Odoo 19's project management module allows UK professional services firms to track time, manage tasks and generate client invoices automatically from logged hours, starting at £9.10 per user per month on Enterprise. Key capabilities include Kanban and Gantt project views, billable versus non-billable time tracking, automatic invoice generation from approved timesheets, real-time project profitability analysis and milestone billing for project-based engagements. UK professional services firms implementing Odoo project management typically reduce invoice preparation time by 80% and improve project profitability visibility from quarterly to real-time. The billing integration is the primary reason UK consultancies and IT agencies choose Odoo project management over standalone project tools such as Asana or Monday.com.
Last updated: 18 May 2026
Published 18 May 2026Odoo 19's project management module is a comprehensive work management system built directly into the Odoo ERP implementation platform. Unlike standalone project tools such as Asana or Monday.com, every task, timesheet entry and project milestone in Odoo connects directly to the accounting module - meaning approved hours automatically become client invoices without any manual data transfer. For UK professional services firms, this integration eliminates the billing lag that costs most consultancies three to four weeks of debtor delay each month.
At its core, the module gives teams four distinct ways to view and manage work. The Kanban board is the default view for most professional services teams - drag-and-drop tasks through custom stages that match your delivery process. A Gantt chart provides timeline visualisation for project managers who need to track dependencies and resource loading across multiple concurrent projects. The list view suits teams who prefer a spreadsheet-style overview, and the calendar view is particularly useful for law firms and consultancies managing client meeting schedules alongside billable deliverables.
Tasks in Odoo are far more capable than a simple to-do item. Each task supports multiple assignees, deadline tracking, priority flags, custom tags and a full checklist for sub-tasks. You can attach documents directly to tasks - contracts, briefs, delivery files - keeping everything associated with a piece of work in a single location rather than scattered across email threads and shared drives. Task dependencies allow you to specify that one task cannot begin until another is complete, which is essential for IT implementation projects where UAT cannot start before development is signed off.
The stage configuration in Odoo is one of its most practical features for professional services firms. You can define project stages that mirror your exact delivery methodology. A management consultancy might use: Discovery, Proposal, Engagement, Delivery, Review, Invoiced. An IT agency might prefer: Requirements, Development, Testing, UAT, Sign-off, Invoiced. These stages are customisable per project type, and you can set stage gates that require certain conditions to be met before a project can progress - for example, requiring timesheet approval before moving to Invoiced status.
The customer portal is a feature that significantly improves client relationships. Clients receive login access to a branded portal where they can view project progress, review approved timesheets before invoicing and download their invoices. For accountancy firms and law firms where billing transparency is a compliance consideration, the portal provides a documented audit trail of work performed and approved before payment is requested.
Mobile time logging is available through the Odoo mobile app on both iOS and Android. This is particularly valuable for professional services firms whose staff work at client sites - a consultant running a workshop at a client's premises can log time directly on their phone rather than reconstructing timesheets from memory at the end of the week.
| Feature | Included | Notes for UK professional services |
|---|---|---|
| Kanban view | Yes | Customisable columns matching your delivery stages |
| Gantt chart | Yes | Task dependencies and resource loading visible |
| List view | Yes | Spreadsheet-style overview, exportable to Excel |
| Task dependencies | Yes | Block-and-wait logic for complex project sequences |
| Time tracking | Yes | Timer, manual entry and mobile app all supported |
| Billable vs non-billable | Yes | Set per task or per project type |
| Automatic invoicing | Yes | From approved timesheets or milestone triggers |
| Milestone billing | Yes | Fixed-price invoices on project stage completion |
| Retainer billing | Yes | Recurring monthly invoice for retained clients |
| Budget tracking | Yes | Budget vs actual in £ and hours |
| Project profitability | Yes | Revenue vs labour cost per project in real time |
| Customer portal | Yes | Clients view tasks, timesheets and invoices |
| Mobile time logging | Yes | iOS and Android, works offline |
| Stage customisation | Yes | Per project type, with stage gate conditions |
| Resource planning | Yes | Cross-project capacity planning via HR integration |
The breadth of this feature set is why professional services firms increasingly choose Odoo project management as their primary work management system rather than bolting a standalone project tool on top of a separate accounting system. The integration is not an afterthought - it is the architectural foundation of how Odoo is designed.
Odoo gives employees three ways to log time against tasks: a live timer they start and stop within a task, manual timesheet entry for retrospective logging, and mobile app logging for staff working at client sites. All three methods feed into the same timesheet system, and every logged hour is associated with a specific task, project and employee - giving project managers a complete, real-time view of where time is being spent across the business.
The billable versus non-billable distinction is one of the most important configuration decisions when implementing Odoo for a professional services firm. You can set the billing policy at three levels. At the project level, you can mark an entire project as non-billable - useful for internal projects, business development or training. At the task level within a billable project, individual tasks can be marked non-billable - for example, an IT agency might mark internal code review as non-billable even when the overall project is time-and-materials. At the timesheet entry level, employees can flag individual time entries as non-billable when circumstances require it.
Employee rate cards are configured in the HR module and linked to the project billing system. Odoo supports three types of rate. A standard employee rate applies one hourly rate across all projects - suitable for firms with a uniform billing rate. A role-based rate allows you to bill at different rates depending on whether the employee is acting as a senior consultant, project manager or analyst on a given project. A customer-specific rate allows you to negotiate different rates for different clients and have Odoo apply the correct rate automatically when generating invoices.
The cost rate, distinct from the billing rate, is the fully loaded employee cost used for profitability calculations. A senior consultant might bill at £150 per hour but cost the business £65 per hour including salary, national insurance, pension, office costs and overhead. Odoo uses the billing rate to calculate invoice value and the cost rate to calculate gross margin, giving you a real-time profitability figure for every project.
Timesheet approval is a critical workflow step before invoicing. Without an approval process, employees can submit inaccurate or inflated timesheets that flow directly into client invoices - a significant risk for professional services firms where billing accuracy affects client trust and retention. Odoo's approval workflow requires employees to submit their timesheets at the end of each period (daily, weekly or fortnightly depending on your configuration), after which project managers or department heads review and approve or query each entry before it is marked as billable. Only approved timesheets can trigger invoice generation.
We see the real-world impact of this system clearly in our implementations. A 12-person London IT consultancy we implemented Odoo for was invoicing clients three to four weeks after month end because timesheets were collected in Excel spreadsheets, emailed to project managers, manually consolidated, checked against Xero and then used to create invoices in a separate billing system. With Odoo, timesheets are logged daily on mobile, approved weekly by project managers, and invoices generate automatically within 24 hours of month end. Debtor days reduced from 52 to 34 days in the first quarter after go-live.
Here is the end-to-end timesheet workflow in Odoo once properly configured:
This six-step process, which previously took three to four weeks in most professional services firms, typically completes within 24 to 48 hours in Odoo once the approval workflow is running smoothly. The reduction in debtor days is the primary financial return on investment that justifies the Odoo project module implementation cost for most UK professional services firms.
Odoo supports four distinct billing models for professional services projects, and different projects within the same Odoo instance can use different models simultaneously. The billing model is set at project creation and determines how and when invoices are generated from project activity - no manual intervention is required after initial configuration.
Time and materials billing is the most common model for UK IT consultancies and management consultancies. Every approved billable hour generates invoice value at the employee's applicable rate. At the end of the billing period - typically monthly - Odoo consolidates all approved timesheets for a client, applies rate cards, and creates a draft invoice itemised by task, employee and hours logged. For clients who require detailed billing breakdowns, each line item on the invoice can show the task description, employee name, date and hours - providing full transparency without manual invoice preparation.
Fixed-price milestone billing is the standard model for project-based work where the total contract value is agreed upfront. Odoo allows you to define billing milestones at project creation - for example, 30% on contract signature, 40% on delivery of the first phase, 30% on project completion and sign-off. When a project milestone is marked as reached (either manually by the project manager or automatically when the project stage advances), Odoo creates a draft invoice for the corresponding percentage of the contract value. This model is typical for law firms handling transactional work, architects managing building projects and IT agencies delivering fixed-scope implementations.
Retainer billing suits professional services firms with ongoing client relationships where a client pays a fixed monthly fee for a defined level of service access. In Odoo, retainer billing is configured as a recurring subscription invoice that generates automatically on the first of each month. Hours logged against the retainer project track actual utilisation against the retainer scope - if a client consistently uses more hours than their retainer covers, Odoo flags the overage and can generate supplementary invoices for excess hours.
Subscription billing is a variation on retainer billing suited to managed service providers and SaaS businesses. Rather than tracking hours against a retainer, subscription billing in Odoo generates fixed recurring invoices linked to a service contract, with optional usage-based overage billing for clients who exceed service thresholds.
UK VAT handling is automatic within Odoo's invoicing system once fiscal positions are correctly configured during implementation. For UK-based professional services clients, Odoo applies the standard 20% VAT rate to all billable services. For UK-registered businesses with overseas clients in EU member states following Brexit, Odoo applies the reverse charge mechanism to B2B services - the invoice shows zero-rated VAT with a note stating that the reverse charge applies and the recipient must account for VAT under their local rules. This configuration is essential for UK consultancies with EU clients and must be set up correctly during the initial Odoo implementation; it is one of the configuration elements we test explicitly during our go-live process.
| Billing model | When to use | How to configure in Odoo | VAT handling |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time and materials | Ongoing consultancy, IT support, hourly advisory | Set billing policy to 'Timesheets' at project level; define employee rate cards in HR | 20% UK VAT applied automatically; reverse charge for EU B2B via fiscal position |
| Fixed-price milestone | Project delivery, legal transactions, architecture | Set billing policy to 'Milestones'; define milestone amounts and trigger stages | VAT applied at invoice generation per fiscal position of the client |
| Retainer | Ongoing advisory, PR, marketing, fractional CFO | Create recurring subscription invoice; link project to track utilisation against retainer hours | Recurring VAT applied automatically; adjust if client VAT status changes |
| Subscription | Managed services, SaaS, software support contracts | Use Odoo Subscriptions module linked to project; set billing interval and overage rules | Handled via subscription fiscal position; supports exempt and zero-rated services |
The practical result is that UK professional services firms using Odoo no longer need a dedicated billing administrator to transfer data between their project management tool and accounting system. The entire billing cycle - from timesheet approval to client invoice delivery - operates within a single system with a complete audit trail.
Project profitability visibility is perhaps the single greatest operational improvement that Odoo delivers for UK professional services firms. Most firms we speak to before implementation know their overall business profitability at quarter end, but have no real-time view of which individual projects are profitable and which are running over budget until the damage is already done. Odoo changes this fundamentally - profitability is visible at the project level, in real time, throughout the project lifecycle.
Budget tracking begins at project creation. When you create a project in Odoo, you can set a total project budget in pounds, broken down by budget line if required - for example, senior consultant time, junior analyst time and third-party costs each as separate budget lines. As the project progresses and employees log time, Odoo tracks actual cost in real time by multiplying hours logged by each employee's cost rate. Budget utilisation is displayed as a percentage on the project dashboard, with a configurable warning alert that notifies the project manager when the project reaches 80% of budget - giving them time to have a scope conversation with the client before the budget is exhausted.
The profitability view goes beyond simple budget tracking to show the relationship between revenue and cost. At any point in a project's lifecycle, Odoo shows you three figures: total hours invoiced to the client (revenue), total employee cost for hours logged (cost) and the resulting gross margin in pounds and percentage. This view is available per project and in an aggregate report across all active projects, allowing the managing director or finance director to see the profitability profile of the entire business at a glance.
To make the calculation concrete: imagine a management consultancy project with a budget of £20,000. The project team consists of a senior consultant whose fully loaded cost rate is £65 per hour, billing at £150 per hour, and a junior analyst whose cost rate is £35 per hour, billing at £85 per hour. After the first month, 80 hours of senior consultant time and 120 hours of junior analyst time have been logged and approved. The revenue from those hours is £12,000 (senior) plus £10,200 (junior) totalling £22,200. The cost is £5,200 (senior) plus £4,200 (junior) totalling £9,400. Gross margin is £12,800 or 57.6%. Budget utilisation against the £20,000 budget is 47% of hours consumed. All of this is visible in Odoo without opening a spreadsheet.
Expenses add to project cost automatically when employees submit expense claims against a project. A consultant who travels to a client site and submits a train fare expense in Odoo - having associated the expense with the relevant project - sees that cost appear in the project's cost total immediately. This gives a true cost picture that includes all direct project costs, not just labour.
The profitability report across all projects is where the strategic value of Odoo becomes clear for professional services firm owners. Rather than waiting for month-end management accounts to discover which service lines or client relationships are profitable, the Odoo profitability report provides a ranked view of all active projects by gross margin percentage, updated in real time. Project managers whose projects appear in the red can be alerted immediately, and remedial action - scope renegotiation, rate adjustment, timeline compression - can be taken before the loss becomes a sunk cost.
The contrast with pre-Odoo operations at firms we have implemented for is significant. Before Odoo, a typical 15-person IT consultancy tracked project costs through a combination of Harvest for time tracking, Xero for accounting, and spreadsheets for profitability analysis. The finance manager would spend two to three days each month transferring timesheet data, reconciling expense claims, calculating project margins in Excel and presenting the results to the management team. By the time the numbers were ready, the projects were three to four weeks further along. With Odoo, that management information is available in real time on any device - the managing director can check the profitability of any project from their phone between client meetings.
The honest answer to this comparison is that Asana, Monday.com and Jira are all superior to Odoo on pure project management user experience. They have refined their interfaces over many years, offer richer collaboration features - inline comments, video clips, form-based intake, advanced automation rules - and have larger ecosystems of native integrations with other SaaS tools. If a professional services firm needs only project management and task tracking, one of these dedicated tools will likely provide a better day-to-day experience for the team.
The reason professional services firms choose Odoo instead is billing. Asana, Monday.com and Jira are project management tools. They are not accounting systems. Connecting any of these tools to a billing system requires a third-party integration - typically Zapier, Make.com or a custom API connector - that transfers approved timesheet data to Xero or QuickBooks where invoices are then manually created or semi-automated. Every link in that chain is a potential point of failure, a source of data discrepancy and a maintenance overhead.
Odoo eliminates the integration problem entirely because the project module, the timesheets module and the accounting module are the same system sharing the same database. There is no data transfer, no API connector and no reconciliation step. An approved timesheet in Odoo is already in the accounting system - it does not need to be exported, mapped and imported. This architectural difference is not a UX preference; it is a fundamental operational advantage for any firm where billing accuracy and speed directly affect cash flow.
UK professional services firms also benefit from Odoo's native UK VAT handling in a way that standalone project tools cannot replicate. Asana does not know your VAT number. Monday.com cannot apply a fiscal position for EU reverse charge. Jira cannot generate a Making Tax Digital compliant invoice. Odoo does all of these things because it is, at its core, an accounting system that happens to include excellent project management - not a project management tool with accounting bolted on.
| Feature | Odoo Project | Asana | Monday.com | Jira |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Task management | Good | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent |
| Time tracking | Built-in | Limited (via add-on) | Limited (via add-on) | Limited (via add-on) |
| Billing integration | Native, zero config | None (requires Zapier) | None (requires Zapier) | None (requires plugin) |
| Invoice generation | Automatic from timesheets | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Budget tracking | Real-time vs actuals | Basic budget field | Basic budget column | Limited |
| Profitability analysis | Real-time per project | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Accounting integration | Native (same system) | Via Zapier/API | Via Zapier/API | Via plugin/API |
| HR integration | Native (cost rates) | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| CRM integration | Native (same system) | Via Zapier/API | Via Zapier/API | Via plugin/API |
| UK VAT handling | Full (fiscal positions) | None | None | None |
| Price per user per month | £9.10 (Enterprise) | £10.99-£24.99 | £9-£19 | £7.16-£12.48 |
The price comparison shows that Odoo is competitive on a per-user basis with its alternatives, even before accounting for the fact that Odoo replaces not just the project management tool but also the separate accounting system, the time tracking add-on and the integration layer between them. A professional services firm paying for Asana plus Harvest plus Xero plus Zapier connectors can typically reduce their total software cost while gaining the billing integration they have been missing.
Our recommendation for UK professional services firms is straightforward: if you invoice clients based on time logged, use Odoo. The billing integration will reduce your debtor days and eliminate your monthly billing admin burden in a way that no standalone project tool can replicate. If you are a product company or internal team where billing is not driven by project timesheets, Asana or Jira may serve you better on UX grounds alone.
Yes - Odoo includes a customer portal where clients can log in to see project status, task progress and approved timesheets before invoicing. The portal is branded with your company logo. Clients can also download invoices and make payments via the portal. For law firms and accountancies, we typically restrict portal access to invoice viewing only and keep internal project tasks private.
Yes - Odoo supports three billing models simultaneously on different projects: time and materials (hours times rate), fixed price (invoice on milestone), and recurring retainer (monthly subscription). Each project can use a different billing model. The billing model is set at project creation and drives automatic invoice generation without manual intervention once timesheets are approved.
Invoices generated from Odoo projects feed directly into the Odoo accounting module, which is MTD for VAT compliant. The digital link from timesheet approval to invoice to VAT return is unbroken, satisfying HMRC's MTD digital link requirement. No data re-keying occurs at any point in the billing cycle - this is the primary MTD compliance advantage for professional services firms.
Yes - Odoo Enterprise licences are modular. You can implement just the Project, Timesheets and Invoicing modules without Inventory, Manufacturing or other ERP functions. A professional services firm typically needs: Project, Timesheets, Invoicing and Accounting modules plus optionally CRM and HR. This is a focused implementation rather than a full ERP deployment.
Odoo project and timesheets implementation starts from £3,000 for a basic setup (project views, time tracking, client portal) up to £7,000 for a full professional services configuration including billing model setup, rate cards, budget tracking, profitability dashboards and staff training. A full Odoo implementation including accounting and CRM starts from £8,000.
Odoo 19's project management module gives UK professional services firms a single system for task management, time tracking, client billing and project profitability analysis. The key advantage over dedicated project tools such as Asana or Monday.com is the direct integration between approved timesheets and automatic invoice generation - eliminating the manual billing cycle that costs most UK consultancies three to four weeks of debtor delay each month. UK firms implementing Odoo project management typically reduce invoice preparation time by 80% and gain real-time project profitability visibility across their entire portfolio within 90 days of go-live.
Ready to implement Odoo project management for your professional services firm? Read our Odoo cost guide or book a free consultation with Softomate - we will scope the modules you actually need and provide a fixed-price quote.
Written by the Softomate Solutions AI Development Team, Barking, East London. We implement Odoo 19 project management, timesheets and billing modules for UK professional services firms including IT consultancies, law firms, architects and management consultancies.Odoo implementation for a UK SME typically takes 4-6 weeks for accounting only, 8-14 weeks for CRM and inventory, and 16-24 weeks for full ERP including manufacturing. The timeline depends on data migration complexity and internal team availability. UK-specific requirements (MTD VAT, payroll RTI) add 1-2 weeks to any implementation scope.
Yes. Odoo Enterprise includes full Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT compliance - the software connects directly to HMRC's API for VAT return submission. This has been available since Odoo 12 and was updated for UK-only MTD rules post-Brexit. MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment (ITSA) support is included in Odoo 17 for businesses above the £50,000 income threshold from April 2026.
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