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Many digital nomads choose to work for themselves as one of the best ways to achieve the required flexibility to work and travel the world at the same time. Their enterprises often start as small one-man-ventures with one person juggling all the different tasks that go into making a business work. But, if the business becomes successful, it can grow quickly, and managing it can become more complex.
Add to this that, as the business expands, many digital nomads choose to work with and hire other digital nomads. You can find yourself graduating from a “one-person show” to someone managing a complex business with a dispersed international team. While it is challenging, achieving this kind of success from what was initially a flexible job is the dream.
Whether you are at the stage in your business where you are doing everything – you are the manager, accountant, content creator, and product developer – or you are at the point where you are building a team and looking for smart ways to collaborate, you need a lot of different business tools. Accounting, point of sale, HR, marketing, and project management; there are tools out there to help you manage all these elements of your business. However, finding all the tools you need can be time-consuming and expensive, and getting all the different tools to talk to each other can be outright impossible. Incompatible tools can result in double data entry and makeshift workarounds that see things fall through the cracks.
If you can relate to these challenges, then Odoo might be the right tool for you. Odoo is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform that hosts the full suite of applications that businesses need. It can be a cloud-based solution, ideal for remote teams and nomadic businesses. It is one of the most affordable ways to get access to all the tools your business is ever likely to need, and is scalable. Plus, every application is designed to work with one another.
This is our full review of Odoo. We take a closer look at what it is, how it works, and what kinds of businesses it is right for. We look at the benefits, but also some of the issues, and we explain why we recommend Odoo for nomadic entrepreneurs and businesses managing remote teams.
What is Odoo?
Odoo is a suite of essential business management applications such as finance, accounting, CRM, sales, warehouse management, human resources, marketing, and more.
There are around 45 core applications that are developed, maintained, and upgraded by the Odoo team. If you only use one of their applications, it’s free for life. If you want to use two or more, you subscribe to a paid plan, which gives access to the full suite of apps.
All the apps are designed to function seamlessly together in an integrated ecosystem. You customize that ecosystem for your business, choosing the apps you want. Because it is open-source software, you can also customize the apps for your specific needs if you have access to the technical skills.
Many developers are creating business applications for Odoo to meet the specific needs of different industries such as healthcare and manufacturing. There is also a library of 40,000+ business applications contributed by the developer community.
How is Odoo Implemented?
There are two different ways to use Odoo, as a community solution or an enterprise solution.
Odoo Community Solution
As a community solution, it’s free and open source. You can install and manage it on your private servers. With this approach, you don’t get support from the central Odoo team, but there is a strong community of Odoo developers out there.
It offers full customization possibilities. This is often the choice of “tech types” who know how to work with Python and JavaScript, the two programming languages used by Odoo.
But, of course, there is a cost associated with having the time and expertise in-house to manage Odoo.
Odoo Enterprise Solution
Odoo Enterprise offers more features and applications compared to the Community edition. It is available as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution hosted on Odoo’s secure cloud servers or it can be installed on your own servers.
With the Studio app, you can perform some customizations without knowing how to code. If you need advanced customizations, Odoo also offers something called Odoo.sh, which is a hybrid model.
They use two-factor authentication to protect access, and, as in the community version, you have sophisticated user permissions to control who can see what. You do get support and upgrades from the Odoo team. Everything is included in the single licensing price.
Pricing
The pricing below applies if you are looking at the Odoo enterprise edition.
If you are only interested in one application, such as accounting, you can use one app for free for life with an unlimited number of users. Those looking for the full package will be choosing between the Standard and the Custom plans. Both give you unlimited access to all the available applications. The difference is that the custom package allows for more advanced customization options.
The pricing is adjusted according to each region’s purchasing power. It is as affordable as a meal restaurant or a Netflix subscription! For example, for US customers, when you pay annually, the Standard package is US$24.90 per month per user in the first year and then increases to US$31.10. For all plans, Odoo also provides unlimited support and hosting. If you need help with set-up and implementation, you can pay extra for the Odoo Success Pack, which gives you access to a personal Odoo consultant. How much this will cost depends on your business needs.
There are also a lot of knowledge resources and educational content available on their website if you prefer to figure things out that way.
Available Applications
Below we are going to look at some of the 45 core applications maintained by Odoo. We will be categorizing them under the same eight headings that Odoo uses: Finance, Sales, Website, Inventory and Manufacturing, Human Resources, Marketing, Services, and Productivity.
Finance
Odoo’s finance suite is user-friendly and essential for all businesses. It offers apps such as accounting, invoicing, expenses, document management, and online signatures. It is great as you can do things on the fly. You can take a picture of a receipt as a business expense or quickly generate an invoice on your mobile device for a new client with a few clicks. Since Odoo is an integrated solution, this data automatically syncs with the accounting app, eliminating the need for double data entry!
It is important to note that invoice digitization is one of a number of Odoo in-app purchases (IAP). For IAPs, Odoo operates a credit system, so you can buy credits in advance and use them as needed. You get 200 credits included when you initially join and can top-up at any time within the application.
You can also implement automatic bank synchronization, compatible with 25,000 banks worldwide. Odoo also offers pre-configuration based on the accounts and tax requirements of your chosen country. Though, of course, if you aren’t familiar with accounting and taxes, ask an accountant to look it over.
Sales
When it comes to sales, Odoo starts with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which is the ultimate client-focused tool. All interactions are centralized into your pipeline in order to better plan the next engagement. It integrates with all key communication lines including email, SMS, live chat, and VoIP. In addition, the Sales app will allow you to use quote templates in order to automate common orders. The right prices and taxes based on the customer’s location will be automatically applied. With Odoo, you can also come up with custom pricing strategies such as product listings, loyalty programs, gift cards etc.
Another app of the Sales suite is the PoS app. It is intuitive, reliable, and available both online and off-line. You can use it for your shop, for your restaurant, or any other type of business where you need to take payments. Transactions are managed with ease and focused on what matters: the customer’s needs.
Website
Odoo’s website builder works a lot like Wix or Squarespace, and anyone who has worked with these web-building platforms will have no problem navigating Odoo. You don’t need to know how to code. Sites are mainly built using drag and dropping blocks, and everything is fully customizable. You can do things such as generate leads via a form on your website. Since the information is flowing from one app to another, the data gathered on the form will automatically generate a lead on your CRM.
In the website suite, you can also find apps such as eCommerce to allow you to launch your online store or eLearning to promote your training courses.
Inventory and Manufacturing
Odoo has a modern inventory application for managing replenishment, quality control, and storage. It provides strategic batch picking for the faster collection of products and prints shipping labels for your preferred courier.
You can simulate manufacturing orders with real-time capacity planning, component availability, and cost control. It also enables analysis of quality issues and supports IoT integrations for machinery.
Human Resources
Odoo’s HR package is extremely useful, with tools that will help you stay on top of the management of your employees. Odoo has applications for recruitment, employee management, appraisals, time off, and referrals. You can oversee your teams while maintaining personal data privacy, find employees with the skills you need for different projects track time off to ensure you are never left short, and even manage appraisals transparently and interactively.
Marketing
Odoo offers a suite of marketing tools that leverages automation to ensure that the right person gets the right message at the right time. It’s possible to design campaigns using a visual interface and push out communications via email, SMS, and social.
Odoo also offers an all-in-one event management platform for events, be it a webinar or a festival. You will be able to manage speakers, sell tickets, get sponsors, and more.
Services
It’s time to keep track of your projects and increase your efficiency! With the Odoo Project app, you can easily organize your tasks and assign people to them. On the chatter, you can send messages to your collaborators, upload documents, log notes, and schedule activities. Project updates are generated in real-time and provide a detailed overview of profitability, milestones, resources, and tasks.
The Project app enhances collaboration and interacts with other apps such as timesheets, field services, and sales.
Productivity
Odoo also has a suite of apps it calls productivity. In the suite, the knowledge app will help you centralize all your company’s key information, work on it as a team, and access it from any Odoo app. Knowledge at your fingertips!
It also includes an approvals app, which allows you to automate the process of managing employee requests.
This is also where you will find the IoT (Internet of Things) which will enable you to connect many external devices to your database like for example a barcode scanner.,
Do Users Like Odoo
Looking at everything Odoo has to offer, it looks great on paper, but what is it actually like to use? To give you a general idea, Odoo scores 4.1/5 stars on Capterra, 3/5 stars on Trust Pilot, and 7.2/10 on Trust Radius. What is the sentiment behind these scores?
Overall, it seems that small businesses that use Odoo as an enterprise solution and use their out-of-the-box applications with minimal customizations tend to be the happiest. This is because Odoo’s apps handle fundamental business tasks such as finance, sales, and HR very effectively. The platform is fairly seamless and intuitive.
People who are less pleased with Odoo tend to be businesses that have unique business needs or established ways of working that they are now trying to adapt to Odoo. However, Odoo provides various implementation methodologies tailored to suit different types of businesses. Experienced developers who choose to use Odoo as an open-source application, who adapt it themselves as they see fit, also seem relatively happy, since Odoo is flexible, making most things possible. The community is also strong, so when programmers do run into issues, there are a lot of experienced Odoo users out there sharing ideas and fixes.
Pros and Cons of Odoo for Nomadic Entrepreneurs
When it comes to deciding whether Odoo is right for you and your business, it is generally a case of weighing the pros and the cons, and the cost and benefits. While this depends on your industry, the scale of your business, and the systems that you already use, below are some of the main pros and cons for nomadic entrepreneurs.
Pros
Odoo is easy to use.
Using Odoo is simple and intuitive, and it immediately gives you access to the essential things that most companies need such as accounting, sales, and management tools. Odoo helps you free up your time to work on other important things. It is a major productivity booster!
Odoo grows with you.
When you are just starting, you may only need a few basic tools. But as the business grows, new business needs will emerge. With Odoo, you just use the applications you need, and you can add new ones as your business scales. Once you use two or more apps, you will switch to a paid plan which gives you access to the entire suite of apps.
Everything works together.
In Odoo, all the apps are interconnected and the information flows from one app to another seamlessly. Anyone who has worked with multiple systems knows that it can be a pain to get them to work together. With Odoo, this integration simplifies operations, making it easier to manage your business from a single platform.
Odoo is affordable.
Assuming you choose to pay for Odoo as a SaaS, it is one of the most affordable ERP solutions on the market, especially for industries that aren’t supported by a plethora of free tools. Because you pay per user, it tends to offer the best value for small businesses.
The first app is free forever, and when you decide to add your second app, you switch to a paid plan that gives you access to Odoo’s full suite of apps. As a reminder, the pricing depends on each region’s purchasing power. For example, in the US, it costs US$24.90 per month per user in case of a yearly plan. Just take a moment to think about what you can buy for US$24.90. Maybe a gym subscription? A pizza? Running your business for that amount is just a bargain!
Odoo works for international businesses.
Odoo is a good solution for international businesses with clients and suppliers across borders. Not only does it support payments and invoicing in multiple currencies, but you can also connect multiple bank accounts, in multiple countries and currencies, to Odoo.
Odoo makes task management easy.
Many Odoo users who are finding themselves fulfilling a variety of business roles appreciate how Odoo helps them stay on top of all their tasks. It can automate some tasks, and send reminders so that things don’t get missed. When businesses grow from a one- or two-person enterprise to something larger, task management can be a major transitional challenge, which Odoo can help manage.
You can manage multiple businesses from one Odoo account.
If you have multiple small businesses, you can manage them all from one Odoo account. This is ideal for entrepreneurs who have a business, an influencer presence, and incomes from multiple other sources. But be aware that the multi-company feature is only available in the Custom plan.
Cons
Setting up Odoo can be complex.
If you need a lot of customization to make Odoo work for your business, it can be challenging to get Odoo set up by yourself. You can get free support from the Odoo team regarding bugs, but if you need help for your implementation, you will need to buy a consulting pack to work directly with an Odoo consultant, which can be quite an investment You can also decide to hire a third-party Odoo developer or system integrator. In either case, maintaining your customizations comes with ongoing costs.
Access to Odoo support can be hard.
While Odoo offers great customer support options, users agree that a longer response time can sometimes be observed. This is probably a result of Odoo’s growing popularity, with demand outstripping availability. Odoo is aware of the matter and is taking active steps to address it.
Why We Recommend Odoo for Nomadic Entrepreneurs?
If you are a nomadic entrepreneur growing your business, Odoo can be an excellent solution for managing your fundamental business tasks such as finances, sales, and HR. It is more than affordable for small to medium-sized businesses, its cloud-based service makes it ideal for remote working and remote teams, and it works very well with international currencies and taxes. Odoo is also very scalable. You can start using it when your business is small, and it will grow with you.
These are all good reasons why nomadic entrepreneurs should consider using Odoo when developing their businesses.
