Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Module Setup.

If you’re setting up Dolibarr for the first time — or coming back to tidy up your configuration — the Module Setup section is where you’ll spend a good chunk of your time. The core idea is simple: Dolibarr works on a modular system, meaning features aren’t all switched on by default. You pick what you need, activate it, and build your environment piece by piece. To get there, you navigate to Admin, then choose Modules and Applications from the menu. That’s your control panel for everything we’re about to walk through.

Now, NZRT has a recommended activation order, and there’s a reason it exists. Some modules depend on others being active first, and if you switch things on in the wrong sequence, you can end up with missing options or broken links between parts of the system. So let’s go through the twelve-step order that NZRT recommends.

You start with Company Settings. Before anything else, you want to lock in your currency — for NZRT that’s New Zealand Dollars — and your timezone, which is Pacific Auckland. Get this right first, because these settings flow through to invoices, reports, and timestamps across the entire system.

Step two is Products and Services. This is your catalogue — anything you sell, provide, or stock lives here. You’ll need this active before you can attach items to invoices or orders.

Step three is Third Parties. This covers both your customers and your suppliers. Think of Third Parties as your contacts database with a financial layer on top. Customers are people or organisations you invoice, and suppliers are who you pay.

Step four is Invoices — both customer invoices and supplier invoices. Once your third parties are set up, you can start creating and tracking financial documents in both directions.

Step five is Bank Accounts. This is where you record your actual bank accounts so that payments can be reconciled against them. You want this in place before you start logging payments against invoices.

Step six is Orders, covering both sides — customer orders coming in, and supplier orders going out. Having invoices already active means orders can flow cleanly into billing.

Step seven is Stock Management. If you’re tracking physical inventory, this module handles it. It ties in with your products catalogue from step two, so that module needs to be live first.

Step eight is Projects and Tasks. This is where you manage work — whether that’s internal projects, client engagements, or anything else you want to track with timelines and task assignments.

Step nine is HR, which actually covers three things in one: Leave management, Expenses, and Timesheets. These are the tools your team uses to log time off, claim costs back, and record the hours they work. Having Projects and Tasks already active means timesheets can link directly to project records.

Step ten is EDM and Email Collector. EDM stands for Electronic Document Management, and combined with the email collector, this gives you tools for sending bulk communications and capturing inbound emails into the system.

Step eleven is the REST API. This is the bridge between Dolibarr and any external tools or scripts that need to talk to it. At NZRT, a lot of the automation — agents, scripts, integrations — relies on this API being active. Without it, external systems simply can’t connect.

Step twelve, and last in the sequence, is the WordPress Integration Module. This is the final piece because it depends on everything else being in place — particularly the API. Once it’s active, data can flow between your WordPress site and Dolibarr, keeping things like product listings or customer records in sync.

To recap quickly: you start with your foundational settings, build out your core records — products, contacts, finances — then layer on operational tools like orders and stock, add your people management modules, open up external connectivity with the API, and finish with third-party integrations like WordPress.

One more thing worth noting: the wiki cross-references a Full Module List if you need to go beyond these twelve. That’s a deeper reference for edge cases or modules not covered in the standard activation path.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.