Module architecture
Orders, inventory, purchasing, invoicing and reporting as separable modules that can be adopted in any order.
05 — Starter website
ERP starter
An operations platform assembled from the modules a business genuinely runs on, adopted in an order that keeps the business working throughout.
Who it is for
Built for a particular kind of team.
- Businesses holding stock, fulfilling orders and reconciling both against money
- Operations teams whose real system of record is a spreadsheet nobody wants to touch
- Companies that need to replace one process at a time rather than all at once
The challenge
What usually goes wrong here.
ERP projects fail in a recognisable way: everything is specified at once, the rollout is a single event, and the business is asked to change its processes to match the software on a Monday morning.
The alternative is unglamorous and works better — find the spreadsheet the business is actually run from, replace that one first, and keep going only where there is a real cost being paid.
How it works
How it actually feels to use.
The home screen is a module board, not a dashboard of charts. It shows what needs attention today: orders to fulfil, stock below threshold, invoices overdue.
Every list is dense on purpose. Operations staff are experts working at speed, so keyboard navigation, bulk actions and inline editing matter more than generous whitespace.
Reporting is built for the three conversations that recur: what did we sell, what do we hold, and what is late. Everything else is an export.
Baseline capabilities
Already built, already working.
Inventory and stock movements
Locations, thresholds, adjustments and a full movement history — an audit trail rather than a current-value field.
Order lifecycle
Quote to fulfilment to invoice, with a state machine that makes invalid transitions impossible instead of merely discouraged.
Dense operational lists
Virtualised tables, keyboard navigation, saved views and bulk actions, designed for people who use it all day.
Roles and audit
Per-module permissions and a complete audit log, because operations data is eventually reconciled against money.
Migration tooling
Import tooling and a documented mapping from the existing spreadsheets, run in parallel until the numbers agree.
What we adapt
The part that becomes yours.
A practical starting point, adapted to your workflow, users, integrations, and growth stage.
Adoption order
We start with whichever process is costing the most today, and only continue where there is a real cost being paid.
Your order states
The state machine is built around the transitions your operation actually has, including the awkward ones nobody documents.
Stock model
Locations, units, batch or serial tracking and threshold rules set to how the business really holds inventory.
Document templates
Invoices, picking lists and purchase orders in your format, with the fields your suppliers and customers expect.
Configuration versus build
Modules are adopted one at a time and each maps to a process the business already has. Nothing is switched on because it came in the box.
Possible integrations
It has to fit what you already run.
These are the connections this starter is commonly asked for. Each one is scoped against the specific system you use — an integration is only real once we have seen the account it has to talk to.
- Accounting systems
- Shipping and fulfilment providers
- E-commerce storefronts
- Supplier and purchasing portals
- Barcode and warehouse scanning hardware
Stack rationale
Chosen for this problem, not for the CV.
- Next.js + TypeScript
- Server components keep large operational tables off the client bundle, and shared types stop the schema drifting between screens.
- PostgreSQL
- Stock and money need transactions, constraints and a real audit trail. This is not a place for eventual consistency.
- Background workers
- Imports, reconciliations and document generation run out of band with retries, so a slow report never blocks fulfilment.
- Docker
- Predictable environments matter when a system is reconciled against money. The same image runs in staging and production.
Responsive views
The same interface at three scales.
Other starter websites
- CRM starterA sales workspace that adopts the pipeline your team already sells with, instead of imposing a new vocabulary on them.
- HRM starterA people system that answers the three questions managers actually ask, without turning the team into a data-entry department.
- Editorial portfolioA portfolio that reads like a printed issue, where the work is the layout rather than a grid of thumbnails.
- Travel starterA destination site that sells the trip through story and detail, then makes the enquiry the easiest thing on the page.
Want a ERP shaped around your business?
Bring the process you use today, including the awkward parts. That is where the useful decisions come from.