Case file 004 · Industrial business · Indian Ocean
Cannot Edit Standard Charts
A production upgrade that failed on the first attempt — by design, safely, with a backup — and the rule we wrote so it never happens again.
ERPNext · Frappe · Docker deployments
The brief
A growing industrial business runs its operation on ERPNext: buying, stock, selling, accounts. They needed upgrades, new features and customisations, without the system ever being down when the trucks are loading.
The file
- The production upgrade failed on its first attempt with four words: "Cannot edit Standard charts." Our exported configuration had quietly carried the entire standard chart of accounts with it. ERPNext refused, correctly, to let us overwrite it.
- Because the upgrade began with a full backup, the failure cost us an evening, not a business. That is the whole point of the backup. Nobody remembers the backup until it is the only thing anyone wants to talk about.
- A new rule was written that night: configuration exports never carry standard records. It is now on a checklist. Checklists are scar tissue.
What we did
- A deploy wave for every release: back up, compare what's live against what's in code, adopt any drift first, then ship features, then verify. Never migrate production blind.
- Customisations as code, in version control, so the next upgrade is a merge and not an archaeology project.
- Separate test and production, with production data restored into test whenever someone needs to check something against reality.
- Image-based deployments so the thing we tested is exactly the thing that goes live.
Outcome
Upgrades are scheduled, rehearsed and boring. The business keeps loading trucks.
Every rule in our runbook has a date next to it. Ask us about any of them. We'll tell you the story.
(Clients, colleagues and numbers stripped out. The dysfunction is ours to share; theirs isn't.)