Odoo CRM Consultant in Australia

GST-inclusive retail prices and GST-exclusive trade quotes

Plenty of Australian businesses sell to both consumers and trade customers. Consumers expect a price with GST included. Builders, retailers and other businesses expect a price before GST with the tax shown separately. If Odoo is set up for only one of these, reps end up adjusting lines by hand and the invoice no longer matches the accepted quote.

Odoo handles both, but the decision has to be made deliberately:

• Tax-included or tax-excluded price lists, with the matching tax settings, chosen by customer type rather than by rep habit.
• Customer type set at conversion, so a lead that becomes a trade account automatically gets trade pricing and terms.
• GST-free items flagged on the product, agreed with your accountant, not decided on the quote.
• Rounding rules tested on real quotes, because inclusive pricing can produce cent differences that annoy customers and bookkeepers alike.

Your accountant confirms the tax treatment. My work is making sure the quotation a customer accepts is the same total that finance invoices and reports. The ledger side, including BAS, is covered on my Odoo Accounting Australia page.

Freight, stock location and lead times across a big country

Distance shapes Australian quoting more than in most markets. A wholesaler with stock in Sydney and Melbourne quoting a customer in Darwin needs to know which warehouse ships, what the freight costs and how long it takes. If the rep guesses, the margin or the delivery promise is wrong.

In Odoo, I connect the CRM quote to inventory data:

• Warehouses per state, with the sales team linked to its usual dispatch location so the quote checks the right stock.
• Delivery methods by zone, using fixed rates, rules by weight or carrier connectors where your edition supports them.
• Lead times on the quote calculated from stock, purchase and transfer lead times, with a rule for when a rep must confirm with the warehouse.
• Inter-warehouse transfers triggered by confirmed orders when stock sits in the wrong state.

The stock side is covered on Odoo Inventory. The CRM benefit is that reps can quote with confidence from their phones, and managers can see which quotes are stalled because of freight or availability rather than price.

Turning accepted quotes into field jobs and projects

For trade and service businesses, the quote is the start of the work rather than the end of the sale. An accepted quote for an installation, maintenance contract or fit-out should create the job that the crew will complete, with the scope, site address and contact already filled in.

Odoo can do this when CRM, Sales and the job apps are designed together. Service products on the quotation can generate project tasks, or field service tasks in editions where that app is available, so check which apps your edition includes before planning around them. What I set up:

• Site addresses as delivery contacts under the customer, so a builder with many jobs keeps one account.
• Quote templates for common jobs, with labor, materials and optional extras.
• Deposit invoices on accepted quotes where you take money before starting.
• Progress or completion invoicing based on delivered work or milestones.

Quote follow-up is still the biggest sales lever in this kind of business. I add a simple report of sent quotes with no next activity, reviewed weekly by the sales manager. For the operational picture, see ERP for field service.

ABNs, Peppol and one record per customer

The Australian Business Number is the most reliable way to recognize a business customer in Odoo. Two records with the same ABN are almost always the same entity, whatever trading name the rep typed. I make the ABN the key field for business customers:

• Captured at conversion for trade accounts, with a format check and, where you want it, a lookup against the public ABN register through an integration.
• Checked before imports from spreadsheets, an older CRM or event lists. Odoo highlights similar records; fuller deduplication rules depend on edition.
• Separate legal and trading names, so invoices go to the right entity.

The ABN also matters for e-invoicing. Australia uses the Peppol network, and business participants are commonly identified by their ABN. Some customers, particularly government buyers and larger companies, may ask to receive invoices that way. Accurate customer ABNs in the CRM make that easier when finance turns it on. Check Peppol support for your Odoo edition and version.

Lead routing completes the data picture. Sales teams by state, with assignment rules that respect time zones and daylight saving differences, stop inquiries from Perth sitting unanswered because the east coast has gone home.

Xero, other CRMs, editions and when Odoo CRM does not fit

Many Australian businesses run Xero or MYOB and like it. If Odoo is coming in only as a CRM while the ledger stays put, much of the advantage of selling inside Odoo disappears, because quotes, orders and invoices no longer live in one system. In that case a dedicated CRM connected to the existing ledger may be simpler, such as HubSpot or a similar tool. If Odoo takes over inventory and accounting, Odoo CRM usually makes sense.

The CRM app is part of Odoo Community. VoIP, Studio, field service and some automation may need Enterprise or paid services, and features move between versions, so I check your edition early.

Odoo CRM is a weaker fit when:

• The business is mainly trades jobs where scheduling and dispatch dominate and a job management tool already works well.
• Marketing owns most of the funnel and needs nurture and scoring in one place.
• The sales motion is complex enterprise selling with detailed forecasting needs.

See the global Odoo CRM page, my Odoo consultant Australia page, CRM consulting, the ERP consultant Australia page and the Australia hub.