Questions & Answers
There are no wrong questions
Who is Berberis for?
Most of Berberis users are small and middle-sized enterprises of various industries. Our customers are e.g., trading companies, manufacturers, consultants, law chambers, but also public institutions.
Is Berberis a flexible solution?
Yes. Berberis is highly configurable. The administartive tools allow the user e.g.,:
- to add to the database new columns describing contractors, repertories, events, projects, goods etc. according to the company needs,
- to design templates of printed documents (invoices, offers, orders etc.),
- to create templates of new, untypical printed documents,
- to build templates of business processes,
- to create special data processing scripts, reflecting specific company needs, in particular performing data exchange with other software,
- to establish new report templates,
- to modify names of various entities and adjust the frontend look to the user's needs.
Is Berberis an integrated system?
It depends on what you mean by integrated. All external activities of the enterprise i.e., these which are directed to customers including advance sale, sale, technical support and store management are supported by Berberis. Options connected with the internal enterprise activity such as accountancy module or staff - billing module are not available in the system. As the accountancy is an inseparable part of the sales and stores, a software which is specially integrated with Berberis can be bought by our customers. It is highly recommended to use the Firma FK system of PWSK company which ensures not only the automatic data transferring between Berberis and the system itself but also creating cross-sectional reports based on data which are stored in both systems.
Is an accountancy module available in Berberis?
No. However, Berberis can be supported by external accountancy applications. See the answer below.
Can Berberis be supported by external accountancy applications?
Yes. There is a special engine governing external PHP scripts and it can be used to exchange data with other applications, provided they have an open interface. So far this kind of system connection has already been established between Berberis and a number of accountancy applications offered on a local market. Generally, Berberis simply automatically exports (e.g., once a day) all the necessary information to a given format.
Does the system support the groupware?
Yes. Documents and tasks can be transferred among the users. Moreover, templates of business processes can be defined within the system.
Does Berberis work over the internet?
Yes. The system has been designed to minimize the quantity of data transmitted between the server and the client software. Therefore Berberis works efficiently not only over the local area networks but also over the wide ones, which in principal are much slower. It is highly recommended to use VPN connections encrypting data in order to ensure the proper confidentiality level.
On which platform does Berberis work?
The database server (PostgreSQL) can be installed either on Windows or on Unix (e.g., Linux). The client software is dedicated for Windows 7 or higher.
Are confidential data protected from an unauthorized access?
Yes. Each user has an individual account and an individual password. User rights are determined by assigning particular persons to an appropriate group of employees and defining privileges of that group. Thus, e.g., a user can enter some data but cannot modify them.
What happens if the program 'hangs'?
Several reasons why the system hangs can be mentioned here: a malfunction of hardware or of the network infrastructure, an instability of the operating system, virus activity, or internal application errors which were not eliminated despite all the appropriate testing procedures. As it is known, errors occur in every software. However, thanks to the transactional data processing, even if the client application hangs, the data stored in the central database will not be damaged.
Is it possible to transfer data from a 'previous' system to Berberis?
In principal yes, but it depends on how the 'previous' system manages the data. In course of implementation we often migrate user's data. However, in most cases it turns out that the information is of very poor quality, so that a time-consuming and arduous cleaning must be performed.
Is a demo version available?
Yes, on demand.
How much does the implementation cost?
The cost strongly depends on the specific user needs. However, in most cases it can be roughly estimated as 50-100% of the license fee.