8-part guide
Agencies and consultancies run on billable hours, project margin, and client trust. Most ERP systems are built for product companies and bolt on project afterthoughts. Odoo project...
Why this matters
Agencies and consultancies run on billable hours, project margin, and client trust. Most ERP systems are built for product companies and bolt on project afterthoughts. Odoo project management was rebuilt from v17 onward with services firms in mind, task hierarchies that mirror your SOW, timesheets that flow straight...
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Project lets every project define its own task stages, Discovery, In Progress, Review, Done, visible in Kanban, list, Gantt, or calendar. Agencies typically run Kanban per project; consultancies prefer list with deadline columns. You get both in the same record without any configuration gap. Assign each stage a fold...
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Fixed-fee engagements live and die by milestone discipline. Project milestones in Odoo let you define deliverables with due dates, assign tasks to each milestone, and lock billing until the milestone is marked reached. Combine milestones with the Sales module's milestone-based invoicing policy and you get an automatic...
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The single biggest time-theft at services firms is the gap between doing work and recording it. Timesheets in Odoo attach directly to tasks, consultants log hours from the task record, the mobile app, or a weekly grid, all flowing to the same timesheet line. Hours map to cost rates by employee and to billing rates by...
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Every project manager should know margin by Thursday of each week. The Project profitability view surfaces planned vs. actual hours, billable hours, material costs, and revenue recognized, all on one screen without an analyst. Tie this into Analytic Accounting with one analytic account per project and you get P&L by...
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Booking consultants blind is how you blow a delivery. Planning exposes each consultant's booked hours against their contract capacity week by week. Project managers see who is available without emailing four team leads. Shift templates repeat recurring allocations; forecast hours feed the Gantt so deadlines are...
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Clients who cannot see project status email to ask. Odoo's customer portal gives each client a login-gated view of their project tasks, milestone status, shared documents, and invoices, without a VPN or a screen share. You control what is visible per project. Agencies using the portal report a 30-40% drop in...
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Retainer engagements need repeating work without repeating admin. Recurring tasks in Odoo auto-generate on a daily, weekly, monthly, or custom cadence, pre-assigned to the right team member with the correct project and analytic tag. Hours logged flow straight to the retainer billing subscription. Combine with...
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BD teams at consultancies work on variable comp tied to closed deals or project revenue. Sales in Odoo supports commission rules by salesperson, product category, or margin, and Analytic Accounting lets you slice commissions by practice area or geography. Transparent commission reports reduce payroll disputes and let...
Bonus
The right partner for a product-company rollout is often the wrong partner for a consultancy. Billing complexity, utilisation reporting, and client-portal nuance require real services-firm experience. Six checks that matter:
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