Spreadsheets are used to transfer the configuration information from the real world into the ERP5 system, in order to configure an ERP system.

Each organization has corresponding partners. In order to configure your organization's ERP system, not only the organization itself has to be modeled. Additionally, the corresponding clients and suppliers from the external world need to be included in the modeling process. As a consequence, the configuration needs to encompass your company's objects, as well as the related objects from the external world.

A company can use ERP5 for all its processes or for some parts only. The grade of how much is covered is referred to as "scope". For example, a company could use ERP5 for the sales department only, but still, the configuration has to be done for all parts of the company.

The shown categories have to be filled. The following slides will discuss the different facets in more detail.

In this sheet of the configuration spreadsheet, define the physical sites of the organisation. Sites are structured as a tree of sites with children sites. The level of detail may be different from one site to another. For example, a small retail site may be known only by its city or region name. A factory may on the contrary describe 6 levels of hierarchy, from the regional name to the identifier of a storage cell in one of multiple warehouses of the factory.

If reporting is needed on groups of sites, then it can be useful to group sites per regions based on the reporting requirements.

It is preferable to use region than cities. This will eliminate the need for changes in case an office moves from one city to another.

Security codes must be defined for a selection of sites, at an appropriate grain level. It would be for example useless to define different securities based on the storage cell of a warehouse. However, it can be useful to differentiate security permissions for each warehouse of the same factory. A warehouse clerk of warehouse A may be prevented from entering inventories for warehouse B.

In this sheet, define the juridical structure of your organisation with its subsidiaries and business units. This juridical structure will be used of analytical accounting. If the organisation is simple, a single group is enough.

Also define in this sheet your own vision on the structure of third party business entities (clients, suppliers, partners) with your own view on how they are structured. For example, if you have some business with a group of companies named "partner_group", you may want to differentiate its 2 entities (info service and administrative), especially if only info service employees are working with you as partners and if they are allowed to access your own ERP5 system within a specific partnership contract which grants them access to some documents.

Just as for site, security codes must be defined at reasonable granularity level. It is useful to differentiate entities with different security. It is useless to define different codes for entities which share the same security policies.

In this sheet, describe the functional structure of your organisation and of organisations you are in business with.

Organisation functions are implemented by nodes (ex. factory, shop) of the function tree. Person functions are implemented by leaves (ex. factory/manager, shop/sales).

Please make sure you understand the difference between grade and function. For example, a person whose grade is "director of research" may be assigned a function of "factory manager". Think of grades as in an army (ex. general, commander) and of functions as assigned missions (ex. researcher, spy).

Grade describes the position in an organisation from a "honorific" point of view. Salary is also usually based on grade, rather than on function.

Typical example of grade can be:

- owner: You can use "owner" for shareholder, partner or associate of the organization, who has the decision power in the board.

- executive: For the company managers who are "executives", e.g. CEO /CFO /CIO, you can use "executive" as grade. Note that for the other managers, they are treated as employees from a work law point of view, so they belong to the grade "employee".

- employee: Full-time or part-time employees.

- member: As stated in "Role", for some associations or organisations which are not a company, maybe there is not an owner, executive manager or employees, but there are members (active member who are voted into the board to have decision right, and non-active members). So you can use "member" as grade for this kind of organisations.

- trainee: Please remember this grade when there are trainees in the organisation.

There is no direct relation between grade and function. Grades differ from function in the sense that function describes actual operational position while grade describes a honorific position. A typical example is in the army, there are grades such as "General" and "Commander". Some army Generals are sometimes assigned to research management functions. Their grade is still general but their function is Director of R&D Center

The provided examples show three basic configurations:

International organizations may consider structuring the regions into continents. The hierarchy can be more detailed on the second level. For example, Europe could be further divided into northern and southern Europe or relevant countries.

Organizations and companies, which are focused on several countries could consider structuring the regions into those countries.

Small companies with local market alignment may structure their regions based on smaller geographical units like states. It is possible to combine the level of modeling granularity by using the hierarchy. The level of detail depends on the requirements of your company.

Remaining markets could be assigned to an "Other" or "Rest of World" region group.

Please fill the list of skills which you want to associate to Person in order to qualify them.

First consider people inside your organisation and their skills. Afterwards consider people outside your organisation and the skills they provide to your organisation.

It's time to fill the list of nationalities in the world according to your point of view.

UNO standards exist for this. However, they do not cover all nationalities. For example, the nationality of a Chinese from mainland and a Chinese from HK is treated quite differently by immigration services in Western Europe.

A person from Taiwan is considered as Taiwanese by some people and as Chinese by others. His or her passport mentions "Republic of China". Addressing to a Taiwan inhabitant as he or she was Chinese can sometimes create a lot of frustration.

Another interesting case is the case of group of counties (EU, CEDEAO, etc.) which inhabitants carry a passport with a dual mention: the group of countries and the country itself.

We advise you to define your own view on nationalities so that it serves best your business needs.

Activities describe your view on all possible economic activities in the world. There are UNO, European standards for activities. However, it is better to define your own classification based on specific business requirements

Activities are different from function. Activities usually relate to a classification of third parties based on the nature of their industry (e.g. banking, IT, automotive) whereas function is independent of the activity (i.e. both an IT and an automotive company can have entity which has the function of a warehouse).

Activities describe your view on all possible economic activities in the world. There are UNO, European standards for activities. However, it is better to define your own classification based on specific business requirements

Activities are different from functions. Activities usually relate to a classification of third parties based on the nature of their industry (ex. banking, IT, automotive) whereas function is independent of the activity (i.e. both an IT and an automotive company can have entity which has the function of a warehouse).

Please fill here the list document types in your company.

A document type is for example: a contract, a status report, a letter, etc. The different document types which are involved in your daily business can be stored in the ERP, either autonomously (ex. Letter) or in relation with a business document (ex. a specification document can be used to support a Sale Order).

Please fill here the list of product lines sold or purchased by your company.

Product lines are used for both purchase and sales. They are useful to create a catalogue of products (sold or purchased) and to structure a large database of products and services by families.