Leveraging Odoo to Simplify Administration and Management in Co-Working Spaces

Image: Wikipedia Commons — Deskmag

One of the client profiles we’ve found to leverage and benefit from Odoo’s modular solution are Co-Working spaces. After several conversations, we have come across two observations:

1. Many co-works use Excel or various systems, maybe even a specific system that was configured for them years ago
2. Data is decentralised and together with 1. brings in additional maintenance costs and lack of scalability

We’ve found Odoo to be a viable solution to solve these two issues.

Here are five benefits that Co-Works can leverage based on a few successful implementations that Aureofy did.

#1 Centralised Invoicing

There is a module in Odoo’s platform called Accounting. This module allows for invoicing to customers and partners invoicing. In this way, the accounting team can keep track of the invoices and interface with the Sales or Operations team in case invoices are delinquent or need further following up.

Odoo invoicing module

Managers can get a sense of their pipeline and expected monthly invoicing numbers. Further, they can also see Sales Orders which they can forecast and project for upcoming recurrent or one-off invoicing.

#2 Centralised Sales and Contacts

There are two modules which can be used in tandem — CRM and Contacts. Both of these modules give Sales and potentially Marketing teams to look at contacts and get a sense of the pipeline or who they may want to use in the Marketing module.

Odoo’s CRM module

Sales leaders and executives can review their sales pipeline and uplift. In case there might be various branches, then these different branches can have their respective tags and split up. The same can be done on the invoicing side to get a true comparison and an overview of each branch’s health and sustainability.

Odoo’s contacts module

#3 Documents

Odoo’s document module

Customer contracts as well as other documents can be stored in the documents module. This provides Sales and Finance (and perhaps Ops too) an opportunity to track customer orders. In this way, the corresponding sale, invoice, and contract can be linked together across the modules with the document stored here.

#4 Website

Odoo website module

Because Odoo is modularised, you can also leverage the website module where you can have an e-commerce marketplace. If you want to have more automated ordering, then you can setup a marketplace where customer can buy their plans and get started. Otherwise, you can get them to fill in a contact form, and then one of the sales teams can reach out to the customer. WhatsApp integration as well as native Gmail integrations exist.

#5 Instant reporting and simultaneous access

I bring these to together, because it might happen that a director is travelling and wants to get a quick overview of the latest invoicing numbers or the latest profit/loss. Odoo facilitates this easily thanks to the reporting module as well as the fac that you can access the tool at any time.

In case there isn’t a report that couldn’t be generated, then the beautiful part is that this can be developed separately. This is another overall benefit that applies within Odoo’s ecosystem which is that anything can be developed or integrated as necessary.

Conclusion

Odoo as an ERP solution can be a great fit to simplify the administration and management of a Co-Working space thanks to modularised structure and corresponding price point.

Feel free to get in touch to discuss further on abadenhorst@aureofy.com or +54 9 11 6883–1172