Odoo for Facilities
Odoo rollouts for facility management and maintenance teams
In-house teams, managing agents and TFM contractors. The space and asset register, response and resolution clocks that hold up in a client review, permits, and lifetime cost per asset.
Every CAFM project is decided by the asset register. A system built on a vague estate list produces work orders against places nobody can find and cost reports nobody believes, and no amount of configuration afterwards fixes it. So the survey comes first, the help desk second, and the clocks are agreed with the client in writing before go-live rather than argued about in the first monthly review.
Where it hurts today
Faults are reported against a description of a place
The unit on the second floor means three different machines to three different technicians. Without a space and asset register the same fault is attended twice, invoiced twice, and fixed neither time.
The SLA is measured two ways
The client counts from the call, the contractor counts from acceptance, and cover hours are applied differently by each side. Every monthly review opens with an argument about the numbers instead of a conversation about the estate.
Planned maintenance always loses to reactive work
The schedule is a spreadsheet. The week the desk gets busy, planned visits slip, and they are never caught up because nothing tracks the backlog. It stays invisible until plant fails on the hottest day of the year.
Contractor control is a folder, not a control
A liability certificate that expired eighteen months ago sits in a drive, and the person who would notice is the one assigning the job. Permits get issued verbally because the paperwork lives somewhere else and the job is urgent.
Repair or replace cannot be answered
Three years of spend on one chiller is scattered across parts issues, subcontractor invoices and internal hours. The capital case cannot be built, so the plant keeps being patched at a cost nobody adds up.
The modules that carry the load
Each one is here for a reason specific to facility management, not because it appears on a standard module list.
- ๐ง Odoo Maintenance
The asset register with its parent and child tree, so spend on a compressor shows against the chiller it sits inside, plus planned schedules on calendar interval, meter reading, or whichever falls first.
- ๐๏ธ Odoo Helpdesk
Fault intake from tenants, staff and email with a priority that picks up the response and resolution targets, rather than an urgency written in a subject line.
- ๐ Odoo Field Service
Dispatch to a technician or a contractor with the job sheet, and hours and parts booked on site instead of typed up on Friday afternoon from memory.
- ๐ฆ Odoo Inventory
Spares issued from a real store to the job, so a critical part being out of stock is known before the callout is promised rather than during it.
- ๐ Odoo Purchase
Subcontractor orders and parts raised against the job, with the vendor bill checked against what the job actually consumed.
- ๐ผ Odoo Accounting
Contract billing, additional works billed separately from the contract, and cost carried per site and per asset in the ledger rather than in a spreadsheet.
- ๐ Odoo Documents
Inspection certificates, insurance, warranties, drawings and permits held against the asset and the contractor, with expiry dates that raise work before they lapse.
How the rollout runs
- 1 The estate and the asset register
Sites, buildings, floors and spaces, then assets with make, model, serial, criticality and warranty expiry. This phase is the project. Where the data does not exist, a walk round is scoped as work, not wished away.
- 2 The help desk and the clocks
Priorities, response and resolution targets, cover hours, escalation and the breach report. Agreed in writing with the client or the estate owner before go-live, which is the single cheapest dispute you will ever avoid.
- 3 Planned maintenance, permits and competence
Schedules per asset class, meter readings, inspection intervals and certificates, plus permit types, who may issue them, and the insurance and competence blocks that stop an assignment before it happens.
- 4 Cost, contract billing and performance
Spares, labour rates, out of hours premiums, subcontractor cost, lifetime cost per asset against replacement value, and the planned to reactive ratio per site.
What to have ready before kickoff
Projects that slip usually slip here, not in the build. Bring these to the first workshop.
- โ A space list to the level a fault will actually be reported at. Room level beats floor level, and getting there is the real cost of the project.
- โ The asset register with make, model, serial number, install date and criticality. Where it does not exist, budget a survey before you budget software.
- โ Maintenance intervals per asset class and the certificate each inspection produces.
- โ The SLA table as contracted: priorities, response and resolution targets, cover hours, and what is allowed to stop the clock.
- โ Contractor records with trades, agreed rates, insurance expiry and the sites each one is approved to work on.
- โ The permit types your safety policy requires and the named people authorised to issue each one, because that authority has to be enforced on the record, not on a button.
Where it connects
Systems we most often connect on facility management projects. The full list is on the integrations page.
Facility Management
For the feature view of the asset register, planned maintenance, work orders, permits and SLA reporting, read the solution page.
Open the Facility Management solutionQuestions we get asked
Can response and resolution be measured separately, with cover hours applied? +
Yes, and it matters more than most buyers expect. Two clocks run on every job, each with its own target and breach flag, and a four hour target on a nine to five contract does not run overnight. That last detail is the usual reason a client SLA report disagrees with the contractorโs own report.
We do not have an asset register. Can we still start? +
Yes, but plan for the survey rather than pretending it will happen alongside. The practical route is to start with the spaces and the critical plant, go live on reactive work, and add the rest of the register site by site. Starting with a bad register is worse than starting with a small one.
Can we manage subcontractors as well as our own technicians? +
Yes. Contractors carry the trades they are approved for, the sites they cover, agreed rates and an insurance expiry that blocks assignment before the certificate runs out. Approving a firm is the facility managerโs decision, and it is enforced so the help desk cannot lift the block itself.
Does planned maintenance work on running hours as well as dates? +
Yes, on a calendar interval, on a meter reading, or on whichever comes first, which is what most manufacturers actually require. Meter readings are recorded per asset and the movement between them turns a run hour interval into a date you can plan labour and parts against.
How long does a CAFM rollout take? +
Help desk, work orders and the SLA clocks typically go live in the 8 to 12 week band once the asset register exists. The register itself is the variable: an estate that has been surveyed recently adds nothing, and one that has never been surveyed can add more time than the software work does.