Chris runs a flooring business in Belgium. He prices jobs, sends quotes, installs flooring, and gets paid. He runs it together with his wife Janique. The workflow looks simple on paper, but keeping quotes consistent with invoices, processing supplier bills without retyping, and handing clean data to an accountant takes more than a Word template and a shared folder.
ODILA built an Odoo environment around the way Chris actually works.
"Smooth and productive collaboration." — Chris
Where the quotes ended, the mess began
Flooring jobs break into many line items: materials, installation, surface prep, disposal, and more. Customers want a detailed, branded quote before they commit. Chris needed quotes that signal he knows what he's doing, match what eventually gets invoiced, and hold up when a customer questions a line.
On the other side: supplier invoices arrived as PDF attachments, had to be typed in manually, and reached the accountant at month-end with minimal context. Two separate worlds, with Chris and Janique as the bridge.
One database, clear roles
PDF quote builder. ODILA configured Odoo's quote builder with Verzelen's headers, footers, logo, and products. Quotes pull from a product catalogue with current prices and stay consistent every time.
Peppol, in and out. Supplier invoices sent via Peppol land in Odoo as draft records. Janique reviews and confirms, no retyping. Outgoing sales invoices go via Peppol as well, which matters as Belgium rolls out mandatory B2B e-invoicing.
Accountant in the same database. Chris's accountant has a user account in the same environment. Chris uploads invoices, confirms them, and reconciles bank transactions. The accountant checks, corrects, confirms, and closes periods. They communicate through log notes in Odoo rather than email chains about which PDF belongs to which quarter.
The project closed with a personalised training document built around Verzelen's configuration, with their own examples.
"Every question got answered." — Chris
The Result
Chris quotes in Odoo, converts accepted quotes into invoices in one click, and sends them via Peppol. Bank transactions reconcile against open invoices on the same screen. His accountant works from the same data and doesn't reconstruct anything from PDFs at month-end.
The drift between what was quoted and what gets invoiced is closed. The gap between what Janique books and what the accountant sees is closed.
"Very good value for money." — Chris
What other flooring contractors can learn
Running a specialised business doesn't require a complex system. Three things matter regardless of company size:
- Quotes and invoices belong in the same place. When they live in separate tools, details drift. Prices get updated in the template but not the outstanding quote. Invoices get sent from memory.
- Give your accountant direct access. Sending PDFs at month-end creates a second job: reconstructing what happened. A shared database means your accountant sees your books as you work. Both of you save time.
- Peppol is mandatory whether you set it up or not. Belgium's B2B e-invoicing rules apply to sole traders too. Specialised businesses often overlook this.
Would Chris and Janique recommend ODILA to their colleagues?
"Absolutely, without doubt." — Chris and Janique
Working in flooring or another trade? ODILA builds Odoo implementations for Belgian contractors, tailored to how your business actually runs. Contact us to see what that looks like for you.