Undoubtedly observed trends in any business regardless of the position or sector is the change in working method. Behind every successful company, its operations will be a collective work. Here comes the importance of Odoo Project Management. Successful completion of a project involves so many factors. The entire process of the project has to be split into different tasks and it has to be assigned to the right people. Sometimes tasks may be a collection of subtasks. Also assignees have to record the time spent on each task. On the other hand the project profitability and project budget has to be managed. All these have been properly recorded and handled.
Odoo 16 project management helps to achieve all these.
In this blog we are going to discuss the new features introduced in the Odoo 16 Project Management module.
Service Invoicing Policies
For service products invoicing policy has decided how the service has been invoiced to customers. In Odoo 16 we have two more invoicing policies which have changed in its functionality which are,
1.Based on Milestones
2.Based on Delivered Quantity (Manual)
Based on Milestones
Milestones are not just an invoicing policy, it will give an exact breakup of the entire project. The large projects usually segmented to multiple milestones and each milestone has a deadline. So the planned works have to be completed within that duration and invoicing will be also based on the milestone.
Consider you may have an expensive and large project. It might take some time to complete, maybe 1 year or 2 years etc. So the entire project duration will be segmented to different phases or milestones. Completion of each milestone will be a gradual development to the ultimate goal. Thus receiving payment when each milestone is achieved will be convenient for the company to assure a regular payment during the lifetime of the project. This will also be helpful for the customers to identify the progress and updates of the project.
Consider a construction project and construction service set as ‘Service Product’ with invoicing policy “Based on Milestones”.
The ‘Create on Order’ chosen as ‘Project and Task’ refers when a SO is confirmed with this configuration a new project will create with a new task having milestones.
One can add more milestones if the entire project is again broken down to multiple segments. The milestones are linked to tasks and once each milestone is completed, it can be invoiced.
Let’s open the milestone and create more milestones. In this case only one milestone has been generated with 100% quantity.
One will be able to edit the existing milestone and also create more milestones using the NEW button.
Here the entire project has split to 5 milestones, each of which has to complete 20% at each deadline and if any of the milestones is achieved one can be marked as ‘Reached’. In the gantt view the milestones appear as a diamond shape and late milestones will appear in red color.
First milestone is mentioned with a tick denoting the milestone has reached.
Now comes Invoicing part of the project. Invoicing based on milestones will not depend on the timesheet added. Maybe in this task multiple employees have worked as they have added their spent hours and work description in the timesheet.
But as we marked the milestone as reached, it will not count the timesheet hours recorded. It only counts the delivered quantity as 20% of the ordered quantity, i.e. 20% of 30 Days, which is 6 Days.
The recorded hours are the timesheet hours ( 32 Hours ), which will not affect the invoice. Invoice will be generated for the delivered quantity i.e. for 6 hours.
As each milestone is achieved, milestones can be marked as ‘Reached’ and can create Invoice for each milestone achievement.
In the Project updates also it will show the milestones and added project updates along with the other details like profitability, budget details, timesheet hours recorded, tasks, Invoices, burnt down chart etc.
Based on Delivered Quantity
This Invoicing Policy enables users to invoice their project based on the delivered quantity. The delivered quantity has to be manually updated in the SO and need to create the invoice for the delivered quantity.
The service invoicing policy ‘Based on Delivered Quantity’ can be set on the service product. In the above screenshot of a service product “Odoo Functional Training” whose hourly charge is $150 and created on order is ‘Project & Task’.
Thus the confirmation of SO for this product will create a new project with a new task.
The customer has been asked for a training of 10 hours total. Thus in the created task, the ‘Allocated hours’ will be taken as 10 hours.
As the timesheet is entered , totally spent hours is 3 and the remaining 7 hours of training is pending. This can be invoiced by manually adding the spent hours as the delivered quantity in the sale order.
Then can be invoiced for the delivered quantity. In this case also delivered quantity will not depend on the timesheet entered, whatever the quantity manually provided say less or greater than the timesheet, invoice is created for the manually given delivered quantity only.
Revamped Project Updates
With Odoo 16, the Project Updates are redesigned to have an easier tracking of Sale order details, Profitability details of project, Margin and budget details etc.
Documents Management and Document Workspace
With odoo 16 Project module is integrated with Document module, where a smart tab will appear ‘Document’ to add project related documents.
This basically linked to the ‘Documents’ module and thus the documents can be shared, locked to prevent editing, actions can be set to sign, or to create tasks, to make invoices and bills etc.
Every document related to the project will be kept in a separate ‘Workspace’ in the Documents Module. The hierarchy of workspace will be able to be seen in the documents module.
One can add the workspace template in the service product, then the documents will be kept in that particular workspace.
If the workspace template is not defined, for every project, a workspace with the same name of project will be automatically created under the parent workspace ‘Project’, which can be view in the settings of the respective project.
SMS Template on Stages
A new SMS template has been introduced in the stage settings to send SMS to customers as the task moves to that particular stage. The SMS can be to send an acknowledgement message, to review the project status etc.
Project and Task Tags
Tags are certain words to denote the project and task.Using this tag we will be able to identify the type of project and task. The below screenshot describes the assigned tags to the construction project. Tags can be added based on what is happening in this project.
In Odoo 16 when adding tags to tasks of the project, it will only be able to view and add tags that are added to its project.
But for tasks it will be able to create new tags on the flow itself. On the other hand, if you try to create a new tag which is already used in another project, which will not create any duplicate tags.That is wonderful!!
Converting Task to HelpDesk Tickets
With Odoo 16, project tasks can be converted to helpdesk tickets provided the helpdesk module should be installed in your database. This will be a great feature to easily make this conversion possible.
From ‘Actions’ one can convert the task to a ticket. The ‘Convert to Ticket’ pops up a wizard in order to define to which helpdesk team this ticket has to be assigned and to which stage it has to send.
Thus the task will be archived in the project and a ticket corresponding to this task will be created in the helpdesk module under the defined helpdesk team and ticket stage will be the mentioned stage.
