Odoo for Laundry
Odoo rollouts for laundries and dry cleaners
High street shops, wash and fold, linen plants and collection routes. Piece-level tagging, plant stages, rack locations, and contract billing that stops being rebuilt by hand.
Almost every problem in a laundry traces back to the same shortcut: the ticket records five shirts instead of five garments. Once a piece has no identity, it cannot be traced past sorting, its condition cannot be evidenced, and rework cannot be counted. An Odoo rollout here starts at the counter with tagging, moves through the plant stage by stage, and only then touches routes and contract invoicing.
Where it hurts today
A ticket is not a garment
The order says five shirts. When four come back, nothing tells you where the fifth stopped moving. The shop pays out on a claim it cannot investigate and writes it off as a cost of trading.
Condition is remembered, not recorded
Existing stains, missing buttons and worn seams are noticed at intake and never written down. Every claim then becomes the word of the customer against the word of whoever was on the counter that Tuesday.
The order is somewhere on the rack
At six in the evening staff walk the rails while a queue builds. Nothing records which rack and slot a packed order went to, so the fastest part of the job is the part that takes longest.
Rework and late orders are never counted
A rewash costs the plant twice and is recorded nowhere. Turnaround is measured against the promise only when a customer complains, so nobody can say which service, branch or shift is actually losing money.
Contract accounts are billed from a folder
Hotel and corporate work is invoiced monthly by adding up delivery notes. Disputed lines get credited to keep the account, and the margin on the biggest customers is the least understood number in the business.
The modules that carry the load
Each one is here for a reason specific to laundry and dry cleaning, not because it appears on a standard module list.
- ๐งพ Odoo POS (Point of Sale)
The counter: intake, payment, deposits and collection, with the tag printed at the moment the customer is still standing there to confirm condition.
- ๐ช Odoo Barcode
Scanning a piece or a whole order between plant stages, which is what turns a paper docket process into a location history per garment.
- ๐ฆ Odoo Inventory
Consumables, packaging, hangers and solvent, plus owned linen stock for hire contracts, so plant cost per piece is a real number.
- ๐ Odoo Sales
Contract accounts for hotels and corporates with their own agreed rates, quoted and renewed rather than remembered.
- ๐ผ Odoo Accounting
Consolidated monthly invoicing per account and per branch, raised from the work recorded rather than assembled from delivery notes.
- ๐ Odoo Field Service
Collection and delivery visits with a driver, a run of stops, time windows and proof of collection at the door.
- ๐ Odoo Website
Online pickup requests and order status for retail customers, feeding the same route plan the driver already works from.
How the rollout runs
- 1 Counter and tagging
Service and garment price list, intake screen, condition capture, tag printing and rack naming. Piloted in one shop for a full week including a Saturday, because the counter is where the process either sticks or quietly reverts to paper.
- 2 Plant stages
Sorting, cleaning, pressing, quality check and packing as scan points, with workload per stage and turnaround measured against the promised date. Rework gets a reason code here, which is usually the first honest cost number the business has ever had.
- 3 Routes and contract accounts
Drivers, vehicles, stops and time windows, then hotel and corporate rates with consolidated invoicing. Contract billing goes live one account at a time, in parallel with the folder, until the numbers agree.
- 4 Online and branch reporting
Customer pickup requests, order status, and reporting per branch, per service and per shift. Left until the plant data is trustworthy, because a status page that lies is worse than none.
What to have ready before kickoff
Projects that slip usually slip here, not in the build. Bring these to the first workshop.
- โ The price list per garment type and service, including express and same-day surcharges as you actually charge them.
- โ A decision on how a piece is tagged: printed barcode tag, heat seal or permanent label, and who applies it.
- โ Rack and slot naming for each branch, physically labelled before go-live rather than agreed in a meeting.
- โ Contract rates per hotel and corporate account, with what the current monthly invoice is built from.
- โ The promised turnaround per service, as advertised to customers, not the one the plant achieves on a good day.
- โ A written rule for who authorises a damage or loss claim and up to what value.
Where it connects
Systems we most often connect on laundry and dry cleaning projects. The full list is on the integrations page.
Laundry & Dry Cleaning
For the feature view of garment tagging, plant stages, express pricing and route delivery, read the solution page.
Open the Laundry & Dry Cleaning solutionQuestions we get asked
Do we really have to tag every single piece? +
For dry cleaning and shirt service, yes. Piece-level identity is the whole point: it is what makes a lost garment traceable, a claim answerable, and a rack location findable. Wash and fold by weight is different and can stay at order level, and most shops run both models side by side.
Can we price per piece, per kilo and per square metre at the same counter? +
Yes. The unit belongs to the service, so shirts price per piece, wash and fold per kilo, and curtains and rugs per square metre, with the counter picking the service rather than doing the arithmetic.
How do hotel and corporate contracts get billed? +
Each account carries its own rates, and the month accumulates against it as work is recorded. One consolidated invoice is raised at the period end with the detail behind it, so a disputed line points back to a specific order and date instead of a delivery note somebody has to find.
Will drivers and counter staff actually use it? +
Only if the scan is faster than the paper it replaces. That is a hardware and screen-layout question, so we pilot the counter flow with the real queue in one branch and fix what slows it down before any other branch is touched.
How long does a rollout take for a chain of shops? +
A first branch plus the plant typically runs in a 6 to 10 week band. Remaining branches go in batches after that, and the cost per branch is mostly tagging hardware and two days of counter training rather than configuration.