Custom Backoffice for Small Business

We are looking to create our own backoffice system, to keep track of supplier orders & deliveries, invoices, customer orders, shipments and payment. Ideally, this would be a web based system (ruby on rails, host os = redhat) hosted on our own dedicated server (a proliant DL380 G3), with a whole slew of security features, journaling and so forth enabled. This system should be closer in philosophy than an ERP system than a CRM system. ## Deliverables Ultimately, the system should feature ajax and be reasonably good looking and functional. It must be designed to work with both serial and lot numbers, at the supplier level and the customer level. It should be able to model a manufacturing process as a succession of tasks with many inputs/subcomponents (and serial numbers or lot numbers) and a single output (with a serial number or lot number). Beyond the conventional ERP aspects (invoicing, reporting...) the system must be able to provide at any given moment the resulting end product location (e.g. customer or to whom it shipped), based on the serial or lot number of a single subcomponent. Individual manufacturing steps will have prices associated with it, and the ability to create a paper trail is a must have. We have an existing system unfit for our needs, so I think we are in a good position to narrow and nail down our expectations.