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 software runs a business’s core operations — stock, purchasing, sales, accounting, people — in one system with one shared set of records. The point is not the features. It is that a storekeeper, a salesperson and an accountant all read and write the same numbers, so nobody reconciles spreadsheets.
Guide 02
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 03
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 04
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 05
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 06
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 07
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 08
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 09
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 — each one names what the other product does better.
