ERPNext E-commerce

E-commerce with ERPNext

ERPNext is a great ERP system but it hasn't quite equipped with good e-commerce solution just yet.

Currently (as the time of writing 28-09-19), there are 3 viable ways to use e-commerce with ERPNext.

1. Use ERPNext e-commerce shop directly
2. Integrate ERPNext with Woocommerce
3. Integrate ERPNext with Shopify

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ERPNext e-commerce shop

ERPNext has e-commerce include in the core ERP system.

Pros

• Fully integrated with ERPNext (since it’s ERPNext it self), there will be no redundant work for users
• It supports integration with a lot of different payment gateways
  • PayPal
  • Razorpay
  • Braintree
  • Stripe
• Product page support a lot of details and support custom meta tags which is great for SEO optimization

Cons

• Lacks of pre-build theme
• User has to sign up before adding item to cart
  Note: There might seem to be a stand-alone apps Awesome Cart which will make the checkout process a lot nicer but it is hard or impossible to integrate this into ERPNext since developer built this for specific project and it depends on a lot of other apps.
  However, it's still a great starting point for creating optimized checkout process the details of this apps is detail on “New App for one-page shopping cart experience” in ERPNext discuss board.
• Some E-commerce functions are missing or need to re-config such as
  • Product listing page are quite basic
  • Item with variance has odd UI/UX on website and need to re-config

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ERPNext with Woocommerce

Woocommerce is open source e-commerce platform add-on to Wordpress written in PHP programming language, it’s one of the best open source e-commerce platforms on the market.

ERPNext has Woocommerce plug-in which make integrating with Woocommerce fairly easy but it’s only one-way synchronize, data only flow from Woocommerce to ERPNext which is not ideal.

Pros

• Woocommerce is a really great e-commerce platform it has the biggest market share in e-commerce platform market
• Basic integration is easy since ERPNext already offer Woocommerce plug-in
• Wordpress has a great SEO optimization tools
• Woocommerce has a lot of pre-built theme
• Further custom customization can be made to make integration more seamlessly

Cons

• ERPNext Woocommerce plugin is only offer one-way integration, data (Item, Customer, Sales Order, Taxes) only flow from Woocommerce to ERPNext
• There will still be redundant work for user such as
  • Updating order status, transfer item, update payment status have to done twice, once on Woocommerce and again in ERPNext

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ERPNext with Shopify

Shopify is proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems.

ERPNext has Shopify plug-in will sync data between your Shopify and ERPNext. There’re some data that will flow both ways and some only flow from Shopify to ERPNext.

Product and Customer data will sync between Shopify and ERPNext. Sales Order data will only push from Shopify to ERPNext.

Pros

• Shopify is nice and easy to use e-commerce platform and comes with a lotof pre-build theme
• ERPNext Shopify Connector is written by Frappe Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (developers of ERPNext) which should guarantee the code quality of this plug-in.

Cons

• Shopify is proprietary software and it’ll come with monthly cost