Getting started with Dolibarr

Dolibarr is an open source business management application. It brings together in one place what many people handle with several separate tools: the customer file, quotations, orders, invoices, payment tracking, the calendar. It runs in a browser, with nothing to install on your machine.

This chapter does not get any real work done. It teaches you to find your way around, which makes every following chapter much faster to read. Allow a quarter of an hour.

This chapter as a video: a one minute guided tour

Logging in

Your Dolibarr hosting has an address that was given to you, something like https://management.my-company.com. Open it and you land on the login screen.

Enter the login and the password you were given. Nothing else is asked of you.

Important

Change the initial password on your very first login, especially if it reached you by e-mail. This is done from your user card, described further down.

The first screen

As long as your company identity has not been filled in, Dolibarr shows the setup screen on every administrator login, with a reminder of the two mandatory steps: fill in the company, then enable the modules you need. This is normal, it is not an error.

Once those steps are done, logging in takes you to My Dashboard, which gathers the figures and alerts of the moment.

The four areas of the screen

The interface never changes its structure. Wherever you are in the software, you find the same areas.

1. The top bar lists the main areas: Third parties, Billing, Agenda and so on. It is the first level of navigation. What you see there depends on the modules that are enabled, so your bar will not necessarily look like the one in this screenshot.
2. The left column changes with the area picked at the top. It holds the detail of the available actions, and at the very top a search field that searches across all your data.
3. The central area displays the content: a list, a record card, a form.
4. The user block, top right, gives access to your own card (where you change your password and your display preferences) and to the logout button.

The vocabulary to know

Dolibarr uses a few words in a precise sense. Knowing them removes half the hesitation.

• Third party: any company or person you deal with. A third party is a prospect, a customer, a vendor, or several at once. It is the most important word in the software.
• Contact: a physical person, attached to a third party or not.
• Product and service: what you sell. A product is stocked, a service is not.
• Commercial proposal: the quotation.
• Module: a feature of the software, enabled or not. Menus only show enabled modules, which is why the same version of Dolibarr can look very different from one company to the next.
• Card and list: the two screens described just below.

The two screens you will see everywhere

Almost all of Dolibarr comes down to two screens. Understanding them once is enough for all the rest.

The list

A list shows records of the same kind: your customers, your invoices, your users.

1. The filter row, just under the title. You type in the box of a column and the list narrows down. The cross on the left clears everything.
2. The column headers are clickable and sort the list on the chosen column.
3. The tools, top right: number of rows displayed, choice of visible columns, export.

Clicking a row opens the matching card.

The card

A card shows a single record and everything attached to it.

1. The tabs, at the top, group the aspects of the record: its information, its attached files, its events. A figure on a tab shows how many items it holds.
2. The information sits in the middle. Above it, a banner recalls who or what this is about, with its status on the right.
3. The actions are grouped at the bottom: modify, clone, delete, send by e-mail. Which buttons appear depends on the status and on your permissions.

Important

An expected button is missing? It is nearly always one of two reasons: the status of the record does not allow it (you do not freely modify a validated invoice), or your user does not have the matching permission.

What explains the differences between two Dolibarr installations

Three settings make two installations look unlike each other: the modules enabled, the permissions of your user, and the status of the records you are looking at. If a screenshot in this documentation does not match your screen, look there before concluding that something is broken.

The general look also changes from one Dolibarr version to the next. The principles described here do not.

Good habits to pick up straight away

• Create the third party before trying to quote or invoice it: everything starts from the third party.
• Fill in the e-mail addresses on the cards, they are used later to send documents.
• Use the filters rather than scrolling through lists, they grow quickly.
• Do not work on the same card as someone else at the same time: the last one to save overwrites the previous one.

What comes next

The next chapter builds on this ground to create a first third party, then follow the usual path: quotation, order, invoice.

A question about your own installation? Write to me.