Hi everyone,
I’m evaluating Dolibarr (on-prem) for my business and have been really impressed so far. I’m currently using Invoice Ninja but am looking for something a little more ERP-focused.
My primary business is an IT/MSP, but I also help family with a care home business and may eventually support a construction business.
A few things I’m looking for:
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Multi-company (looks like there’s a paid module)
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Recurring invoices/subscriptions
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Automatically email recurring invoices
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Automatically charge a saved credit card through Stripe (if supported)
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Customer portal
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Double-entry accounting
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Purchasing & inventory
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Projects / job tracking
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API for integrations
A few questions:
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Does anyone here use the MultiCompany module? How has your experience been?
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What’s the recommended workflow for recurring billing with Stripe? Can Dolibarr automatically generate the invoice and charge the customer’s saved card, or do most people use Stripe Billing for that?
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Are there any good modules for:
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What are your “must-have” paid modules?
Anything you wish you knew before moving to Dolibarr?
Thanks!
Welcome — and good set of questions to ask before committing.
On multi-company: the MultiCompany module (paid, on DoliStore) gives you separate customers, products, invoicing, accounting, and numbering per entity. It works, but plan for a more involved setup than a standard install — particularly around what’s shared vs. per-entity (users, products, bank accounts). If the three businesses are truly independent, budget setup time, not just installation time.
For recurring billing: Dolibarr’s Contracts module handles recurring invoice generation on a schedule via a cron job and will email the generated invoice if your SMTP is configured. What it won’t do is automatically charge a saved card — Dolibarr doesn’t store payment credentials or trigger Stripe charges autonomously. The typical approach: Dolibarr generates and emails the invoice, Stripe Billing handles the scheduled card charge separately, and you reconcile the payment in Dolibarr manually or via the API.
Customer portal is available (external user access for invoice viewing and payment links) but it’s fairly minimal — not as polished as a dedicated client portal product.
For care home or construction: nothing purpose-built exists in the Dolibarr ecosystem that I know of. Projects + Tasks covers job tracking reasonably for MSP work. Purchasing and inventory are solid native features.
Double-entry accounting and the REST API are both well-supported and reliable across versions.
Thanks @MuhammadAli.Dev !!! Ill give it a try.. thanks so much. Ill prob have follow up questions lol
Your comment on manual reconciliation has me thinking - why isn’t there an automated billing tool that utilizes stripe or some other card processor? I’m going to take a look at the current Stripe integration…
The pieces are half there already — the Stripe module binds a third party to a Stripe customer and shows the saved payment modes, so the card is on file. What’s missing is the other half: nothing in core creates an off-session PaymentIntent against that saved method when the recurring-invoice cron generates the invoice. Core Stripe is built around customer-initiated payment links with SCA, not merchant-initiated charges.
That’s less a gap in ambition than in liability — off-session charging drags in mandates, SCA exemptions and failed-payment retries, all of which is state you then have to keep in sync with the invoice. If you do dig in, the shape that works is a small module hooking recurring invoice generation: pull the stored payment method for the third party, confirm an off-session PaymentIntent, then write the payment back on the invoice from the webhook. Otherwise most people let Stripe Billing own the schedule and push the paid events back into Dolibarr.
Curious what you find in the current integration.
— Ali, Silicon Blaze · siliconblaze.com
