Compliance-heavy teams running ERPNext quickly hit the limits of the native File DocType. Attachments live scattered against individual records, there is no true folder hierarchy with inherited permissions, no version history when a file is replaced, no check-out lock to stop two people editing the same contract, and no way to search inside a scanned PDF. When an auditor asks "show me every controlled document, who accessed it, and prove this is the current revision," the stock File list cannot answer. Teams end up bolting on a separate SharePoint or Google Drive, which breaks the single-source-of-truth that made ERPNext worth adopting.

We build a proper Document Management System as a native Frappe app (its own module, not a pile of customizations) that lives inside your ERPNext instance and reuses its user table, permissions engine, and audit trail. At the core is a DMS Document DocType with a parent DMS Folder tree (an nsm/nested-set structure so a folder's permissions cascade to children), a DMS Document Version child/linked DocType that captures every revision with author, timestamp, hash and change note, and metadata fields plus a free-form tag/Tag link table. Check-in/check-out is enforced through hooks.py doc events (before_save, on_update, validate) plus a whitelisted checkout() / checkin() method pair that sets a lock owner and rejects edits from anyone else. Access control is expressed as ERPNext Role Profiles and User Permissions layered with folder-level permission rules, so "Finance can read, Compliance can approve, everyone else sees nothing" is enforced by the framework, not by hiding a button.

Full-text and OCR search is handled by a background pipeline: on upload, a scheduler_events / background job runs the file through an OCR engine (Tesseract by default; a cloud OCR provider optional) and writes the extracted text into an indexed field so both typed and scanned PDFs, images and Office files become searchable from one search bar. Expiry and review reminders run off a scheduled server script that scans documents whose review_date/expiry_date is approaching and raises ERPNext Notifications, ToDos or email alerts to the responsible role. Everything is reachable over the standard Frappe REST API and whitelisted methods, so your other systems (or a customer portal) can push and pull documents with the same authentication and permission checks as the desk UI. Client scripts add the in-list drag-drop, the version-compare view and the check-out banner.

Because this is build-to-order, nothing is a black box. We start with a short scoping call to map your folder taxonomy, retention rules, roles and the DocTypes documents must attach to, then build against a staging copy of your instance targeting Frappe/ERPNext v15 or v16. You get the full app source in a Git repository you own, installation and configuration on your servers, UAT on staging with a rollback plan before we touch production, user training, and a post-go-live support window. Typical delivery is 2 to 4 weeks from confirmed scope, depending on how much OCR tuning and custom permission logic your compliance regime requires.