Three Warehouses, Six Sales Channels, One Live Odoo ERP in 12 Weeks

Each warehouse managed its own stock records in separate spreadsheets. Transfers between sites were tracked manually, often by WhatsApp message and a follow-up phone call to confirm receipt.

Six sales channels (retail, modern trade, B2B key accounts, eCommerce, export and direct sales) were each tracked in completely separate order files. When a large customer placed an order, the sales team had to call two warehouses before they could confirm availability. By the time confirmation went back to the customer, the stock had sometimes already been allocated elsewhere.

Three people spent every Monday morning comparing stock reports that never matched. That meeting consumed four hours of operations management time every week and still produced figures no one fully trusted.

Month-end inventory reconciliation took five days. Slow-moving and near-expiry goods were only discovered during physical counts. Overstock in one warehouse sat idle while another location placed emergency orders for the same SKU. The business needed a connected distribution ERP that could give every location and every channel a single source of truth.

• Stock levels at each warehouse were only updated during weekly physical counts, making day-to-day inventory data unreliable for order decisions.
• Inter-warehouse stock transfers were tracked manually with no system record, creating phantom inventory that appeared available but was in transit.
• Six sales channels operated from separate order files with no visibility into each other, causing double-allocation of the same stock.
• Purchase orders were raised on gut feel with no automatic reorder triggers, leading to regular stockouts on fast-moving SKUs.
• Month-end close required manually consolidating five spreadsheets across three locations and took five full working days every month.

• Odoo Inventory (multi-warehouse): all three warehouses on one instance with bin-level tracking, putaway rules and real-time transfer visibility.
• Sales and order management: all six channels consolidated into one sales pipeline, with customer-specific pricing and credit limits enforced automatically.
• Purchase and replenishment: automatic reorder rules triggered by min-max levels at each warehouse location separately.
• Accounting and multi-currency: two-country operations with live exchange rates and a consolidated P&L without monthly export reconciliation.
• Reporting and dashboards: live inventory ageing, channel margin and slow-mover reports replacing the weekly reconciliation meeting.

Each warehouse went live after a parallel-run validation period.

1. Discovery, data audit and master data cleanup (weeks 1 to 2). We audited all three warehouse spreadsheets, reconciled product master data across locations and cleaned duplicate SKUs before a single line of configuration was written.
2. Odoo configuration and data migration (weeks 3 to 7). Product catalogue, supplier records, customer price lists, opening stock and reorder rules were configured and validated for all three warehouse locations and all six sales channels.
3. Parallel run at warehouse 1 (weeks 8 to 10). The primary warehouse ran live transactions through Odoo alongside existing records for two weeks. Discrepancies were resolved and workflows refined before the other two warehouses joined.
4. Full cutover, all three warehouses live (weeks 11 to 12). All three locations went live on Odoo simultaneously. Staff in each warehouse received role-specific training. A 30-day hyper-care period followed with same-day support for any post-go-live issues.

Measured in the first quarter after go-live: inventory carrying costs fell by 35%, stock accuracy across all locations reached 99%+, the month-end close came down from five days to half a day (the old page labelled it "5 days: Month-end Close Reduced to Half a Day"), and six sales channels now run in one system.