The problem with cost control
The project is coming to an end. The client is happy, though it wasn't without a few bumps along the way. But now comes the key question: how much did we actually make on this?
To calculate profitability, you need to add up all the costs... and that's where the trouble starts.
Especially when the project was sold at a fixed price (lump sum), but along the way a few extra changes and several dozen extra hours "snuck in." So begins the tedious investigation.
You have to manually tally:
- Employee working time and the associated costs (who, how much, on which task?).
- Subcontractor costs (have all invoices been assigned?).
- Travel costs and all other employee expenses (hotels, tickets, per diems).
So you have to dig through emails, project folders, and invoices, and then spend hours in Excel making sure everything adds up. Sound familiar?
This chaos isn't the people's fault. It's a problem of scattered tools. When cost data lives across emails, Excel, and a separate accounting program, calculating profitability after the fact is a nightmare.
How do you bring order to your documents?
The solution is a systemic one: one place that collects all of this data automatically. And that's exactly where Odoo helps. How?
Odoo has a project management module that's integrated with timesheet tracking, the expenses module, and the purchasing module (for subcontractors).
What does that mean? That all costs incurred in connection with a project are visible in one place, in real time – in the project dashboard.
- Subcontractors: A cost invoice from an external company is assigned to the project right away. Its cost immediately hits the budget.
- Travel and Expenses: An employee takes a photo of a hotel invoice with their phone and assigns the cost to the project through the Expenses module. The manager just approves it.
- Employee Working Time: Engineers log their working time (timesheet) directly against tasks within the project. The system automatically converts this into a cost based on their rates.
This gives you consistent information about all the costs of an order. You have quick access to invoices and expenses from a single dashboard.
Most importantly: you stop guessing. Instead of calculating profitability after the fact, you monitor it in real time. You see when hours start "slipping away" and can react before the project ends up at a loss.
This is one example of how much easier it is to run a project in Odoo, just looking at cost and profit analysis on a project. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
How can Adapt IT help?
We solve these problems using Odoo. If you're curious whether your problem is one we specialize in solving, book a 20-minute needs analysis.