Engineering consultancy went from spreadsheets to Odoo in six weeks

The starting point

Fifteen engineers and admins, dozens of parallel design projects, no system of record. Quotes were assembled in Word from old quotes, hours lived in per-person Excel files, invoices were written when someone remembered, and the tax advisor received folders of PDFs. Nobody could say which projects made money until the annual accounts arrived – too late to act.

What we did

• Week 1 – scoping. One workshop, one fixed-price offer: CRM, Sales with quote templates, Project, Timesheets, Invoicing. Nothing else – accounting stays with the tax advisor.
• Weeks 2–4 – configuration. Quote templates rebuilt from their five most common job types; hourly rates and project stages configured; three years of customers and open projects imported from Excel.
• Week 5 – DATEV-compatible export. Invoice data exports in the format their tax advisor's software ingests – no accounting migration, no disruption to compliance.
• Week 6 – training and go-live. Two half-day sessions: one for engineers (timesheets, projects), one for the office (quotes, invoicing). Live on a Monday.

The result

Quotes go out the same morning they're requested – from templates, in three hours instead of two days. Hours land on projects daily, so planned-versus-billed is visible per project every week, not once a year. Month-end invoicing is one afternoon of reviewing drafts generated from timesheets. And because it's Odoo Community, the 12 seats cost 0 € in licences – the whole budget went into configuration and training.

"For the first time we know which projects make money while they're still running – not a year later in the annual accounts."

Managing partner, engineering consultancy (name withheld – reference available on request)