online store promotion engine
7. Integrations with payment gateways
8. Product searching
9. Customer portal

Benefits of Apache OFBiz

There are a number of advantages related to using Apache OFBiz, including:.

Free and open source
Scalable, reliable enterprise solution
Fully Customizable
Flexible to grow with your business

Apache OFBiz Installation

We will see how to install OFBiz on Windows or Linux machine. Please follow the steps below

Download the source code from this link or visit Apache OFBiz download page to dowload older releases.

Download the Gradle wrapper:

MS Windows:

init-gradle-wrapper

Unix-like OS:

./gradle/init-gradle-wrapper

Once you have downloaded the source code and ready with Gradle wrapper it will need to be built. The command to built

Building OFBiz

Run the following command to clean system and load the complete OFBiz data

Unix-like OS

./gradlew cleanAll loadAll

MS Windows

gradlew cleanAll loadAll

Starting and Running OFBiz

Now, run the following commands to Start OFBiz:

Unix-like OS:

./gradlew ofbiz

MS Windows:

gradlew ofbiz

To log into OFBiz, navigate with your browser to

https://localhost:8443/webtools

You will be redirected to login screen

and login with username “admin” and password “ofbiz”

And you will be landed on the OFBiz Dashboard

Stopping OFBiz

To stop OFBiz running locally, open a command line terminal window and navigate to the OFBiz directory and;

Run the following command for Unix-like OS

./gradlew 'ofbiz --shutdown'

Run the following command for MS Windows

gradlew ofbiz --shutdown

Walkthrough of Different OFBiz Modules

We will go through all major modules of OFBiz, this will help you to understand OFBiz in better way also you can relate it to your use case

Accounting Main screen.

This is the default tab for the Accounting Manager application. The screen currently shows links that will display more detailed screens related to Agreements, Billing Accounts, Invoices and Payments.

Accounts Payable (AP)

This is the module where you manage your accounts payable. The screen below shows different features present in OFBiz Accounts Payable module

Accounts Receivable (AR)

This is separate module to easily handle your accounts receivables. As shown in below screen you will get these features under Accounts – AR module

Asset Maintenance

The asset management and maintenance application enable organizations to maintain a register of all kinds of assets. It enables them to plan maintenance and keep track of allocations and use. The screen below shows different features available under Asset Maintenance

Catalog

The Catalog Manager creates or provides access to a variety of information. Whether Products, Catalogs, or Categories, this screen offers search tools and links to get you to the type of information you need

Down the left-hand column are 4 sections:

Search Products,
Product Categories
Browse Catalogs
Browse Categories

Content

OFBiz provides content management for product content, web sites, general content, blogging, forums, etc.

Facility

OFBiz Facility is to support and optimize warehouse functionality and distribution center management. This module facilitate management in daily planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling the utilization of available resources, to move and store materials into, within, and out of a warehouse (facility), while supporting staff in the performance of material movement and storage in and around a warehouse.

HR (Human Resources)

The Main window is the entry point into the Human Resources Application and displays the Company tree view for navigating to the main menu items.

This screen shows the organizational setup of your Company.

The system also lists any divisions or departments that have been setup with the role “Internal organization” as defined in the party relationships as a “Group member”.

The number of organizational levels can be as many as required.

Salient features of HR Module are below

Navigate the organization to view departments, positions and people
Add or remove a department
Add a person
Quickly open the profile of any item in the tree
If the item is a position you can add a person to fulfill the position

Manufacturing

OFBiz Manufacturing & MRP is a highly functional seamless application that contains everything you need to run an efficient and successful manufacturing business.

Key features include:

Bill of Materials
Manufacturing Routing and Tasks
Production Planning
Production Costing
Equipment Billing
Raw Materials Procurement

Marketing

This module covers marketing activity in the company which includes marketing campaigns, tracking, segments and reports.

My Portal

OFBiz my portal covers user’s profile, timesheet, tasks, leaves, trainings, payments

Order

OFBiz order management module allows you to enter and maintain orders, quotes, requests and report on them.

SFA (Sales Force Automation)

OFBiz SFA application is to support the process of creating orders for leads.

The SFA application is for a specific user to list his leads, contacts accounts and opportunities. He can create new parties or he can assign existing parties to himself.

Party Management

The Party Manager application is used to manage the parties, i.e any legal entity your company has to deal with.

Scrum

The purpose of this component is to have a web based and ERP integrated access and recording for all information related to your Scrum project development.

Work Effort

OFBiz Work Effort Management is to manage work efforts, tasks, calendar, maintenance assignments and more.

BIRT

BIRT is an open-source Eclipse-based (EPL v1 license) reporting system.

It integrates with any OFBiz application to produce compelling reports, including graphical presentations like pie and bar charts and provides ways to export reports in different formats

Web POS (Point of Sale)

OFBiz has its own open-source POS front end application. The business functionality directly utilizes the core OFBiz technology underneath. Thus, the POS terminal gains all the benefits already built into the framework around products, pricing, promotions and facilities etc.

Recommendation

If you want to go in depth and learn more about OFBiz, I would recommend below books.

Conclusion

So, in this article we saw what is OFBiz, its different features, how to install OFBiz on windows/Linux like systems and how to get started with it.

Also, we covered different modules of OFBiz at high level to get an idea of OFBiz as a whole

References

ofbiz.apache.org