The old CRM was being retired. Today sales and finance for 7 companies work in one system, from quotation to DATEV export.
Rauschenberger Catering & Restaurants GmbH & Co. KG from Fellbach near Stuttgart has about 500 employees and 40 years in business: corporate, sports and private events, trade-fair catering and its own restaurants in Stuttgart, Munich and on Mallorca. For the whole group, Ruetech replaced Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Odoo 19 Enterprise on Odoo.sh. Outlook stays the mail client and is connected to Odoo.
Odoo 19 Enterprise has been in production since June 2026 and the daily working system for sales and finance since July 2026; email retrieval from Microsoft 365 is still being stabilised, and several phase-two finance items remain open.
Long sales cycles, seven companies, and everything starts in a mailbox
A catering group sells over months, invoices through several companies, and almost every enquiry starts in an Outlook mailbox.
- One group, many senders: 7 companies, 6 sales teams from catering and tenders to restaurant events and location management, sites in Germany and on Mallorca, three languages in the system.
- A long road to revenue: Enquiry, option, cost overview, proposal, signature, deposit invoices, final invoice. Agency and venue commissions sit inside the price. Enquiries arrive in personal and shared Microsoft 365 mailboxes, and that is where sales wanted to keep working.
- The clock was set from outside: Dynamics CRM was being switched off, so phase 1 had to rebuild the existing process 1:1 and fast. On top came the e-invoicing mandate, DATEV bookkeeping for several companies, German VAT at 7 and 19 percent, Spanish IVA at 10 percent and Spanish invoices for Mallorca.
The expensive gap is not the CRM but the handover to accounting
When a CRM is switched off, most groups shop for a new CRM. The expensive gap is elsewhere: where a sold event becomes an invoice and a booking.
At Rauschenberger that handover was done by hand, for every event and every company. Dynamics CRM was a sales-only system, and quotations were written in Word or Excel. Invoices were built from placeholder lines for total food and total drinks, with the amounts calculated elsewhere. No invoice data went to DATEV, so accounting booked everything by hand. And in a group the handover starts at the enquiry: the company that sells decides bank details, VAT treatment, legal text and document language. Decide that only at invoicing and it is too late.
A new CRM that stops at the quotation only rebuilds that gap. So judge a CRM replacement by what leaves sales: the invoice, the revenue account, the company, the DATEV line. Not by the leads coming in. At Rauschenberger the goal was both: continuity when the old system goes dark, and fewer manual handovers.
What the old process cost in a normal week
Every event was entered more than once: quoted in Word or Excel, carried into the CRM as placeholder lines, and finally booked by hand in DATEV.
- A workaround for every report: Total lines hid the detail. Revenue per business line needed account suffixes, and conference packages were split into food and drink revenue accounts by hand from a side spreadsheet. Accounting called it a time eater without end.
- Two number ranges kept consistent by hand: Event invoices ran through the CRM, small and monthly invoices through a manual range, and the old numbers mixed letters and digits.
- Wrong company, wrong document: A quotation on the wrong one of seven companies means wrong bank details, wrong VAT and wrong legal text. It gets fixed after the fact.
- Follow-ups held in memory: An enquiry in a personal mailbox stays invisible to the team until someone forwards it. Options, deposits and the final invoice depended on memory for months.
A week anyone in event sales will recognise: Thursday, 4 pm. The enquiry for a company anniversary has been sitting since Monday in the personal mailbox of a colleague who is off this week. Next door, accounting is retyping the invoices from the last events, looking up the food and drinks split in a spreadsheet, and wondering whether the second deposit for the summer party has gone out yet. None of this is a pipeline problem. It is a handover problem.
What a group needs before any product is named
The enquiry has to set the company, and quotation, invoice and booking have to hang on the same chain, in both countries. Bank details, tax, legal text and document language then follow from the company.
- One chain instead of copies: Quotation, order, invoice and booking are linked. What was quoted is exactly what is invoiced and booked, per revenue account and company.
- Deadlines tied to the event date: Follow-ups count in business days and run off the event date. Deposits and the final invoice are chased by the system, not by memory.
- Outlook stays, the enquiry becomes visible: Mail stays in the familiar client, while the enquiry sits on the opportunity where the whole team can see it.
- Two countries, one system: Separate accounting, tax rules and document language per company, plus one export to the in-house finance team that books in DATEV.
It also means templates and contacts move over from the old system instead of being retyped. This was the yardstick Ruetech set for Odoo 19 Enterprise at Rauschenberger.
The business area on the enquiry drives company, team and quotation
Sales picks the business area once, and the quotation then automatically carries the right company, bank details and legal data.
- Each team in its own pipeline: Six sales teams work with their own stages, from "Reserve availability" to "Signature received", and with lost reasons that fit the catering business. Nobody files opportunities into someone else's pipeline any more.
- The system plans the follow-up: Odoo schedules the next steps in business days, from contacting the customer through proposal and signature to the Last Call before the event. Deposit and final invoice tasks go to the finance team, with a separate finance team for Mallorca.
- Outlook stays the mail client: In the Customer Inbox, emails from shared and personal Microsoft 365 mailboxes become leads, attachments included. Each user connects their own Outlook. Anyone writing on behalf of another group company sends with that company's signature and sender address.
- Carried over, not retyped: More than 200 Dynamics email templates came across by script instead of being rewritten. Contacts moved over with their legacy fields.
- Commissions inside the price: Agency and venue commission percentages are stored per partner and product category, applied to quotation line prices and recalculated when the partner changes.
From sales into the books: Germany and Spain in one system
Quotation, order and invoice are linked, and each company has its own revenue accounts, its own tax logic and document language. German and Spanish companies have separate accounting setups, revenue accounts per business field and company, and fiscal positions for domestic, EU and Spain.
- Documents that match the company: The Mallorca branch issues Spanish-language invoices with its CIF. Orders follow the DIN 5008 layout, the project number appears on order and invoice, and invoice and delivery dates are taken from the event date. E-invoicing with XRechnung and ZUGFeRD is part of standard Odoo and was demonstrated in the project.
- From invoice to DATEV: Invoices are created from the order with the revenue account of the business area and reach the in-house finance team through the DATEV export.
- Export adjusted with the finance team: A booking-type column was added and an unneeded column removed. DATEV debtor numbers are assigned automatically.
Status in September 2026 and the next step
In production since June 2026 and in daily use since July 2026; the email retrieval from Microsoft 365 is still being stabilised.
- Timeline: Project start in March 2026, demos with sales and accounting at the end of March, in production since June 2026. In July 2026 order and project data were imported and the Outlook mailboxes connected. Ruetech has supported daily operations since.
- Still open: Retrieval of incoming mail from personal and shared mailboxes and the sync of sent mail are being stabilised. Address data on the Mallorca documents is still pending.
- Planned: Down-payment management, commission reporting and credit notes, splitting conference packages to revenue accounts, e-signature for offers, invoice approval and management reports.
Do you run event sales across several companies? Write the path of one enquiry on a single page, from the mailbox to the booking, marking every point where someone retypes something. We will lay that flow next to standard Odoo and tell you which handovers it closes and where a group like yours needs adjustment.
