Machine-parts manufacturer cut Odoo running costs by 61% – without losing a single workflow

The starting point

The company – around 40 employees, machining precision parts for automotive suppliers – had run Odoo 15 Enterprise on Odoo.sh since 2021: CRM, Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Manufacturing, Invoicing and Accounting. Licences plus hosting came to roughly 12,400 € per year, and the 2025 renewal quote raised it by 18% with two more users about to join.

Our audit found they actively used nine modules – and only two things that were genuinely Enterprise-only: a set of Studio-built forms on manufacturing orders, and the Enterprise accounting report pack. Everything else existed, feature for feature, in Community or OCA.

What we did

• Weeks 1–2 – audit. Module-by-module usage analysis on a database copy; mapped each Enterprise dependency to its Community/OCA replacement.
• Weeks 3–5 – rebuild. Studio forms rewritten as proper custom modules (versionable, upgrade-safe); Enterprise accounting reports replaced with OCA mis-builder; database converted 15 Enterprise → 18 Community on a copy.
• Week 6 – parallel run. Key users worked both systems side by side; two report discrepancies found and fixed.
• Week 7 – cutover. Friday-night switch to an EU cloud VPS. Monday shift started on the new system.

The result

Annual running costs fell from 12,400 € to 4,830 € – hosting plus a support retainer, no per-user licences. Adding the two new users cost 0 € instead of ~900 €/year. The Studio customisations, now proper modules, survive upgrades; the path to Odoo 19 is already planned. The saved budget covered a barcode-scanner rollout in the warehouse the same year.

"We expected to lose features. What we lost was the licence bill – the system works exactly as before, and new users are free."

COO, machine-parts manufacturer (name withheld – reference available on request)