Compiere®

User’s Guide

RELEASE 2.4
February 2003

SAMPLE
Compiere User’s Guide Release 2.4

© 2003 Anne Wassmer All rights reserved

Contributors: Anne Wassmer, Kathy Pink, Jorg Janke

The documentation contains proprietary information of Anne Wassmer. It is protected

by copyright, patent and other intellectual property law. No part of this document may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
for any purpose, without the express written permission of the author. The information
contained in this document is subject to change without notice. If you find any problems
in the documentation, please report them to us in writing. We do not warrant that this
document is error free.

Compiere is a registered trademark of ComPiere, Inc.

All other company or product names are mentioned for identification purposes only, and
may be trademarks of their respective owners.
For more information please visit www.compiere.com

or contact

ComPiere, Inc.
Jorg Janke
Fax: (++1) 203 445-0186
40 Old Tannery Rd
Monroe, CT 06468
jorg.janke@compiere.org
2 Implementation of Client and Organizations

In Compiere the Client is the highest level of an independent business entity. Each Client
will have one or more Organizations reporting to it. Each Client defines the accounting
parameters (Accounting Schema, Tree Definition, Non-monetary Units of Measure). This
information is shared with all organizations.

In Compiere an Organization can be a legal entity or a subunit for which only certain
documents and transactions are processed. It could also be a business partner whose
access is restricted to certain information only (for example their own invoices) In a smaller
enterprise the client and the organization could be identical.

Preparation

Compiere requires no formal prerequisites, but you might want to prepare the import of
accounts, business partners and products. Although you can import all these entities later,
it saves you time, if you set up the import of the accounts. In this initial phase, the import
of CSV (comma separated values) with a predefined list of attributes is supported.

Accounts

Compiere needs a set of accounts for system operations, even though some may never be
posted to (example: if you don’t have foreign currency transactions, accounts like Realized
Gains will never be used). Edit the NaturalAccountsUS.csv file, which (depending on
your installation) you usually find in the directory C:\Compiere\Compiere2\data\import.
German users use the German Chart of Accounts NaturalAccountsDE.csv in the same
directory. You can change the account number, name, description, etc. of the mandatory
accounts in Microsoft Excel. Do not edit the [For internal use] column. You can add
additional accounts by leaving the [For internal use] column empty.

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Initial Implementation

You start the initial implementation by running the Initial Client Setup.

Important: You start the initial setup program from a System Administrator role:

Figure 2.1: System Administrator Login

If necessary, you can enter more clients (depending on your organizational structure).
But in the typical case you would just enter the name of your enterprise. The Client is
the highest level of an independent business entity. Each Client may have one or more
Organizations reporting to it. The Role determines which Clients and Organizations you
can see.

Under General Rules, Client Rules you click on Initial Client Setup:

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 Figure 2.2: Initial Client Setup Menu

The The Initial Client Setup window opens.

You overwrite the defaults in the window with the name of your enterprise, for example
GardenWorld. Enter the Currency, Country, City and Region. Then you select the
Optional Account Segments and click on the Load Accounts button. This allows
you to select a comma separated file in the format of NaturalAccountsUS.csv, which you
should have adapted to your needs. Select the file and click Open. Back in the Initial
Client Setup window, click OK:

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 Figure 2.3: Initial Client Setup Window

A window is opened which displays the selected values. Confirm it by clicking OK.

The Client Setup creates Users, Roles and basically all standard entities for Document
Types, Business Partners, Products, Projects etc. These entities can be changed afterwards
at any time you like. The important thing is that after this fast setup you can theoretically
start and enter your invoices. In contrast to other systems, the initial setup procedure
is very easy and does not involve complex decisions. The only way to add new clients
is through the Initial Client Setup. It ensures that the security infrastructure is defined
correctly and creates the ’Standard’ default entries.

Now you have created the Client with two users or roles: One user with the client-level

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role (in our case GardenAdmin) has all the rights to maintain the rules and to enter
transactions. The user with the organization-level role (GardenUser) has all the rights
to enter transactions.

Refining your Implementation

After completing the initial implementation you have everything to get started, but you
may want to check and update the initial settings.
Important: To review the client created you have to close the application (which runs on
system level otherwise) and log in again under the client-level Role you have just created,
in this case GardenWorld Admin.

Figure 2.4: Client Administrator Login

This ensures that System-level, Client-level, Organization-level actions and records are not
mixed up. Settings done on the client level are shared on organization level. The advantage
is that these values have to be set up only once.

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The Workflow

Under General Rules, Client Rules you can review the client setup by double-clicking
−→
on Initial Client Setup Review. The W icon in front of the menu item indicates that
it is a Workflow:

Figure 2.5: Initial Client Setup Review

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Click OK when you see the following window:

Figure 2.6: Review Info

Now the Workflow is loaded. In the upper half of the window you see a graphical illustration
of the Initial Client Setup Workflow. You can easily review the steps carried out during
the setup:

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 Figure 2.7: Initial Client Setup Review Workflow

In the lower half of the window you see the explanation of the relevant workflow step.
To navigate through the different steps and open the appropriate window you can either
double-click on the specific workflow icon or use the workflow buttons.

The Client

The Client is the highest level of an independent business entity. Each Client will have one
or more Organizations reporting to it. Use the Client window to define the accounting
parameters (Accounting Schema, Tree Definition, Non-monetary Units of Measure). This
information is shared with all organizations.

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 Figure 2.8: System Structure

Use the Workflow buttons or double-click on the Client icon on the workflow to open the
Client window:

Figure 2.9: Client

On the left, two tabs are displayed. The Client tab is the parent record.
Important: Do NOT create a new client in the Client window (use the Initial Client

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Setup as a System Administrator only). If you do so, the required client infrastructure
will NOT be set up.

The following fields are displayed: Search Key, Name, Description, Language, SMTP
Mail Host, Request Email, Request User, Web Directory, Request Folder, Re-
quest User Password. Compiere allows to change all of these values afterwards if nec-
essary.

Select the Multi Lingual Documents checkbox if you want to maintain multilingual
documents. Select the SMTP Authorization checkbox if you want to allow SMTP
authorization.

Click on the Client Info tab to display all the details of your client:

Figure 2.10: Client Info

Select the Discount calculated from Line Amounts checkbox if you want the discount
always be calculated from line amounts.

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Here you see the Calendar and the Primary Accounting Schema that will be used for
your client. You can opt for a Second and a Third Accounting Schema by ticking the
appropriate checkboxes. The UOM fields are not used here. All other fields (Primary
Tree Organization, Primary Tree BPartner, Primary Tree Project, Bus. Part-
ner Cash Trx, Product for Freight, Goal, Primary Tree Menu, Primary Tree
Product and Primary Tree Sales Region) have defaults which would not be changed
under normal circumstances.

The Organization

The Organization window allows you to define and maintain organizational entities. An
organization can be a legal entity or a subunit for which only certain documents and
transactions are processed. It could also be a business partner whose access is restricted to
certain information only (for example their own invoices) In a smaller enterprise the client
and the organization could be identical.

Use the Workflow buttons or double-click on the Organization icon on the workflow to
open the Organization window:

Figure 2.11: Organization

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The Organization window consists of three tabs. The parent record is the Organization
record. Next to the tabs, the structure of your Organization is displayed. You can search
the tree via the yellow search field below. Double-click on the entity to display Search
Key, the Name and the Description of the organizational entity marked. You can choose
to make the organizational entity a summary entity (which is used for reporting purposes)
by ticking the Summary Level checkbox.

Important: When you add a new Organization in this window, you must re-login to be
able to access the new Organization.

Open the Organization Info detail record by clicking on the corresponding tab:

Figure 2.12: Organization Info

Click on the button next to the Location/Address field to update the address informa-
tion:

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 Figure 2.13: Update Location/Address

Enter the Address, the City, the State, the ZIP code, the Country and click OK to
return to the Organization Info window.
D-U-N-S (Dun and Bradstreet identification number used for EDI - for details see
www.dnb.com/dunsno/list.htm), Tax ID and Goal.
For more information on the Accounting tab, please refer to Chapter 12, Accounting
and Performance Analysis.

The Role

The Role controls access to windows, tasks and reports. Users can have one or multiple
roles. Basically, there are four kinds of generic user types. One type is the System
Administrator. With this role you can only see system-level records like UOM’s and
document types.
The next type is the Superuser. The superuser gets all roles in the system. This role is
designed for emergency situations, when you need one user who has all rights of access in
all organizations. Use of this role should be restriced to a few high level users.
The other two role types, which are the typical transaction users, are the Client Ad-
ministrator and the Client User. The client administrator can set up data and enter

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transactions, whereas the client user is restricted to transaction entry only.
Use the Workflow buttons or double-click on the Role icon on the workflow to open the
Role window:

Figure 2.14: Role (Data Grid)

Select the Role, in our case GardenWorld User.

Use the different tabs in the Role window to set the access rights for this Role. In this
window you can control the Client Access, Org Access, User Assignment, Window
Access, Process Access, Form Access, Workflow Access and Task Access.
These tabs work basically all in the same way: You select or deselect a certain Organization,
Window, Process, Form etc. depending on the access rights you want the user to have.

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 Example: You may want to prevent your User from accessing the Material Transac-
tions form. Open the Form Access window, where you see a list of all available forms.
Select the form you want to edit. The default is read and write access for all forms. Click
on the Data Grid Toggle button on the toolbar:

Figure 2.15: Form Access (Data Grid)

The single record is displayed. If appropriate, deselect the Read Write and Active
checkboxes:

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 Figure 2.16: Form Access (Single Record)

When you now login as GardenWorld User, the Material Transactions form won’t
be displayed to this role.

Another example would be to set up a Role for a business partner. When the business
partner logs in, he can only see his own data. You could allow him to update certain data,
for example his address etc., but not more. You can create roles which can be assigned to
more than one client.

The User

The User basically forms the link to the business partner.

Use the Workflow buttons or double-click on the User icon on the workflow to open the
User window:

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 Figure 2.17: User

The two system-generated users will already be in the list of Users as a result of the Initial
Client Setup. The Name and the Description are defaulted. The value in the Password
field defaults to the Name of the User and can be changed. An Email address can be
entered as well as a Supervisor (for escalation purposes), a Sales Representative, a
Goal, an Email User ID, a Personal Goal and an Email User Password.

Select a User (for example, the GardenAdmin) and open the User Roles window:

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 Figure 2.18: User Roles

The Roles which the User can assume are displayed. Naturally, an Administration User
will be able to assume more roles than the ’normal’ User.

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