Overview
Every business has rules that no packaged ERP anticipates. A production order that has to be raised automatically for each line of a transfer request. A field that must never be edited after approval. A journal entry with a shape unique to your group. The usual answer is a customisation project: a developer, a quote, a release cycle, and a modification you must re-test after every upgrade.
Entity Flows are Nama ERP’s answer. A flow attaches logic to an entity — a sales invoice, a customer, an employee, a purchase order — and runs it automatically when someone saves, edits, deletes or revises a record. Flows are configured, not programmed: they are built by implementation consultants and support staff through a normal screen, using capabilities that in most systems are reserved for developers.
Because a flow is configuration held in the database, it survives upgrades. It is part of your system, not a patch applied on top of it.
Features
Attach logic at exactly the right moment
A record does not simply “save”. It passes through a defined lifecycle, and a flow can attach to any point in it:
- Init — set default values the moment the user clicks New.
- Before calculated fields — adjust inputs before totals, taxes and computed fields are derived.
- After calculated fields — act on the results once they exist.
- Validation — block a save that breaks a rule of your own making.
- Before effects — make final adjustments before accounting entries and stock movements are generated.
- Save effects / after commit — create the related records that should follow, once the document is safely posted.
That precision is what separates a flow from a trigger. You are not reacting after the fact; you are inserting your rule into the exact step where it belongs.
Conditions, so a rule applies only where it should
A flow can be scoped to a book, a term configuration, or any set of criteria — and to an Apply When Matching Query, so it fires only for the records a SQL query returns. One entity can carry several flows, each with its own condition, without them interfering.
Fifteen parameters per element
Each step in a flow is an element — a named capability such as “generate an entity from this entity”, “calculate field values”, or “prevent changing these fields” — configured through up to fifteen labelled parameters. Field maps let you describe exactly how data moves from source to target, including into and out of document lines.
249 documented recipes
The documentation ships a library of ready-made flows, organised by area:
| Area | Recipes |
|---|---|
| Core platform | 95 |
| Supply chain | 71 |
| HR and payroll | 27 |
| Accounting | 11 |
| E-commerce (Magento) | 10 |
| Service centre | 7 |
| Real estate | 5 |
| Contracting, AI, CRM, POS, manufacturing, hospitals, tax | 23 |
Several are published with an Excel sheet you can import directly and an audio walkthrough of how they were built — a worked example rather than a description.
Not every trigger is a person
A flow can also be started from outside the system. An integrator endpoint gives an external system an address to call, and what arrives is handed to an Entity Flow that decides what to do with it. That is how a web shop, a payment gateway or a supplier’s system feeds Nama ERP directly, with nobody sitting at a screen.
What it replaces
In most ERP implementations, the gap between “what the system does” and “how we actually work” is closed by paid customisation — and then reopened at every upgrade. Entity Flows move that work to the implementation team, in configuration, at implementation speed. The rules stay visible, adjustable, and yours.
Read the full Entity Flows documentation, including the recipe library and worked examples.
