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Odoo Projects UK
How can a UK consultancy run projects and billing in Odoo?
A UK consultancy or design practice can sell day-rate work, staged fixed fees and retainers as separate Odoo service products, record time in days or hours, and invoice from approved timesheets with VAT applied by customer location. I design that flow independently and remotely, keep contractor hours and sterling margin visible per project, and flag when CIS, retention and interim valuations call for construction software instead.
Last reviewed by Vikas Saroj
British consultancies, engineering practices and agencies often price in days rather than hours, quote fees by work stage, and lean on limited-company contractors when a project peaks. Their old setup is usually a timesheet tool, a fee tracker in Excel and Xero or Sage for invoicing, with a partner reconciling the three before each month's bills go out.
Odoo can carry that whole chain if the commercial structure is clear before anything is configured. The questions are practical: is a day seven hours or eight, which stages invoice on completion, how are contractor days costed, and which clients sit outside the UK for VAT purposes.
I advise as an independent consultant, not on behalf of Odoo or any implementer. Sessions run remotely inside the UK working day, with written design notes your finance lead and practice manager can review between calls, so decisions about fees and timesheets are recorded rather than remembered.
What I Do
The work is built around how UK practices price, staff and bill, rather than around a generic project template.
I take a sample of your fee proposals and engagement letters and turn each fee basis, whether day rate, staged lump sum or retainer, into a service product with a tested invoicing rule.
A deliberate choice on units: timesheets in hours with invoices in days, or days throughout, plus the conversion rule finance agrees, so a partial day never becomes a dispute.
Milestones mapped to your work stages, with invoices raised when a stage is signed off and any additional services billed on time spent once the agreed scope moves.
Limited-company contractors and freelancers costed at their real day rate, through user timesheets or supplier invoices posted to the project, so associate-heavy jobs show true margin.
Fiscal positions for domestic, EU and wider overseas business clients, so service invoices pick up the treatment your accountant confirms, including reverse charge wording where it applies.
A month-end view of unbilled time, invoiced fees and cost per project in sterling, giving partners a WIP figure they can discuss with the accountant rather than estimate.
IT support desks and planned maintenance contractors linked to contracts, tickets and site visits through Helpdesk or Field Service, where your edition includes those apps.
Live jobs, fee balances by stage and unbilled days transferred from Excel, a timesheet tool or a practice management system, with the cutover timed to a month end.
How I Work
Fees, staffing and VAT profile
Fee bases catalogued
Day definition agreed
Contractor model reviewed
Overseas clients identified
Products, stages and analytics
Service products built
Stage milestones defined
Analytic plans for offices
Fiscal positions tested
Sample invoices signed off
First month-ends on Odoo
Weekly timesheet deadline
Partner approval step
WIP review meeting
Write-off rules agreed
Ask a UK consultancy how it charges and the answer is rarely just hourly. Management consultants quote day rates. Architects, engineers and surveyors often split a fee across work stages, with stages such as those in the RIBA Plan of Work shaping when invoices fall due. Agencies and IT firms run monthly retainers or call-off arrangements where a client draws down days as needed.
Odoo handles each of these through the service product on the sales order:
None of this replaces a clear engagement letter. If your proposals mix fee bases inconsistently, the first output of my work is a short standard list of fee types that sales and finance both agree to use. The general mechanics are on the Odoo Projects page.
Many British firms deliver through a mix of employees and associates who trade through their own limited companies. That affects Odoo design in two ways.
First, cost. An employee's hourly cost comes from salary plus employer costs, while an associate costs whatever their day rate is. I set both so project margin reflects the people actually doing the work. Associates can log time as Odoo users or submit invoices that carry days and post to the project, and I help you weigh licensing cost against the detail you need.
Second, status. Whether an engagement falls inside the off-payroll working rules is a decision for you and your advisors. Odoo can store the outcome against the supplier and keep the paperwork attached, but it does not make status determinations, and I do not either.
On the timesheet routine itself, UK teams respond well to a simple rule: time in by a fixed point each week, approved by the project lead before the invoice run, with a missing-time report going to whoever owns billing. Formal approval of timesheets tends to come with Enterprise rather than Community, so confirm what your edition offers. Without it, I use a filtered review list and a lock date instead.
For sector context see my pages on consulting firms and engineering businesses.
Project invoices in the UK carry VAT decisions that a generic template will not make for you. Services supplied to a business client overseas, including in the EU, are often treated differently from domestic supplies, and invoices may need reverse charge wording. Consumers abroad can follow other rules again. The correct treatment depends on the service and the customer, so I ask your accountant to confirm it and then make Odoo apply it through fiscal positions linked to the client record.
Currency is the next layer. Firms with clients in Ireland or mainland Europe often quote in euros, while staff costs sit in sterling. Odoo can invoice in the client's currency and report the project in your company currency, but someone has to decide which exchange rate drives the margin report. I agree that rule with finance up front.
Groups with a UK company and an Irish or EU subsidiary sharing staff also need intercompany recharges and an analytic plan that lets a partner read margin by office as well as by client.
The VAT return, Making Tax Digital filing and bank feeds belong to the ledger side, covered on my Odoo Accounting page for the UK. For currency design as a problem in its own right, see ERP for multi-currency.
A UK contractor, fit-out firm or building services business runs on different mechanics from a consultancy. Interim applications and valuations under contracts such as JCT, payment and pay less notices under the Construction Act, retention held on each certificate, CIS deductions from subcontractor payments, and the domestic reverse charge on certain construction services all need tracking. Odoo can manage projects, purchasing and timesheets for these firms, and milestones can stand in for a basic application, but valuations, retention ledgers and CIS returns sit outside what Project does out of the box. Expect third-party modules, careful accounting configuration or a construction-specific product.
If that is your business, read my construction ERP page for the UK before settling on Odoo, and treat the CIS and VAT points as questions for your accountant.
Where Odoo fits, my role stays the same: independent design of how you sell, deliver and bill, a gap analysis against your real contracts, and support for whichever implementer you appoint. Broader platform advice lives on my Odoo consulting page for the UK, my UK ERP consulting page and the UK hub.
Tell me about your business and current systems. I’ll suggest the most sensible first step.
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FAQ
Yes, through units of measure on the service product, but it needs care. You must define how many hours make a billable day and how partial days round. I test that conversion against real timesheets before go-live, because small rounding differences quickly become client queries.
Each work stage becomes a milestone on the sales order, and an invoice can be raised when the stage is marked reached. Additional services outside the agreed scope go on a separate time-based line. This keeps stage invoices clean and makes extra work visible rather than silently absorbed.
Odoo applies the taxes and invoice wording you configure through fiscal positions. Whether reverse charge applies to a particular service and customer is a question for your accountant. Once that is confirmed, I set Odoo so the right treatment follows the client automatically instead of relying on someone to remember.
Yes. They can be users who log timesheets, which needs a license per person, or they can invoice you with days shown on the bill, posted to the project. Either way their cost reaches project margin. Employment status questions remain with you and your advisors.
Usually only with add-ons or a lot of configuration. Interim valuations, retention, CIS deductions and payment notices are not standard Odoo Project features in most setups. I would compare a construction-focused system alongside Odoo before you commit, and I am independent of both.
Every business is different. Share where you are today and what you want to fix, and I’ll tell you honestly whether and how I can help.
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