Rethought and redesigned: JTL-Wawi 1.6 Open Beta

Our ERP system opens its doors today for the start of the Open Beta. Look forward to numerous new features that not only affect our ERP itself, but also other JTL products! In the following article, we will take you through all the information we have compiled for JTL-Wawi 1.6 over the last few months and at the end we will focus on the news about JTL-WMS, our marketplace interface and the brand new JTL-Wawi app.

By popular demand: community-driven development right from the start

With hardly any other version of our ERP system have we implemented the principle of “community-driven development” as consistently as with JTL-Wawi 1.6. At a very early stage of our development work, we invited you to share your feature requests with us in the JTL forum. In direct exchange and based on your feedback, functions have been added and adapted again and again. After all, you are the ones who will be working with the product later on! The new version of our ERP provides you with a tool that supports you in your day-to-day work in the best possible way.

In addition, Product Owner Manuel Pietzsch has repeatedly provided you with hot news from our development on YouTube over the last few months and presented numerous functions. You also had the chance to share your thoughts on our current development status and discuss them with other community members via the JTL forum.

And because pictures – and especially moving images – say more than written words, we have compiled all the videos for JTL-Wawi 1.6 in a YouTube playlist so that you can watch all the new features at your leisure. So now it’s time to sit back, start the playlist and watch the videos:

How to Code an ERP: Our developer diaries at a glance

If you prefer reading to watching, you can take another look at our developer diaries for a detailed introduction to the most important functions of JTL-Wawi 1.6. Here Manuel has dedicated himself to the order details. With today’s launch of the Open Beta, these can be highly customized and adapted to your needs. True to the motto “Make JTL-Wawi your Wawi”, we have taken numerous community requests into account, especially when developing the order details – after all, a central area of the Wawi. But read this blog post to find out for yourself what diverse customization options JTL-Wawi 1.6 has to offer!

You can find a more comprehensive overview of other new functions, such as sales order 2.0, the use of Unicode, partial and cancellation invoices or the new purchase order proposals, in this developer diary. As we only published this at the end of September, you will definitely be up to date and will know exactly what top features JTL-Wawi 1.6 has to offer after reading it.

On the trail of technical details: issue tracker and changelog

For those of you who are particularly interested in the technical details, we recommend our changelog. Here, as for every version of our ERP, we have listed all the changes in detail.

And if you would like to follow both our previous and future work on JTL-Wawi, you should definitely take a look at our issue tracker. However, this publicly accessible ticket system does not focus on passive observation, but on your active participation: After logging in with your customer center data, you can actively vote for tickets to increase their priority. After all, your wishes continue to be the number one source of inspiration for our development!

Further innovations in the JTL cosmos

As already mentioned, JTL-Wawi 1.6 marks an important milestone in the development of our ERP – but not only because of the many changes we have made there, but also because of the numerous innovations for other products. We are also rolling these out today! Here is a brief overview:

JTL-WMS

JTL-WMS in particular has many new features in stock. These include the new printer management, which allows you to create and manage different printers and print templates. In addition, JTL-WMS now also allows you to evaluate GS1-128 bar codes and use the new shipping process called “Identical sales orders”. This should be particularly interesting for retailers who ship bundles with several items or large quantities.

If you want to find out more about these three functions, don’t miss part 1 of our developer diary:

Part 2 of the developer diary highlights further new features: for example, carton management, which makes it even easier for you to meet the requirements of the new packaging law. There are also the restructured and thoroughly expanded pick list templates and the integration of the AutoStore Systems automatic storage and picking system. The latter in particular opens up completely new options in the use of robot technology and is certainly one of the most exciting features in this area in recent years. But just read for yourself:

JTL-WMS Mobile for standard warehouse and JTL-Packing Bench+

With JTL-WMS Mobile, you record the item data by scanning your MDE device directly at the storage location, where the system checks it for accuracy. This not only saves you unnecessary walking, but also reduces the error rate of your picking and consequently also the returns rate.

So that those of you who have only been using Packtisch+ and are not planning to switch to our warehouse management system can also use the app, it will be available with the open beta launch of JTL-Wawi 1.6 independent of JTL-WMS. This means that you can use it with JTL-Wawi Standard Warehouse via JTL-Packing Bench+. With the new version of our ERP, warehouse processes for JTL-Wawi standard warehouses can be carried out directly at the storage bin for the first time. You can also inbound posting and outbound posting goods, commission goods using a mobile pick list and carry out inventories. Especially in cooperation with a Bluetooth scanner, the JTL-WMS Mobile App can minimize the error rate in all of these processes.

Many of these exciting new features, including the ability to use the camera of your smartphone or tablet as a scanner with the JTL-WMS Mobile app, can be found in detail in the corresponding blog post:

JTL-Fulfillment Network

With the release of JTL-Wawi 1.6, there are also some innovations to announce in the area of our JTL-Fulfillment Network (JTL-FFN): Because from this point on, automated returns processes will be possible. If customers log in a return with your fulfillment service provider, they will automatically receive a notification. But you as a retailer will also be informed by the system about registered returns and can, as with the returns process in JTL-Wawi, initiate an exchange order or create an invoice correction.

As you know it from the data exchange within JTL-FFN, the returns status and item condition are also exchanged between you and your fulfiller in near-real time. To ensure smooth data synchronization, we provide both sides with a selection of predefined return reasons.

Synchronization of item attributes: From version 1.6.32.0, it will then also be possible to synchronize item attributes and/or “Custom fields“ as a retailer to the Fulfiller. You can freely configure exactly which data should be transmitted:

Your fulfillment service provider then decides for themselves whether and which item attributes are mapped to their “custom fields”:

Blocked stock: With JTL-Wawi 1.6, warehouses now receive blocked stock in addition to available stock. If, for example, the fulfiller books to a clarification location or a location blocked for available stock in JTL-WMS (version 1.6 required), this is transmitted to the FFN as unavailable stock.

A gain in control! Because you can keep an eye on your entire stock, even if it is not available for delivery from the fulfiller.

Our new marketplace interface

You can currently connect the two major online marketplaces eBay and Amazon to JTL-Wawi via JTL-eazyAuction. With our new marketplace interface, however, you will be able to connect other online marketplaces from JTL-Wawi 1.6 onwards. The integration with Kaufland.de (formerly: Real.de) has already been available to our pilot customers for some time and you will also be able to use it from the stable release.

We have been working intensively on this area over the last few months, as the necessary functions and additional fields for our marketplace interface have necessitated extensive modifications to the ERP. Until the stable release of JTL-Wawi 1.6, names, dialogs and even the menu navigation may still change.

Our next interface will be an integration with Otto.de. Further marketplaces are in preparation. As always, we will keep you up to date on developments.

JTL-Wawi App - ERP on the go

We have saved this highlight until last: With the launch of the open beta of JTL-Wawi 1.6, you can now also use our ERP as an app. This is exactly what many of you have been asking for, which is why we have spent the last few months transferring the first basic functions of our ERP into a mobile application. You can now use the JTL-Wawi app to create sales orders and create and maintain customer data. You can also trigger the manual workflows of JTL-Workflows. In further steps, we also want to enable returns, item creation and the taking of product photos via smartphone camera.

For mobile use, it was particularly important to us to also integrate the dashboard of our JTL-Wawi app. This means you always have important business figures, such as sales and order trends, with you wherever you are. You can define which statistics you want to see with JTL-Wawi 1.6. The graphics can then be customized and adapted in the app.

Similar to our marketplace interface, a lot of development work will also go into our app. We want to gradually add further functions here. There will be more information on this soon. So stay tuned!

You can find the download link for the app and a quick installation guide in the JTL-Guide.

How to: Switch to JTL-Wawi 1.6 Open Beta

You can hardly wait to test the new version of our ERP as an open beta? Good for you! Then we recommend our JTL-Guide, where we have provided a comprehensive step-by-step guide. Here you will also find some recommendations on the ideal time to update and tips on how to shorten the update time:

Test JTL-Wawi as Open Beta!

By working with our pilot customers, we have already generated a lot of data that will help us to polish up our ERP for their stable release. But you can also help us from today! How can you? By testing JTL-Wawi 1.6 extensively as an open beta and subjecting it to your personal stress test. We look forward to any feedback and will try to process the incoming tickets until the stable release.

Ready to go? Then download the new version right here: