The Company: Who is Vloerwerken Verzelen?
Chris runs a flooring business in Belgium. He prices jobs, sends quotes, installs flooring, and gets paid. He does everything 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 a accountant takes more than a Word template and a shared folder.
ODILA built an Odoo environment around how Chris works.
"Smooth and productive collaboration." - Chris
The Problem: A Professional Quote, Then a Mess
Flooring jobs break into many line items: materials, installation, surface prep, disposal, ... Customers want a detailed, branded quote before they commit. Chris needed quotes that show that he knows what he is 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.
The Solution: One Database, Clear Roles
PDF Quote Builder: ODILA configured Odoo's quote builder with Verzelen's headers, footers, logo and products. Quotes pull products from a product catalog with current prices and look 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 examples.
"Every question got answered." - Chris
The Result
Chris quotes in Odoo, converts accepted quotes to invoices in one click, and sends them via Peppol. Bank transactions reconcile against open invoices in the same screen. His accountant works in the same data and does not 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 does require a simpler 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 the accountant sees your accounting, as you work. This saves you AND your accountant time.
- Peppol is mandatory whether you set it up or not. Belgium's mandatory B2B e-invoicing applies to sole traders too. Often specialised businesses do not focus on this enough.
Would Chris and Janique recommend ODILA to their collegues?
"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.