1. Company profile
"Nexus IT Consulting" (fictional): 45 consultants, fixed-price projects, time & material, monthly support retainers, software licence resale. Clients in India, the UAE and the US.
2. Pain points
Timesheets in Excel; projects over budget discovered too late; invoices delayed; utilisation unknown; leave clashes with deliveries.
3. Apps
CRM, Sales, Project, Timesheets, Planning, Helpdesk, Subscriptions, Accounting, Expenses, Time Off, Appraisals, Recruitment, Documents, Sign, Knowledge.
4. Design decisions
| Engagement type | Odoo product setup | Invoicing |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed price project | Service, Based on Milestones, Create project & tasks (project template) | Invoice per milestone reached |
| Time & material | Service, Based on Timesheets, Create task in existing/new project; employee/role rates via SO line mapping | Monthly invoice of approved timesheets |
| Prepaid support block (e.g., 40 h) | Service, Prepaid/Fixed price, Task in project, upsell warning at 80 % | Invoice upfront; upsell activity when consumed |
| Monthly retainer | Subscription product, recurring plan monthly | Automatic recurring invoice |
| Licence resale | Goods/service with cost, margin | On order |
Other decisions: analytic plans Projects and Departments; timesheet validation weekly by PMs; billing rates per employee; Planning for resource allocation; Helpdesk tickets with timesheets for support clients.
5. Configuration steps
- Project settings: Timesheets ✔, Milestones ✔, Task dependencies ✔, Recurring tasks ✔, Customer ratings ✔, Planning ✔.
- Timesheets settings: encoding unit hours, minimal duration 15 min, rounding 15 min, reminders, validation.
- Employees: hourly cost (drives profitability), working schedules.
- Project templates (v19+) with stages: Backlog, In Progress, Review, Done; tasks per phase.
- Products as in the table above; quotation templates per offering.
- Helpdesk teams with SLA policies; timesheets on tickets; prepaid hours.
- Subscriptions: recurring plans, automatic payment, renewal alerts, churn reasons.
- Planning: roles (Functional consultant, Developer), shift templates, auto-plan based on allocated hours.
- Dashboards: utilisation (billable / available), project profitability (v20: billing targets vs billable time dashboard).
6. To-be process
Lead → opportunity → quotation (template) → SO confirmed → project auto-created → PM plans resources (Planning) → consultants log time (timer/letters/grid) → PM validates weekly → invoice (milestones / timesheets) → collections.
7. KPIs
Utilisation %, billable vs non-billable hours, project margin, WIP (unbilled timesheets), DSO, subscription MRR/churn.
8. Pitfalls
- Without hourly cost on employees, profitability shows 100 % margin.
- Decide early whether internal projects (training, pre-sales) carry an analytic account.
- Odoo 20: Light Users can't log timesheets or see tasks. Consultants need full seats.
- Odoo 20 removes the project profitability report in favour of new reports; retrain PMs.
9. Version notes
| v18 | v19 | v20 |
|---|---|---|
| Milestones, upsell warning, project updates | Project & task templates, multiple priority levels, share private projects with portal | Project from opportunity, collaborators vs followers, billing-target dashboard, overage charges for prepaid services, payment-based commissions |