Odoo for Water Delivery
Odoo rollouts for bottled water plants and delivery rounds
Bottling plants, distributors and home and office rounds. The container ledger, deposits, coupons and the daily run reconciliation, built before anything else is switched on.
A water business lends its stock. Most of the containers it owns are standing in other people's kitchens and offices, and the deposits behind them are a real liability on the balance sheet. A rollout here is a container control project first and an invoicing project second, because until the ledger per customer balances, revenue, bottle loss and deposit exposure are all estimates.
Where it hurts today
Nobody agrees how many bottles a customer holds
The driver's count, the office card and the customer's memory all differ. The argument at the door is won by whoever pushes hardest, and the difference is written off without ever being counted as a loss.
Deposits are collected and then forgotten
Taken in cash at the door, noted on a card, never reconciled to anything. At year end the liability has to be estimated, and the estimate is always the number that makes the accounts work.
Coupon books are cash with no ledger
Sold in advance, redeemed by hand, occasionally redeemed twice. The unredeemed value sitting against the business is unknown until a customer turns up with an old book and claims it.
The run does not balance
Loaded, delivered and returned never reconcile to zero, and there is no moment in the day when somebody is required to explain the gap. Across a year that gap is the margin.
Traceability stops at the plant gate
The batch is recorded on fill, but nothing links a batch to the customers who received it. A quality problem turns into a call to the entire customer list rather than to the forty households affected.
The modules that carry the load
Each one is here for a reason specific to bottled water delivery, not because it appears on a standard module list.
- ๐ฆ Odoo Inventory
Full and empty containers as tracked stock by lot, in the plant, on the truck and out with customers, which is what makes the ledger balance instead of approximate.
- ๐ญ Odoo Manufacturing (MRP)
Filling recorded as a production batch with source, shift, operator and shelf life, so every bottle on a truck traces back to a fill.
- โ
Odoo Quality
A test result per batch with its limits and a pass or fail, and a batch that cannot be released onto the trucks until it has one.
- ๐ Odoo Sales
Standing orders per customer by day and container type, which is what the daily run is built from rather than a phone list and a driver's memory.
- ๐ Odoo Subscriptions
Monthly plans with a bottle allowance and an overage price, billed on a cycle instead of a receipt at every drop.
- ๐ Odoo Fleet
Trucks and rounds with running cost against the round that earns the revenue, and the vehicle capacity a load out gets checked against.
- ๐ผ Odoo Accounting
Deposit liability, monthly account statements and cash brought in per driver, posted as they happen rather than reconstructed at month end.
How the rollout runs
- 1 Container ledger and opening balances
Customers, container types, deposits held, and an opening count per customer agreed with the driver who actually serves them. This phase is slow, unglamorous and the entire value of the project. A ledger opened on office figures inherits every dispute the office already has.
- 2 Rounds and the daily run
Round structure, standing orders, a load out counted onto the truck, delivery capture at the door, return reconciliation and cash per driver. Two weeks in parallel with the existing run sheet before the sheet is dropped.
- 3 Coupons, subscriptions and billing
Coupon books with redemption rules and an expiry, monthly plans with allowance and overage, account statements, and deposit charges and refunds flowing to the ledger.
- 4 Plant, batches and testing
Production batches, the test log, release control and the recall list, then dispenser and cooler rentals with their sanitisation cycle and service visits.
What to have ready before kickoff
Projects that slip usually slip here, not in the build. Bring these to the first workshop.
- โ An opening container balance per customer, walked with the driver rather than lifted from the office card.
- โ Deposit amounts by container type, and what has actually been collected against them as opposed to what should have been.
- โ Coupon books outstanding, with what has been redeemed and what has not.
- โ The round structure: driver, vehicle, day, and the stops in the order they are genuinely driven.
- โ Standing orders as they run today, including the regular customers who are on nothing formal at all.
- โ The tests your plant runs per batch and the limit each one is measured against, from whoever signs the results.
Where it connects
Systems we most often connect on bottled water delivery projects. The full list is on the integrations page.
Bottled Water Delivery
For the feature view of the container ledger, coupons, rounds and batch testing, read the solution page.
Open the Bottled Water Delivery solutionQuestions we get asked
How do we get opening bottle balances right? +
By counting, one round at a time, with the driver who serves it. We load the ledger round by round as each one is agreed rather than waiting for the whole customer base, so the first rounds start producing a real shortfall figure while the rest are still being walked.
Do drivers need a device on the round? +
A phone is enough to capture bottles left, empties collected, coupons taken, cash and a signature. Where coverage on a round is unreliable the run is printed and keyed back at the depot on return, and the reconciliation is identical either way.
Can we run cash, coupon, subscription and account customers on the same round? +
Yes. The payment method sits on the customer and can be overridden on the day. Account customers get one invoice a month instead of a receipt per drop, which is usually the change that cuts office work most.
What happens when a batch fails a test? +
It cannot be released, so it never reaches a truck. If a problem is found after release, quarantining the batch produces the list of customers who received it and how many bottles each took, which is the difference between a targeted recall and a public one.
Do dispenser and cooler rentals fit in the same system? +
Yes. Units are tracked from stock to out on rental, in for service, returned or scrapped, with the monthly fee billed automatically and skipped where a cooler is already inside a subscription price. The sanitisation cycle raises its own next visit.