Sector · consulting, IT services, agencies, engineering firms
Odoo ERP for your service company
Your stock is time: once it has passed, it cannot be recovered.
An Odoo ERP links the quote, project management, timesheets, invoicing and accounting. You see the real profitability of each assignment while it is running rather than at year end.
ANOR, an Odoo integrator with 63 years of Odoo combined across its partners, configures this scope for consulting firms, IT services companies, agencies, training organisations and engineering firms, fixed-price or time-and-materials.
Which Odoo scope for a service company?
Short answer: five apps are enough to start: Sales, Project, Timesheets, Invoicing and Accounting. CRM and Helpdesk are added depending on your activity.
This is the sector where go-live is often the most straightforward: there is little stock to carry over, so less heavy data to migrate. The work focuses on your invoicing rules, your rates and the discipline of time entry.
The first batch covers the quote, project, time and invoice cycle. The following batches add workload management, analytic accounting and subscriptions. A restricted first batch can start from 8 weeks.
Your service challenges, handled in Odoo
From the quote to the margin per assignment.
Profitability visible during the assignment
Hours logged, external costs and re-invoiceable expenses are continuously matched against the amount sold. A drift is visible during the assignment, not at year end.
Time entry that people stick to
Weekly entry or from a mobile: the completion rate drives everything else, so it is the first point we work on.
Progress invoicing without a spreadsheet
Time and materials, fixed price by milestone, subscriptions and re-invoiced expenses: invoices are generated from the project or the order, with their hours statement.
A clear view of workload three months ahead
Signed projects, ongoing opportunities and consultant schedules: future workload becomes a dashboard, not a meeting.
IT services firms, consultancies, training organisations: the service businesses we equip
Every one of them sells time and expertise, but none invoices the same way. Configuration starts there.
IT services companies
Time and materials and fixed price, service centres, maintenance contracts and tickets invoiced out of scope.
Software publishers
Subscriptions, recurring licences, support under contract and deployment projects at customers.
Consulting and audit firms
Fixed-price or time-based assignments, re-invoiced expenses, profitability per assignment and per consultant.
Training organisations
Sessions, in-house and subcontracted trainers, agreements, funding bodies and document traceability.
Engineering and design offices
Jobs by phase and milestone, purchases attached to the job, versioned drawings and deliverables.
Law firms
Time per case, retainers, re-invoiced disbursements and invoicing by procedural stage.
Communication and marketing agencies
Quotes per campaign, re-invoiced media buying and subcontracting, results-based fees.
Maintenance and technical support
Maintenance contracts, scheduled on-site interventions and reports signed in the field.
Points to scope before starting
Odoo covers the core business of a service company. Three points deserve a frank discussion.
Payroll
in France, it stays with your provider or in specialised payroll software. Odoo receives the entries through an interface to accounting (see the OpenPaye interface).
Time entry
no tool replaces consultants' buy-in. We plan coaching and reminder rules.
Complex contracts
indexation, cap clauses and cross re-invoicing are checked against your real contracts before any commitment.
These points do not block the project. They are written down during scoping so that go-live leaves no parallel spreadsheet. That scoping starts with a free situation audit. When invoicing rules or the approval workflow deserve a rethink, our organisation consulting does it upstream, over 3 to 8 weeks, before any configuration.
Eight invoicing models covered by Odoo, from timesheets to subscriptions
Service companies do not all invoice the same way and many combine several models depending on the customer. Odoo covers them as standard, with an invoicing policy defined product by product.
| Invoicing model | When it applies | In Odoo |
|---|---|---|
| Time and materials | Scope hard to define at the outset | Validated timesheets, invoiced at the profile's rate |
| Fixed price | Scope clear and agreed by both parties | Fixed price, invoiced on order or on delivery |
| Phases and milestones | Long projects paid on progress | Project milestones that trigger each invoice |
| Subscription | Maintenance, licences, recurring services | Recurring contracts, due dates and automatic renewals |
| Cost plus | Expenses and purchases hard to predict | Expenses and purchases attached to the project, re-invoiced with a margin |
| Retainer | Guaranteed priority access over a period | Prepaid hours drawn down from timesheets |
| Results or value | Strategic consulting, communication | Lines invoiced manually when the result is reached |
| Success fee | Percentage of revenue generated or saved | Invoice issued on the agreed indicator, tracked in analytics |
Timesheets feed invoices without re-keying and the hours statement goes out with the invoice. The customer portal, electronic signature of quotes and document management lighten the admin load without third-party tools.
Training organisations: sessions, agreements and funding
A training organisation juggles three demands: teaching quality, financial balance and document compliance. Odoo brings admin, sales and finance together in a single environment.
- Sessions and trainers: learner registration, scheduling of open and in-house sessions, assignment of in-house trainers and coordination of subcontractors from the planning.
- Agreements and attendance sheets: quote, training agreement and attendance sheets signed electronically and filed on the customer record.
- Funding: coverage by a training fund, a local authority or the employer, invoiced to the right payer and tracked through to payment.
- Profitability per programme: trainer, room and material costs matched against the revenue of each session.
- Document traceability: programmes, assessments and certificates filed and retrieved in a few clicks for quality audits such as Qualiopi.
Course materials and online assessments are published with the eLearning app, on the same website as your training catalogue.
The Odoo applications of a service company
| Odoo application | Role in a service company | Typical batch |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | Quotations, fixed price, time and materials, invoicing on time spent or milestones | Batch 1 |
| Project | Assignments, tasks, milestones, profitability per assignment | Batch 1 |
| Timesheets | Time entry, approval, re-invoicing to the customer | Batch 1 |
| Accounting | Invoicing, VAT, bank reconciliation, analytics per assignment | Batch 1 |
| Subscriptions | Recurring invoicing of maintenance and managed-service contracts | Batch 2 |
| Planning | Consultant workload and assignment to projects | Batch 2 |
| Expenses and time off | Re-billable expenses, absences, availability | Batch 2 |
| CRM | Sales pipeline linked to quotations and assignments | Batch 2 |
These applications are included in the Odoo "Custom" plan: €35.90 per user per month for the first year, then €44.90 from the second year.
How ANOR runs a service project
1
Scoping
Invoicing models, rates, profiles, contracts and the approval workflow are recorded with management and administration.
2
Batch 1
Quotes, projects, timesheets and invoicing are deployed and then tested on real assignments.
3
Management
Analytic accounting, forecast workload and management dashboards complete the base.
4
Follow-up
After go-live, support and maintenance keep the teams supported.
Practical examples in a service company
- An accepted quotation that creates the assignment, its tasks and its day budget in one move.
- Approved timesheets that feed the time-based invoice without re-entry.
- Milestone invoicing followed through to payment, with the assignment margin up to date.
- A maintenance contract invoiced every month on a recurring basis, with its renewals.
- A consultant planning that shows workload, leave and availability before committing to a new assignment.
Odoo 20 AI for service companies
Odoo 20 embeds AI in a particularly advanced way: AI agents in the applications, AI-computed fields and connection to external tools through the MCP protocol. Your service company benefit without heavy development: we check with you which uses bring a real gain before enabling them.
Service companies' questions
The points covered in a first conversation with a service company.
An IT services firm or a consultancy needs to link CRM, quote, project management, timesheets and invoice in the same tool, to read the margin per assignment and per consultant as it goes. Odoo does so as standard, on time and materials as on fixed price, with maintenance contracts and customer support.
The first batch can start from 8 weeks. The scope is set during a 30-minute conversation.
Yes, project by project, with separate invoicing rules and a consolidated view of margin.
In France, payroll stays with your provider or in your specialised software. Odoo receives the entries through an interface and your accounting stays complete without re-keying.
Yes. Odoo manages recurring contracts, their due dates and their invoicing. The indexation rules specific to your contracts are checked during scoping.
Yes, with the Helpdesk app: prioritised and assigned tickets, configurable service commitments and a link to maintenance contracts to invoice out-of-scope work.
The Odoo "Custom" plan costs €35.90 per user per month for the first year, then €44.90 from the second year. Project, Timesheets, multi-company and external APIs are included.
The integration budget depends on your scope: it is quoted after a 30-minute conversation.
Yes. Expense reports and purchase orders are attached to the project and re-invoiced to the customer, at cost or with a margin, on the assignment's invoice. The job's profitability includes these costs automatically.
Yes. The agreement is signed electronically, the invoice is addressed to the payer (training fund, local authority or employer) and payment is tracked in accounting. Sessions and trainers are scheduled in the same database. The documents required by your quality audits are filed in document management.
The Odoo apps involved
Let's make the margin on your assignments visible
Thirty minutes to set the scope and the first batch, with a consultant who knows service businesses.