So, that's the query I want to formulate.

I know about openbravo et al. But as soon as you start digging they all want you to sign in and probably pay some fee, plus, if there's a way to download the source, it must be only known to the devs moms (it for sure not on their front page).

I also know about unicenta and gnucash, which can be used as simple POS. But they don't do accounting etc (fail on the ERP part).

If someone can recommend anything that would be fantastic. I am looking for true open source programs that you will not need to license and that you can modify and adapt.

If there's nothing in the horizon then I will have to roll my own at some point.

Thanks beforehand!

There are some ecommerce web frameworks that might answer your needs. They may not do exactly what you want but might be better than writing your own.


But it's a lot of work and it's usually a business critical bit of software so paying is common.

First of all, thank you everyone for reading and for the answers. I understand it's a difficult topic to answer because finding something useful AND maintained is a titanic task in this field.

That's the approach I am trying to walk along. I have no problem with paying, within my possibilities of course. What I have a problem with, is with my data being kidnapped by any concrete provider, and, whats worse, with my data being dumped into a proprietary database engine such as Access or MSSQL.

Obscurity is also not a bonus, which is what you get with Odoo or OpenBravo. You are, basically, tied to their VM appliances unless you can understand they insane build system, and then you are in your own if (or rather, when) problems arise.

Right now, I am evaluating two promising options, which are FacturaScripts (quite basic, which, in the other hand is good if I plan to get my hands into the code) and Dolibarr, which is quite complete for my purposes, though I still need to deepen my understanding of it. The latest one seems quite complete, as said... Both of them can be complemented with payed plugins for concrete purposes, such as POS, for example. And that's not a problem for me, as long as my orders, bills and stuff can be picked and used in any arbitrary OSS database engine in my computer, if there's any problem.

I will keep you informed, in case this is of any use to someone else.

Again, thanks!

Dolibarr seemd promissing, indeed, until I noticed it hasn't support for product sizes. There's a 3rd party modules but it seems unmaintained and it certainly doesn't activate properly in current dolibarr, so I've wasted a bit of my time it seems.

Otherwise, if you don't need that kind of thing, it indeed looks nice enough.

Hi everyone.

At this point I am not expecting any response but rather trying to iron a bit my thoughts on the multiple things I've tried and documenting it for myself and anyone who stumps on this same quest in the close future. I truly hope things will improve over time...

So far, I've tried a couple dozen software packages, which for some reason or another didn't stand up to the task. Random thoughts...

First, there's almost no OSS ERP which will properly support sizes, which, for a shoe store is a must have. You truly need to keep track of that if you want the software to be of any use, otherwise, you are truly better with paper and pencil, I can tell first hand. Or a spreadsheet, it's all the same.

Still, I have even considered to go without that, because, well, there's not too much material to make a choice from.

Some random notes...

Dolibarr, I like it. It's flexible albeit a bit disorganized, which is not something too important for me so that I would ditch the ERP just for that reason. However it seems to eat my data randomly when I import stuff from CSV files. No native POS anyway. I found something called TakePOS but it doesn't work properly. All pictures are black to start with, and something else I can't remember.

OSPOS, it's one of my finalists. I might end using it. I had some trouble getting it to work with apache 2.4 but managed to solve it, and the maintained quickly upstreamed the fix (improved version of it anyway), so at least this quest served a purpose even if I can't find anything It supports CODE39 and 128, EAN13 et al, it can print the codes, it can import CSV (correctly). It doesn't have size support neither, but I can reasonably circumvent that by defining a million articles in localc with some spreadsheet-foo, or even fill the tables (easy enough to understand) with SQL myself. Custom fields will help me keep track of sizes in an easy way in my queries, without having to mangle descriptions in SQL to pick the size, which in turn will help me get some useful reports (the native ones are not too powerful in that sense, though still useful by the way).

OSPOS CAN'T keep a proper control of cash registers though. It doesn't support images either. And I haven't managed to get a ticket-size print, but that might be because I haven't -yet- a pos printer attached. Not that I am gonna die for that. Simplicity is the key here. I might need to get my hands dirty to get this to work the way I want.

FacturaScripts grabbed my attention then. It seemed nice and clean and all. But... I can't import a single CSV file without paid modules which I haven't tested. So, I discarded it promptly. No support for sizes.

Unicenta, ugh, hangs here, hangs there, can't go back because I changed something, good-for-nothing error messages. Every minute of it is like OMG-can-I-press-this-button-or-write-here-or-will-it-blow-the-whole-city-if-I-do-so-? Importing from CVS is a pain also. It just doesn't work. I can perfectly analize the table or guess what's going on, but if I am doing that I'd rather write the tables myself. Besides that, no proper support for sizes, neither. Just like the rest.

I tried many more, but, most of what's out there, are either unicenta forks or way-too-old-programs that no one maintains and can only bit-rot more and more.

In an attempt to find the one ERP to rule them all, I decided to download the source repository from Odoo, and install that. At first, it seemed quite nice. It DOES SUPPORT item variants in a proper way, meaning you can define a barcode and a separate stock for each of the variants, call them "sizes". So that's good.

The bad part is that, about anything else that you need to do actual work is, guess what, paid. I don't have a problem with paying if needed. But I'd rather like to be able to try the software for a while in a workable manner so that I know if it actually works for my purpose or not. Oh, barcodes are only EAN, so no alphabetic chars allowed

The CSV import mechanism is a nightmare. So far, I haven't figured out how to import variants, though I suspect it can be done. There was a module for that in 8.x, but new we are in 10.x. I suspect the module hasn't been ported because the in-house import feature appeared by then. But, as said, I haven't been able to import anything. Just figuring out the list of fields to export a sample is enough of a nightmare. I think I need some rest before continuing. If the import mechanism is too complicated I can roll my own, which I will, for sure, understand much better

Installing this in Gentoo required some tinkering, involving postgresql, ruby gems and python modules and python versions spaghetti resolution, which I should also document somewhere before I drink my beer doses of the week and forget about it, but that's a different story and a different headache to be told...

On a quick note, I also downloaded and tried a virtualbox appliance of something called ERPNext. It looks a bit like an iPad or something like that (haven't one to compare closely :P). It does support variants, but I haven't been able to figure how to define separate stock for each. Maybe it's just me. Admittedly, didn't try too hard. It looked a bit messy for my taste. But I might come back at some point to try again. I can't say I won't because I have been running circles and revisiting stuff for a couple months now as my understanding of these toys widened.

There's also openbravo, but I'm not that desperate, yet.

The rest, java-looking stuff that creeps around sourceforge, can be safely ignored and discarded. Don't waste your time as I did.

I hope someone, some day, will find some use for this, cheers!

I didn't manage to import variants via CSV in Odoo, tutos around youtube doesn't show the same kind of things I get when I export the sample. Maybe I am just too stupid.

However, it seems it's also impossible to erase an invoice, so you can't even test things and undo them later. Additionally, if I try to manipulate that stuff when I haven't still closed a POS session, it doesn't allow me to close it, and it doesn't allow me to complete it, so I am stuck in limbo and I can no longer use the POS module. I have to delete the database and install everything again.

Definitely, this is not OSS friendly, as I suspected. I warn you: if you are tempted to use this and maintain it yourself, you'd better be a skilled person or prepare to pay for support sooner than later.

One less choice.