Connect enquiries, service delivery and billing across legal entities
At Rauschenberger, seven entities share one Odoo database. Each enquiry determines the selling entity, responsible team and quote template. The system schedules follow-ups in business days and passes invoice data to the in-house accounting team through DATEV export. Previously, the group used Dynamics CRM with more than 200 email templates; quotes were prepared in Word or Excel and entries posted manually. This project shows how Odoo connects enquiries, appointments, service delivery and invoicing.
One enquiry, station by station
A CRM replacement is an opportunity to review the full process, including the handover from sales to invoicing and accounting.
1. The enquiry arrives by email
Odoo can capture emails from personal and shared Microsoft 365 mailboxes as leads, including attachments. Outlook remains the email client. Rauschenberger has used this workflow since July 2026; incoming mail retrieval is still being stabilised.
2. Who is actually selling?
Each legal entity determines its bank details, tax rules, legal text and document language. Standard Odoo supports several entities in one database. For Rauschenberger, we configured the enquiry’s business unit to assign the entity, team and documents automatically. Customer and contact records are maintained once.
3. The quote
In Odoo, quotes are built from products or services and carried through to the order. Quote templates can be configured for each entity. For Rauschenberger, we also developed calculations that include agency and venue commissions in the price.
4. Follow-up and the job itself
Follow-ups are recorded as activities on the relevant record. At Rauschenberger, they are scheduled in business days relative to the event date. Technical service businesses can also use Odoo’s Field Service, Maintenance and Helpdesk apps, with technicians logging hours directly against jobs or tickets.
5. Invoice and accounting
Invoices come from the order, with the revenue account per business unit and company. E-invoicing to XRechnung and ZUGFeRD is standard. Odoo Enterprise ships the DATEV export German tax advisers use. For Rauschenberger's finance team we added a booking-type column and removed one they didn't need. Odoo now assigns DATEV customer numbers automatically.
Billing by time, fixed price or monthly fee
Standard Odoo supports three billing methods. Time-based work is invoiced from recorded hours. Fixed-price work can be billed through milestones or down payments. Maintenance contracts and monthly retainers generate recurring invoices through Subscriptions. The product on the order determines the billing method.
How the move from Dynamics went
Migration also needs to account for templates and contact data. For Rauschenberger, scripts transferred more than 200 Dynamics email templates and contacts with their existing fields. The project began in March 2026 and went live in June. Down-payment handling, commission reporting and management reports are planned for the second phase.
Other service businesses running on Odoo
These projects cover helpdesk, maintenance orders, time tracking and Odoo as the backend of a portal.
LocMaint, Dortmund: locomotive maintenance across Europe. Maintenance orders, CRM and projects run in Odoo.
Nexrail Lease: rail leasing, parent company of LocMaint. Customer requests run as tickets in Odoo Helpdesk, with CRM and communication history.
Roessner Consulting: legal and language consulting. Projects, clients, time tracking and invoicing live in one system.
Projektmagazin, Taufkirchen: Odoo is the backend behind the portal, managing users, content and events.
Where Odoo stops for service firms
In Germany, Odoo usually does not run payroll. That normally sits with the tax adviser in DATEV, and Odoo supplies the pre-payroll data. Planning assigns people to appointments and orders. It does not check collective agreements, surcharges or rest periods. If your field team works offline on construction sites, we test with your devices first. Published references from the trades or plant engineering with a large field team are not available at present; we arrange reference calls on request.
First step: review the process behind an invoice
Bring a redacted final invoice and a short description of the steps from enquiry to billing to the first call. Details of manual data transfers are particularly useful. We will show which steps standard Odoo can connect. Contact us through the contact form for a reply within one business day. The Rauschenberger case study contains the full example.