Most ERP content on the web is a definition wrapped around a product pitch. These are written the other way round: answer the question properly, mention our product only where it is genuinely relevant, and name other products where they are the better answer.
Two of these guides recommend competitors by name. That is deliberate. A guide you cannot trust on the easy questions is worth nothing on the hard ones.
Guide 01
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It is business software that runs a company’s core work, such as purchase, stock, production, sales, accounts and payroll, in one system with one shared database, so an entry made by one department updates every other department without anyone re-typing it.
Guide 02
ERP software runs a business’s core operations — stock, purchasing, sales, accounting, people — in one system with one shared set of records. Most ERP today is cloud ERP: it runs on the vendor’s servers and is used through a browser or app, so everyone works on the same live numbers from anywhere.
Guide 03
Inventory management is keeping one true record of what stock you have, where it is, what it cost and when to reorder, as goods are received, moved, used and sold. For an Indian business it also means godown-wise stock, batches and expiry where they apply, and stock that agrees with GST invoices and challans.
Guide 04
GST billing software raises tax invoices that meet GST rules, calculates CGST, SGST or IGST from the place of supply, and keeps the sales register that GSTR-1 is filed from. Better products also generate the e-invoice IRN and e-way bill from the same invoice, so nothing is typed twice.
Guide 05
E-invoicing under GST means reporting each B2B invoice to the government’s Invoice Registration Portal, which validates it and returns a unique Invoice Reference Number (IRN) and a signed QR code to print on the invoice. It applies once aggregate turnover crosses the notified threshold, currently ₹5 crore.
Guide 06
An e-way bill is an electronic document generated on the GST e-way bill portal before goods are moved by road. It is generally needed when a consignment is worth more than ₹50,000, records the invoice, the parties and the vehicle, and is valid for one day per 200 km of distance.
Guide 07
Batch tracking means recording a batch or lot number on every document goods pass through, from receipt or production to the customer’s invoice. It lets a business trace backwards to the raw material and forwards to every buyer, manage expiry dates, and run a recall in hours instead of days.
Guide 08
A bill of materials is the list of every raw material, component and packing item needed to make one unit of a product, with the quantity each unit consumes. It is the manufacturer’s recipe, and purchase, stores, costing and production planning all read from it.
Guide 09
A POS, or point of sale, system is the software and hardware at a billing counter. It prices items, prints a GST bill, takes payment by cash, card or UPI, and records the sale. Connected to inventory and accounts, it also reduces stock and posts each bill to the books.
Guide 10
In manufacturing, MRP means material requirements planning: working out which materials are needed, how much and by when, to meet orders. It combines demand, bills of materials, stock on hand, open orders and lead times to produce planned purchase and production orders.
Guide 11
Accounting software records financial transactions — invoices, payments, ledgers, returns. ERP runs the operation that creates those transactions: stock movements, production, purchasing, people. In an ERP the accounting entry is a by-product of the operational event, rather than something a person enters afterwards from a document.
Guide 12
Start by writing down the three operational problems costing you money, then judge every product only on those. Insist on a demo using your own documents, ask what the product does badly, and check who supports you after go-live. Feature lists and scoring matrices are where good decisions go to die.
Guide 13
Indian ERP pricing takes four shapes: per user for all apps, per module plus per user, per site regardless of headcount, and free open source that you host yourself. Which is cheapest depends almost entirely on your headcount and how many modules you need — the shape matters more than the rate.
Guide 14
CRM manages relationships before the sale — leads, conversations, pipeline, follow-ups. ERP manages what happens after it — stock, fulfilment, invoicing, accounting. They meet at the order: CRM produces it, ERP executes it. Many businesses genuinely need both, and several products include a CRM module inside the ERP.
Guide 15
An ERP tells a manufacturer three things a spreadsheet cannot: what material is genuinely available, where every job currently is, and what each job actually cost. It does that by recording issues, operations and receipts as they happen on the floor, rather than reconstructing them from paperwork afterwards.
Guide 16
Job work is sending your material to an outside processor and getting it back worked on. In an ERP it means tracking material that has left your premises but is still your stock, moving it on a delivery challan rather than an invoice, and reconciling what comes back against what went out.
Guide 17
An ERP turns attendance into pay. Biometric or app check-ins become attendance, attendance and leave become a payable salary, statutory deductions are computed, and the payroll posts to the ledger as an expense and a liability. The chain runs without anyone re-entering a number between steps.
Guide 18
Both are open-source-rooted ERPs, but they differ in shape. Odoo has a free Community edition and a paid Enterprise edition priced per user with all apps included. ERPNext is fully open source under AGPL-3.0, free to self-host, with hosting priced per site rather than per user.
The guides above answer one question each. These cover the ground around them.
Ask us. If it is a good question we will write the guide, and we will tell you if another product is the better answer.
Prefer to read first? The comparisons with Tally, Odoo, ERPNext and Zoho are written to be checked, not believed.
