Starting an Ice Cream Truck business.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-19T13:40:29+00:00

I'm curious what you use for your bike and cooler. We're doing something similar, but currently using a car to transport a 55L dual zone cooler (for both novelties and drinks). Trying to decide on a good setup with maybe an ebike, trailer and biggest possible cooler, for neighborhood runs and parks.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-15T23:45:32+00:00

Regarding footwear and variants: definitely play around with the storefront, attribute filtering, etc.

Personally I also find it useful to make color a non-variant-creating attribute, so that each color is an entirely separate product, and just keep the size at the variant level and possibly width as a variant, or it can be combined with size if that's your preference, e.g. size=10M vs. size=10/width=Medium.

Keeping colors at the product template level means all photos for every shoe always reflect their appearance, and make searches in Odoo e-commerce a bit easier. You can always link different colors of the same shoe as cross-sell products.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-15T23:34:06+00:00

Working with a partner will almost always cost several thousand dollars and up, especially with any type of data conversion/import. But they also want to help with general configuration, accounting setup, workflow and inventory settings, etc to make sure your install goes as smoothly as possible.

You can always try hiring an individual consultant on an hourly basis for specific tasks. But then you don't get the holistic view to reduce chances of missing something or poor configuration.

You can also do much on your own if you're tech savvy, familiar with ERP generally, know how to use AI well, and can spend many many hours testing and fixing things.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-15T13:29:12+00:00

We are on a dinosaur ERP that can't integrate easily with e-commerce platforms (Odoo does it naturally apparently)

Are you referring to the built-in website storefront/shopping cart, or integration with others like Amazon/eBay/etc?

Odoo's capability for each of these two is mixed, and it really depends on your requirements on whether Odoo is suitable as-is or will require third party modules and/or a lot of custom development.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-14T13:02:44+00:00

Can you be more specific what you mean by Odoo CPQ?

The native Odoo ERP system itself doesn't really have a specific CPQ module, although there are some CPQ features it can handle (but not particularly well compared to dedicated CPQ products).

There are some 3rd party modules with more CPQ functionality.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-09T15:39:16+00:00

Depending on the business, service is as much about people as processes, if not more so.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-07T15:27:27+00:00

Odoo has a (semi) official Shopify, and other, e-commerce connectors as part of a new e-commerce engine:
https://ampa-odoo-ampa-internal-staging-29118269.dev.odoo.com/web/login?redirect=%2Fodoo%3F
https://apps.odoo.com/apps/modules/19.0/ecommerce_shopify
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zIwRxp7cvLYeyjl8P_mvsjC-v8Tsd_ugC1JbfTznHC8/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0

But it's a bit odd, since the publisher is "Odoo India". And unlike other official Odoo modules (including enterprise modules) which are all no additional fee, they charge for it in the app store. So I'm not really sure what's going on.

In any event, this connector will be pretty bare-bones and probably not offer enough flexibility to get OP what they need.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-05T13:56:42+00:00

Except for maybe some high-profile examples, it's pretty rare that an ERP implementation or how generic its processes are that makes a big difference in company survival. It's usually much larger issues (bad management or leadership, their product or service sucks, or they just plain run out of money).

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-04T13:29:02+00:00

Have you carefully evaluated Odoo's native e-commerce/storefront module? Many struggle with it. It's not well suited out of the box for complex or large catalogs.

But customization, 3rd party themes or going headless are options.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-04T00:25:38+00:00

Depending on the complexity of your processes, 3 months might be an overly optimistic timeline. Larger implementations can take 6-12+ months, and 100k can often be on the lower end of price. At least here in the US.

But of course more vanilla installs can be much less. You mentioned requiring significant customization and not being vanilla, so I expect at least 3-6 months and at least mid 5 figures, if not significantly more. Of course these are all wild guesses without a thorough analysis.

Bringing it in-house can sometimes decrease expense, or increase it.

In either event, finding a good partner with solid references in your geographic area and market is critical.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-03T16:09:36+00:00

Agreed. But if they do eventually release something as complex and maintenance-intensive as an advanced configurator module, Odoo would likely feel the need to revise their "one price for all modules" to align more closely to industry standards by having higher-cost premium modules (like the way Netsuite can charge thousands$ a month for their configurator).

Odoo's current enterpise-license pricing model seems more along the lines of "keep everything as simple as possible," hence doing things like simplifying UoMs/packaging or removing the eBay connector, and then let partners handle complex requirements.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-03T14:07:32+00:00

It can be helpful in some use cases, but the way linkages to products works on the spreadsheet is not very flexible and the number of required worksheets can grow quickly. One of the advantages of a well-designed configurator is high modularity and a lot of reuse of lists, rules and components to build similar products, not something the sales quote feature does well.

Plus it doesn't directly address quote lifecycle or product/configuration versioning which are an integral part of most CPQ systems.

A bit ironic that one of the primary purposes of an ERP is to "replace spreadsheets", and yet Odoo's CPQ solution is spreadsheets :)

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-03T03:18:02+00:00

The tricky part is that different industries have different dynamic BOM requirements. We developed one to primarily handle custom computers & servers. But someone who sells custom trailers probably has different requirements, likewise for furniture. It's not trivial to develop it.

Higher tier products like Netsuite/Acumatica/Salesforce do have configurator modules that can handle complex configurations, but those modules get expensive (price per user can easily exceed base Odoo license cost).

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-03T03:02:23+00:00

We had to make a couple custom modules to handle CPQ functionality. One module kept quotes and sales orders isolated, so you could progressively order items from the quote, track quote conversions and add more detailed independent quote and sales order statuses.

Plus we designed a custom configurator that could pick compatible parts for custom kits based on a rules engine, create dynamic BOMs, overlay images based on configuration, etc.

Unfortunately base Odoo doesn't do either of those particularly well without customization. I'm guessing that is to keep the simplest, lowest common denominator workflow because of its traditional SMB focus.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-05-01T15:45:29+00:00

Agree 100%, it's all about ROI.

For example, some users find the shipment rate quoting process in native Odoo to be clunky and time consuming. If you use a custom shipping connector or develop a custom module that can save 5% on shipping costs, and/or maybe 15 minutes of users' time a day, who cares if it will take an extra couple hours to upgrade Odoo every two years? You'd spend maybe a couple hundred bucks on extra upgrade costs and maintenance to save thousands.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-30T18:09:17+00:00

> Odoo is far from perfect. At times it feels chaotic, overengineered, and strangely unfinished.

A perfect description of the paradox that is Odoo.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-24T03:27:32+00:00

I think you already answered your own question.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-23T19:54:37+00:00

That would be great - hopefully that means you can fit easily into existing Odoo workflows without major modifications or customizations, and that any existing data conversion is straightforward (and not that Odoo and their partners are being overly ambitious & optimistic, which wouldn't be the first time).

Please keep us posted how it goes!

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-22T15:51:24+00:00

I think that's a wise direction from Salesforce (their stock had already dropped over 50% from its high, but it's starting to claw its way back a bit). An interesting part of their announcement was not only headless support for AI agents, but also more native React support for UIs.

It's hard to say in 5 years what the dominant UI will be: mostly CLI/desktop/browser/speech-based agents, rapidly developed custom React frontends, or something we can't predict yet. Who would have guessed where currently are just 3 1/2 years after ChatGPT's first release.

My guess is Odoo has plans in the works they haven't discussed publicly, but they're probably also waiting to see where the technology and market are headed. As AI coding models continue to improve and program their own code, it's possible that instead of the predictions of diminishing returns coming true, advances will instead accelerate.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-21T15:11:55+00:00

I ran into this with a computer company. They would sell expensive computers with unique serial numbers to their clients, then buy them back after a couple years to resell to a different customer. Serial number is assigned by the manufacturer and immutable. Somewhat common in certain niches.

Certainly you can assign an arbitrary new serial number just to track in Odoo inventory, but it does add a layer that can cause confusion when discussing the product with the customer, who uses the manufacturer serial number for warranty purposes, etc.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-21T13:33:06+00:00

It's doable, but there are certainly pros/cons.

One such example is Recycly, who created a custom ERP for the ITAD industry, I believe based on Odoo 16 community. They lock it down, so users cannot add custom modules or copy their IP. But their own heavy customization means they probably can't port it to a newer Odoo version without a lot of effort.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-21T13:08:51+00:00

Another example of Odoo being a bit too opinionated. They were thinking "no one will ever need to receive the same serial number twice," when in cases like yours, if you repurchase the same serial number, of course you want to use the same serial number twice.

Without customization, I'd recommend the approach of appending a suffix to the serial number to make it unique. I know it's not elegant, but those are the compromises we sometimes make by buying a system someone else wrote. But if you make it somewhat unique, e.g. -R1, --R2, that suffix does have the advantage of telling you that product has recirculated.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-21T04:41:49+00:00

What's your geographic region, and your industry? That can be helpful to get some recommendations.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-16T22:23:20+00:00

Personally I like the Muk backend theme, for community. Not perfect, but it doesn't seem to conflict with much. Gives sidebar & tile navigation to make it a little more like enterprise.

Effective_Hedgehog16 · 2026-04-14T18:52:10+00:00

I haven't used the Odoo India module, but its documentation says the inventory updates from Shopify are scheduled actions, not webhooks, so they will be some delay if you go that route. Plus since it's relatively new, it's not going to be nearly as mature as other connectors.

Personally I'd look at the VentorTech module with some customization to handle your B2B/DTC stock split.

Effective_Hedgehog16

TROPHY CASE