Duration: 16:37
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This 16-minute session demonstrates how a company delivering both services and goods—here, an EV charging station installer—can manage a “mixed sale” from sales to project execution while tracking margin in real time. The speaker shows how Odoo connects Sales, Projects, Timesheets, Purchases, Inventory, and Invoicing into one flow. The goal: make project profitability transparent and actionable at every step, without spreadsheets or manual reconciliations.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
The story starts with a standard sales process using a Quotation Template for a recurring service package. The template includes a service line (installation), time tracking, and a product line (the EV charging station). The service product is configured to “create a project on order,” which means confirming the Sales Order automatically spins up a project with tasks and milestones (e.g., “Preparation” and “Installation”). This is fully standard—no Studio or custom automation required.
From there, the demo shows how Vendor Orders (Purchase Orders) for hardware and accessories flow into stock and link back to the project, feeding costs to the Project Dashboard. Technicians log Timesheets, and Odoo converts those hours into costs using each employee’s hourly cost. As time and purchases accumulate, the real-time profitability dashboard updates, consolidating accepted revenue, incurred costs, and resulting margin. Milestone-based invoicing is used to bill the service in phases (e.g., 50% at “Installation phase reached”), while goods can be invoiced separately; the system clearly differentiates what’s being billed at each step.
The dashboard surfaces project KPIs that help leaders steer work: average hourly cost per project, billed/used hours utilization, and variances between forecast and actuals. Because all operations—sales, purchases, time entries, and deliveries—are natively connected, the team can stage-gate progress, align billing with work completed, and control budget execution without leaving the project context.
Impact & takeaways ⚙️
This end-to-end flow transforms project management from retrospective to proactive margin control. Service hours, purchase costs, and invoice events are reflected immediately in the Project Dashboard, illustrating the impact of each action—like adding extra cables or panels—on profitability. Milestones make partial invoicing straightforward, improving cash flow and reducing revenue leakage. For managers, this means a single place to compare initial budgets, actual costs, and invoiced revenue—and to adjust course quickly if profitability dips.
In Q&A, the presenter highlights practical extensions: adding new milestones mid-project and invoicing them; viewing burndown charts and statistics via the reporting dashboard; and logging “Monthly Review” notes directly in the project to track status over time. The clear takeaway: with Odoo, mixed sales (goods + services) are handled in a unified model that simplifies execution, ensures invoice alignment with progress, and provides confident, real-time margin visibility. 💬
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
When you connect sales, time, purchases, and invoicing in one flow, real-time margin stops being a month-end report and becomes part of daily work. Our goal with Odoo has always been to make this simplicity the default—so teams spend less time reconciling and more time delivering value.
Mixed sales are a perfect example of where integration wins. A project born from a sales order, updated by timesheets and purchases, and billed by milestones gives everyone the same truth. The community keeps pushing us toward more clarity and less friction, and that’s exactly where we’ll continue to invest.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
The Odoo demo captures a strong UX story: configure once at the product level, then let projects, tasks, and billing flow automatically. For SMBs and mid-market firms, this integrated model reduces complexity and accelerates value. The real-time margin view is compelling, especially for mixed goods-and-services scenarios.
As scale and regulatory complexity grow, the challenges shift: multi-entity consolidations, industry-specific compliance, advanced WIP and revenue recognition, EAC forecasting, and granular auditability. Larger enterprises will evaluate how Odoo handles segregation of duties, data governance, and complex allocation models compared to traditional enterprise suites. Still, the usability and speed to execution set a high UX bar that the market is right to watch.
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.