EDGEBIC + ERPNext: The Complete Scheduling Integration Guide

Integrating ERPNext with EDGEBIC means exporting the items, workstations, operations, and open work orders ERPNext already holds to CSV or Excel from its report views, mapping those columns once with a reusable import mask, and letting EDGEBIC schedule the work against finite capacity: real shift hours, real machine counts, and sequence-dependent setups. Executable dates then go back as Excel. There is no custom app installed in the site, no API integration to build, and no certified connector to version-match when either side updates.

EDGEBIC by User Solutions is the newest generation of a scheduling line that has integrated with ERP systems this way since 1991. Across 35+ years the same file-based approach has fed schedules for the US Navy, GE, BAE Systems, and Cummins. This guide covers the ERPNext case: what to export, how the masks work, what the engine does with the result, and what a realistic first week looks like.

Why an open-source ERP still needs a finite capacity layer

ERPNext is a broad, capable ERP: items, stock, buying, selling, accounting, and a manufacturing module with workstations, operations, and work orders. What most ERPNext manufacturers report is that the daily sequencing decision against real machine constraints still happens in a spreadsheet, because the questions a planner asks each morning are finite capacity questions:

• Which of these 50 open work orders fit on the two machining cells this week?
• If this rush order jumps the queue, which promise dates move and by how much?
• Is the assembly line loaded to 80 percent or 160 percent next Thursday?

Those require modeling shifts, machine instances, changeover sequences, and operator availability against every open order at once. It is a different computational problem from recording transactions, which is why a dedicated finite capacity layer beside the ERP is the standard pattern. The general case is in finite versus infinite capacity scheduling, and the wider argument is in why ERP needs a scheduling add-on.

The integration in one table

The EDGEBIC ERP integration architecture is identical for every system, ERPNext included:

An import mask is a saved recipe. It remembers which kind of data you are importing, what format it arrives in (Excel workbook, or comma, semicolon, tab, or space delimited text), whether the first row is headings, whether text values are quoted, and how each column maps onto an EDGEBIC field. You build it once by dragging your report view's column headings onto EDGEBIC's target fields. Every run after that is two clicks.

Every row produces exactly one outcome: Created, Updated, Reused (matched and deliberately left alone), or Failed (rejected, with the reason recorded). A result dialog shows the counts and a per-run log file records every row individually.

The report view is the interface, and that is the advantage

ERPNext report views are made for this: pick the doctype, choose the columns, filter to what is open, and download to CSV or Excel. That download is a stable, inspectable file, which is exactly what a file-based interface wants. A custom app or API integration would be a dependency that has to be maintained across ERPNext version upgrades; a report-view download has a much smaller failure mode, because the only thing that can break is a column heading, and the fix is re-mapping one row in a mask.

Three practical consequences follow:

• Nothing is installed in your site. No custom app, no server script, no scheduled job driving the integration. There is nothing to carry across a version upgrade.
• No integration user is created. The scheduler never authenticates against ERPNext, so there is no role or API key to manage.
• Scheduling keeps working offline. The plan is computed locally, so a site-availability problem stops the export, not the shop's dispatch list.

Step 1: the four exports

Four report-view exports carry a complete scheduling model.

1. Items. The item code, description, unit of measure, and any cost or lead-time columns worth having visible. The item code is the natural key, matched case-insensitively.
2. Workstations. Identifier, how many identical machines the workstation really holds, default setup hours, efficiency, and an hourly rate for cost rollups.
3. Operations. One row per operation: end item, workstation, sequence number, hours per unit, setup time, queue time.
4. Open work orders. Item, quantity, order reference, and dates.

Whatever the ERPNext column labels say, you drag them onto EDGEBIC's fields; the names do not need to match. The ERPNext to EDGEBIC data mapping reference lists the doctype-by-doctype column pairings, including the conversions and upsert rules.

Step 2: map the columns once

Build one mask per export and name it after the routine rather than the file: Weekly ERPNext Work Orders outlives wo-week29.csv. Mandatory fields are flagged, and the run refuses to start until they are mapped, so a half-built mask fails before it reads a single row.

Two mask features carry most of the weight:

Unit conversion. Set a conversion factor on any numeric column and the multiplication happens before the value is stored. Minutes to hours is 0.016667, seconds to hours 0.000278, and a standard time quoted per lot of 100 pieces becomes per piece with 0.01. ERPNext operation times often come in minutes, so map the operation column with the minutes factor.

Blank-cell preservation. On an update run, a blank cell keeps the existing value rather than wiping it, so a partial refresh file is safe. A zero is a value and will be written, so leave a column out rather than filling it with zeros you do not mean.

Step 3: the routing import, and why it takes two passes

Operations reference each other: step 10 feeds step 20 feeds step 30. A row-by-row import cannot wire those links, because step 20 does not exist yet when step 10 is written.

EDGEBIC's routing import runs in two passes. Pass one reads and validates every row, auto-creates any workstation or item the file names that does not exist yet, and buffers the steps. Pass two groups the buffered rows by end item, sorts them by sequence number, writes them, and wires the chain: 10 to 20, 20 to 30, and the terminal step to the finished item, so the routing renders as one connected flow in the graphical routing designer.

Conventions that pay off immediately:

• Number sequences in gaps of 10 so a later insert becomes 25 and nothing renumbers.
• Keep all of one item's steps in one file. A routing import wipes and recreates that item's steps once per run, which is what makes re-imports idempotent.
• Re-importing is safe for running work orders. Every scheduled job carries a frozen snapshot of the routing it was planned with, so a routing change applies to future jobs and leaves work in progress untouched.

Step 4: work orders in, then run the scheduler

The order import maps item, quantity, reference, and dates. When your export carries an order reference, rows sharing that reference group under one sales order and their jobs auto-number as {Ref}-{line}.

Imports never schedule anything. Imported work orders sit as unscheduled demand until you run the scheduler, which states its scope in plain numbers before it plans. The choice of run is covered in EDGEBIC scheduling modes explained.

Once the data is in, the full engine applies: finite capacity across multiple shifts and machine instances, work center groups that re-shop the machine pool on every reschedule, a sequence-dependent setup matrix, lot streaming with transfer batches, operator skills, and mathematical optimization with a proven optimality gap. The EDGEBIC product overview maps the engine.

Step 5: sending dates back

The return trip is Excel. The Job View grid exports the job schedule as a workbook with colored cells and a legend sheet, the work center schedule exports the same way, and every report dialog exports to Excel or PDF using the column layout you saved. Revised dates then go back into ERPNext through the work-order update path your process already uses, or through ERPNext's own data-import tool if you prefer to load a file. There is no automated write-back, which keeps your ERP data under your team's control.

A realistic first week

The method has a documented benchmark in the User Solutions lineage: at Plastilite Corporation the ERP vendor itself recommended User Solutions scheduling, and the team went from first export to a complete optimized schedule with ERP integration in 5 days. An ERPNext shop usually follows the same shape.

The green-field setup walkthrough covers the from-empty sequence.

Test it with your own export

Build a report view of this week's open work orders and one of your operations, download them, then bring them to a demo. Mapping them live takes minutes, and you leave having watched your own shop scheduled against its own capacity. If you are comparing tools, the xTuple and Odoo versions of this guide follow the same method, which is the point of a universal import layer.