Duration: 21:44
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This session brings together a senior consultant from Deoid, Julia Platan, and a founder/manager from 24Sea (a University of Brussels spin‑out) to unpack how a fast‑growing structural health monitoring company reengineered its ERP to handle complex revenue structures. 24Sea monitors large assets—bridges, port infrastructure, and especially offshore wind turbine foundations—acting as a one‑stop shop for design, installation, data capture, and monthly analysis. With long sales cycles, milestone contracts, and multiple revenue models, the team partnered with Deoid to migrate from a problematic Odoo 16 setup to a fresh, largely standard Odoo 18.2 Online implementation. The stakes were high: accurate project control, budget visibility, and compliant revenue recognition across diverse project types.
Core ideas & innovations ⚙️
The transformation centered on standardizing processes around out‑of‑the‑box Odoo—“adopt before adapt.” The team rebuilt on Odoo Online with minimal changes via Odoo Studio (a few fields and structured dashboards), deliberately avoiding custom code for maintainability. They kept complex quoting in Excel (for now) while converting signed contracts into lean Sales Orders in Odoo, each linked to a pre‑created Project to anchor all downstream activity.
From there, 24Sea leaned on Analytical Accounting with dimensions to track tasks, Timesheets (with different hourly costs by role), Purchases (for components and hardware), and Expenses (for on/offshore travel and overhead). While Manufacturing is planned for a future phase, revenue operations had to work immediately across three flows:
- Supply projects with strict Milestone Billing (cash vs. work performed decoupled)
- Ongoing Service Billing for monthly data analysis
- Ad‑hoc Hardware sales (e.g., spare parts, small adaptations)
Because native Percentage of Completion (PoC) in Odoo ties to planned vs. logged time, the team introduced a simple manual PoC field (via Studio) to avoid time = progress assumptions. They then consolidated live operational and financial data into robust dashboards built with Odoo Spreadsheet, producing three real‑time views:
- Operational budget tracking per task and project, with weighted PoC roll‑ups
- Gross margin reporting blending costs, revenues, and accruals
- A financial project report used by accounting for quarterly close
Critically, they erected a “financial wall” between sales and project execution: project managers manage task‑level budgets and progress, but not sales margins, reinforcing discipline and preventing overspend. Quarterly Accruals for Revenue Recognition (aligned to PoC and milestones) are prepared by the accountant directly in Odoo. Forecasting and cash planning remain in Excel for now, with hopes for more native forecasting capabilities in future Odoo releases.
Impact & takeaways 🧠
The migration reset 24Sea’s project governance. By redesigning the Chart of Accounts, introducing Analytical Dimensions, and codifying “adopt before adapt,” 24Sea achieved real‑time visibility and faster quarter‑close without custom code. Project managers can monitor progress daily, identify cost variances early, and reallocate budgets within tasks. Decoupling Timesheets from progress promotes honest performance measurement: time spent is a cost signal, not a proxy for value delivered.
Practically, this elevated the financial maturity of long, multi‑party projects typical in offshore wind. It also simplified audits and maintainability by staying close to standard Odoo. The remaining gaps—forecasting, manufacturing—are planned as next steps. The core lesson: for small and scaling companies with complex revenue, standard Odoo plus Odoo Spreadsheet and Analytical Accounting can deliver enterprise‑grade control with minimal customization, provided the organization is willing to adapt its processes. 💬
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo’s vision.
What I appreciate most here is the discipline of “adopt before adapt.” When companies embrace standard, they gain speed, clarity, and maintainability. It’s exactly why we invest so much in first‑class modules like Projects, Accounting, and Spreadsheets: so teams can build their own sophisticated workflows—without code and without technical debt.
Revenue recognition for milestone and service‑based models is hard to simplify, but 24Sea’s approach shows the power of integration: analytical accounting, task‑level budgets, and accruals all flow into one coherent picture. We’ll keep pushing to make forecasting and project‑based rev‑rec even more native, because the best ERP is the one that disappears into your operations—simple on the surface, rigorous underneath, and shaped with the community’s feedback.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
24Sea demonstrates how far a modern SMB can go with a low‑customization ERP approach. The use of integrated spreadsheets and analytical dimensions is clever and pragmatic. For long‑cycle projects, though, governance is key: manual percentage‑of‑completion and spreadsheet‑driven reporting demand strong process controls. At scale—multiple business units, geographies, IFRS/ASC 606 requirements—enterprises typically expect embedded revenue accounting (e.g., automated performance obligations, contract modifications, and audit trails) to reduce risk.
The UX simplicity is a strength, but the next test will be scalability and compliance depth: handling large portfolios, complex consolidations, and advanced forecasting. This is where we focus with specialized modules (e.g., revenue accounting, project operations, advanced planning) and prescriptive process frameworks. Still, for a lean team moving fast, 24Sea’s Odoo journey is a solid blueprint—fast deployment, tight integration, and meaningful ownership by the business.
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.