Odoo for Waste and Recycling: Route Contracts, Container Assets and Commodity Resale

Why Does Generic ERP Misread a Waste Business?

Standard ERP assumes you're selling something you already own. A hauler's business does not work that way: it sells a recurring route service while also buying material at a negative price and reselling it at a commodity rate that shifts month to month. Both sides run on the same trucks, drivers and yard, yet most systems capture one side properly and leave the other to a spreadsheet.

Billing Hundreds of Service Agreements Without Re-Keying Them

Each month the cycle is the same: export the route list, pull extra charges, contamination fees and overweight penalties out of driver notes, then rebuild the invoices manually. Whatever a driver fails to record becomes revenue that never gets billed at all.

In Odoo Subscriptions, each service agreement keeps its own recurring schedule by site and container size, which means base billing happens automatically. Extra pulls, swaps and contamination events become Field Service work orders that attach chargeable lines straight to the customer contract, so variable charges land on the invoice run rather than depending on anyone's memory.

Do You Know Where Your Containers Are, and Which Ones Are Earning?

Roll-offs, front-load bins and compactors rank among the most expensive assets a hauler owns, yet they are often tracked on nothing more than a whiteboard in the yard. Units can sit on a job that closed months ago while nobody can say for certain which are still on rent and which have simply gone missing.

With Odoo Inventory, containers become serialised assets, each one carrying a location, a history and a current site. Route temporary placements through Odoo Rental and time on site starts accruing a charge on its own, while Field Service work orders for delivery, swap and pickup update the container's location the moment they're completed.

What Did the Load Weigh, and What Is That Material Worth Right Now?

Weighbridge tickets get typed into a spreadsheet once a week, often days after the fact. Baled material goes out at last month's index price, freight and processing never make their way back into the cost of the bale, and the result is that margin on a grade is more of a guess than a calculation.

Inbound tonnage is received directly against the scale ticket in Odoo, grades are modelled as products, and lot tracking follows the load from arrival through to the outgoing bale. Price lists update with each index period for resale, and Odoo's landed cost feature rolls freight, processing and disposal into the material cost, turning margin per grade into a calculated figure instead of an assumption.

What Do We Deliver for Haulers and Recyclers?

• Recurring route and service contract billing with variable charges in Subscriptions
• Containers as serialised assets with rental accrual and Field Service movements
• Weighbridge ticket capture into receipts, lot tracking and landed cost
• Margin per grade, per route and per site through analytic accounting