ERP for Developers
Everything you need to know to become an ERP developer — the concepts, the vocabulary, the domain, the architecture, the platforms, and the career.
Not a tutorial for one product. This is the layer underneath all of them: the ideas and terms that are the same whether you work on SAP, Oracle, Dynamics, NetSuite, Odoo, or something you build yourself.
Start with the foundations Jump to the glossary
Who this is for
- Developers moving into ERP from general software engineering
- ERP developers who learned one product and want the concepts underneath it
- Anyone building business software who keeps reinventing things ERPs solved decades ago
- People preparing for ERP interviews
Prerequisite: you can write SQL and one programming language. Everything else is here.
Where to start
| If you’re… | Read |
|---|---|
| Completely new to ERP | What ERP Actually Is → History → Master vs Transactional Data |
| A developer who needs the domain | Double-Entry for Developers → Documents and Document Flow → Order to Cash |
| Choosing a platform to learn | The Vendor Landscape → Roadmap |
| Building your own | Building Your Own ERP → Architecture Patterns |
| Preparing for an interview | Interview Questions → Glossary |
| Just looking up a term | Glossary A–Z · Acronyms |
What’s inside
99 pages across 14 sections.
| Section | Covers |
|---|---|
| 1 · Foundations | What ERP is, its history, the vendor landscape, deployment models, licensing, and the roles on a project |
| 2 · Core Data Model | Org structure, master data, documents and document flow, number ranges, periods, currencies, dimensions |
| 3 · Finance | Double-entry, GL, AP, AR, assets, bank, tax, costing, budgeting, consolidation, revenue recognition, period close |
| 4 · Supply Chain | Procure to pay, inventory, valuation, MRP, warehousing, logistics, traceability |
| 5 · Sales | Order to cash, pricing, ATP, credit, returns |
| 6 · Manufacturing | BOMs, routings, production orders, capacity, MES, costing, quality |
| 7 · People & Projects | HR, time, payroll, project accounting, professional services |
| 8 · Architecture | Patterns, performance, multi-tenancy, extensibility, workflow, batch, output, reporting, UX, concurrency |
| 9 · Integration | Patterns, EDI, APIs, messaging, files, e-invoicing |
| 10 · Platforms | SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Dynamics, Odoo, ERPNext, the mid-market, and building your own |
| 11 · Delivery | Lifecycle, fit-gap, migration, testing, cutover, environments, support, upgrades |
| 12 · Security & Compliance | RBAC, segregation of duties, audit trails, SOX, privacy, localisation |
| 13 · Career | Roadmap, skills matrix, portfolio projects, certifications, interviews, reading list |
| 14 · Glossary | ~400 terms, the acronym decoder, and platform cheatsheets |
The ten things that matter most
If you read nothing else:
- The database is the product. Design the schema first.
- Double-entry,
SUM = 0, enforced before insert. → - Financial and inventory records are append-only. Reverse, never delete. →
- Money is
NUMERICwith a currency code. Never a float, never bare. → - Document flow, at line level, from day one. →
- Snapshot master data onto documents. Reprints must be faithful.
- Configuration is data, not code. One binary, many businesses. →
- Idempotency on every write API, keyed to the business event. →
- Every customisation is a permanent upgrade liability. →
- Sit in the functional workshops. The developers who understand the business become architects. →
Contributing
Corrections and additions are welcome — especially country-specific localisation detail and platform specifics from people who work on them daily. Open an issue or a PR.
Licensed CC BY 4.0. Use it, adapt it, teach from it.