Duration: 17:48
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context and why it matters 💼
The session “Making time count: Use the Timesheets app” demonstrates how a consulting-style organization can run a full time-to-invoice flow in Odoo. The presenter, a business analyst, walks through a realistic scenario where consultants log work across projects, managers approve entries, invoices are created accurately, and leadership reports on productivity and costs. The core message: time tracking isn’t just for billing clients; it’s also a key performance metric for utilization and internal evaluation.
How it works end-to-end ⚙️
The workflow begins in Sales with a sale order for a service product like “Consulting Hours.” That product is configured to automatically create a Project and a Task upon confirmation. A project manager assigns a specific employee to the task and sets expectations (e.g., an estimate of 10 hours).
Employees can then log time to the project in four practical ways. The most immediate is directly on the task, adding a description and duration (e.g., “Kickoff – 2 hours”). The Timesheets app offers two more options: adding lines at the end of the day, or using the Start/Stop timer when focusing on a single task for a block of time. A new addition is the Calendar (multi-creation) view, ideal for consultants working on the same project over a week; they can prefill consistent hours and descriptions across multiple days in one shot, dramatically reducing manual input.
For billing, the product’s invoicing policy can be set to “Based on Timesheets,” with an additional control to invoice only “Validated Timesheets.” Managers validate entries from the project’s smart buttons (Timesheets, Sale Orders, Invoices, Vendor Bills, Dashboard), and once approved, the sale order’s delivered quantity updates automatically (e.g., from 0 to 17 hours). From there, creating and confirming the invoice is straightforward.
The flow also supports prepaid fixed price projects. A CRM implementation might always be sold as 5 hours, regardless of actual time tracked. In that model, you still encourage consultants to log time for internal reporting—comparing “sold vs. consumed” hours helps test pricing assumptions and team efficiency over time.
Reporting is integrated throughout. The Project Dashboard provides a project-specific lens: tasks, timesheets, extra hours beyond prepaid, sales documents, milestones, and revenue models (fixed price, timesheets, milestones). Cost analysis is available via employee hourly cost rates, with drill-down to individual entries. Status updates (e.g., “September review,” mark “at risk”) give managers an auditable snapshot of project health.
At the company level, the Timesheets app offers all entries in one place, with a new employee filter that color-codes missing or incomplete weekly hours. The reporting view pivots by employee, project, and task, and any analysis can be exported to Spreadsheets and placed on the Dashboard for ongoing monitoring. Finally, Billing time targets let you define billable-hour goals per employee (e.g., 160 hours/month) so individuals and managers can track progress in real time.
What’s new and improved in Odoo 19 🧠
The standout improvements center on speed and visibility. The weekly multi-creation view in Timesheets makes repetitive entry vastly faster for long-running engagements. The employee filter adds intuitive color cues to highlight missing entries and drive compliance. Visual enhancements across dashboards and the project view give managers a clearer, more actionable understanding of delivery vs. budget.
Impact and takeaways 💬
End-to-end integration means fewer handoffs and cleaner data. A confirmed sale order automatically spawns a project and task; consultants log time in whichever way suits their day; managers approve with minimal clicks; billing is accurate by design. Whether you bill on actuals or fixed price, you still capture performance data to refine pricing and staffing. With Project Dashboards, Spreadsheets integration, and billing targets, leadership gains a comprehensive window into utilization, costs, and delivery risk—turning Timesheets from an administrative chore into a strategic lever.
Practical Q&A highlights: - Timesheet approvers can be set per employee in Employees settings. - Project dashboards aren’t fully customizable, but Status Updates are. - Billable rates can vary by project and employee via Project > Settings > Invoicing. - Timesheet approval can be optional, depending on the invoicing policy. - Project templates help standardize recurring engagements. - Estimated time can be adjusted on the project (for planning) and on the sale order (for correct billing).
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo’s vision.
Our goal has always been to remove friction between teams. When a sale creates a project and a task, and time turns into an invoice with the right approvals, the organization can focus on outcomes instead of administration. Timesheets are not just a billing tool; they’re a feedback loop for pricing, staffing, and learning.
What I like most about this release is the simplicity: weekly multi-entry for consultants, color cues for managers, and dashboards that tell you when you’re at risk. Integration is the enabler, but clarity is the value. With the community’s feedback, we’ll keep refining the details that make everyday work faster.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo’s Timesheets flow is impressively coherent—Sales to Project to Accounting—with strong usability and speed. The new calendar-based multi-entry addresses a frequent pain point in professional services. For SMB and midmarket firms, this will resonate: quick adoption, integrated reporting, and flexible invoicing policies.
At larger scale, the challenges will concern governance and compliance: advanced approval matrices, granular auditability, complex rate cards, and industry-specific rules. Odoo’s extensibility and partner ecosystem help, but enterprise buyers will benchmark it against deep PSA suites and compliance-heavy tooling. The UX differentiation is clear; the enterprise calculus comes down to scalability of approvals, global compliance, and multi-entity control—areas where Odoo’s open platform can compete with thoughtful configuration.
PART 4 — Blog Footer Disclaimer
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.