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Can I Use an ERP System to Manage a Global Enterprise - Organizations

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

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Multi-Organization

Multi-Organization features ensure that different organizational entities can share (or secure) data. An example would be a distributor with several wholly owned subsidiaries operating in different regions. Compiere supports the independent business processes and security requirements of each subsidiary, while enabling consolidated views of the business by executive management.

Compiere implements multi-organization support through three entity levels:

  • System

  • Client

  • Organization-Hierarchy

The System level provides infrastructure information regarding your Compiere instance and enables Compiere to support multiple independent businesses securely with a hosted deployment. Optionally, the System level can also include system-wide business partners, products and accounting schema.

Client (Tenant) defines information and accounting structure for a consolidated business. Vendors, Customers, Products, Warehouses and other business-wide elements typically are defined at the Client level.

The Organization level is the transaction level (i.e. System- and Client-specific user roles cannot perform transactions). Organizations can also have their own data and information structure, not shared by other Organizations within a Client. Organizations can be structured in hierarchies with the children able to access their parent's data.

The multi-organization structure relates to Compiere's role-based security. As a result, data on each level can only be entered or modified by a user/role with "write" privileges at the organization level. In many cases, organization-level roles can view and use data of 'higher' levels, but not change it.

Compiere fully supports multiple legal entity accounting, ensuring that transactions crossing legal entity boundaries are accounted correctly. This can include calculation of cost charges (e.g. selling organization is a different legal entity than the product owning organization).

Compiere also allows you to reorganize your Organization structure or merge entities.

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