Introduction

The proposal relates to providing support to Gas & Air Treatment Systems through the first phase of implementing Odoo ERP. The proposal follows a discovery call between Gavin, Stephen and Gill to understand the workflows within the relevant business areas and the work carried out to date.

The intial scope of work involves the Sales, Purchase, Manufacturing, Inventory and Accounting workflows and the system being migrated from is Sage 50 Financial Controller. 

Separate to the core requirements discussed, we may want to consider integration of the existing GATS domain name from an email perspective to provide a seamless interface for customer facing communication in and out of Odoo.

Additionally, I would recommend setting up the following modules:

Website - This just requires a very minimal setup and basically enables customers to see a friendly view when they receive communication from Odoo such as Quotes, Invoices or Statements.

E-Learning - This is a great module and we ordinarily create client specific basic training content when delivering a managed project implementation. I am very happy to spend an hour setting up the framework of this module to allow you to utilise it through the implementation without any charge.

Knowledge - Similar to above, this is a nice simple place to store information that can be easily referenced by any users. We typically use this to record information regarding some of the nuances of Odoo which can help users in the transition to the new system.

Sales

Creation of the Sales workflow from enquiry to Invoice. This stage will replicate the current process within Sage and should be straightforward to complete with a potential need for some customisation to the template being used.

Purchase

The purchase workflow has been largely completed by Stephen. We are able to implement any further requirements such as completion of reorder rules for inventory items based on the vendor pricelists already created.

Manufacturing

Creation of the Manufacturing workflow from order to finished goods. We will build the system to meet the current requirements of the kit "assembly" process, including creation of manufacturing orders for the required sales lines.

Inventory

Creation of the Inventory workflow as per Stephen's requirements, including storage locations.

Accounting

The Accounting workflow is the one with the largest amount of effort involved, although this does not appear to be overly complex mostly due to the fact that historic accounting data is not being imported. Importing the chart of accounts from Sage requires some manipulation (as Stephen has experienced with other modules!). These are more cosmetic changes in field names or descriptions and in some cases field types. We can complete this process retaining the familiar structure of nominals. We can also support Gill through the transition to the new system in terms of helping to familiarise any areas required. 

I would definitely recommend considering starting to process Accounting in Odoo from 1st October and completing the first VAT return spanning the new financial year within Odoo. This is from my own personal experience largely, as when we made the move from Xero to Odoo I also chose not to import historic accounting data. I chose to run the first VAT return in Xero for one of our companies and not for the second and I found the process for the second one much less painful! Although it's not a huge amount of work duplicating records in the two systems (depending on the number of transactions) Odoo handles MTD in a seamless way and the effort involved in bringing in the information required from the start is likely to be minimal. In short, I would suggest importing outstanding Sales and Purchase invoices as at 1st October along with opening balances for all other accounts. These will then be reconciled as payments are received or made in Odoo, which is a much faster process as demonstrated. The only duplication of effort then would be reconciliation of transactions relating to the pre 1st October Sales and Purchase ledger. This in my opinion would be significantly less than maintaining a quarter of records in two systems. This would also allow production of statements within Odoo reflecting the correct position.