web erp in Educational Institutions

[Daudi]

Dear Phil,

Good day,I would like to use Weberp for Educational Institutions.

Can we handle Different types of fees ie Student Fees, Donations, Capitation ,R&D funds in the module.

Or do we need to customise the ERP. If So please suggest.

Reply On priority.

Rds,
MVS

Tim has asked me to post this:

"A question I get asked a lot is: 'Can webERP handle organisations of type XWZ?'.

An ERP is designed to handle any transaction in any organisation where there is a financial transaction taking place. Even if that transaction is at zero value (which I know sounds odd, but is true).

So in an educational establishment if a student signs up for a semester of a particular course then that involves two different sorts of financial transaction, one is the revenue from the course fees, and the other is the expenses of actually running the course (course materials, salaries of tutors etc).

This can be represented within an erp in several ways. For instance you could create a manufactured part for that course in that semester, which has a bill of materials containing all the items that are used in the course - physical items such as the course materials, labour items such as the course tutors salary - and this part will have a sales value of the course fees. Note you can have several prices for overseas students etc. When a student signs up for that semester you open a works order for them for that course, and you allocate items against it as they are actually used. At the end of the semester this is closed, and then the item is immediately sold to the student as there is no stock. This way you can actually check the budgeted cost of the course against the actual. A list of students on that course in that semester can be found by listing the work orders. A students history is just a list of those items they have bought. It would also be possible to do it as an assembly item. As I said there are normally a number of different ways to achieve the same thing with an ERP.

You mention a library. When a student borrows a book from a library, they are effectively renting an asset at zero cost. Renting of fixed assets can be done through the use of the tagging system.

The canteen is just somewhere manufactured parts are made an sold. For instance a meal of chicken and chips has a simple bill of materials, and you can track usage variances to keep track of spending against budgets.

The skill in an ERP implementation is in seeing how the organisations business processes are mapped to the processes in the ERP. There is rarely a need for customisation of the software.

There are areas where Phil's understanding of webERP is not as strong as others so if you require help on those you need to give some other method of communication, or contact me direct on tim@weberpafrica.com

<Edit> As an afterthought I did link webERP with OpenSIS (http://www.opensis.com/) using the API. This could be of use to you.</edit>

Thanks
Tim