Picture a single can of Coca-Cola. A guest buys it at the hotel. Another sells at the restaurant to a walk-in. A third goes out at a catering event across town. Same can, same price, three completely different stories about how the business makes its money, and for a long time it couldn't tell those stories apart.
That can is the whole problem in miniature. This client isn't one business; it's five sharing a roof, a boutique hotel, a restaurant and bar, a catering and events operation, and a co-working space, across two locations. That range is what makes the place special, but it was quietly costing the owner the one thing every business needs: a clear answer to which parts are actually working. When you can't separate the hotel's Coke from the restaurant's Coke from the catering Coke, decisions get made half-blind.
Two systems, two disappointments
This wasn't the first attempt at a fix. The business had worn through two point-of-sale systems, each teaching a sharp lesson. The first was cheap and flexible, but its only support was a chatbot, slow enough that the owner became the help desk herself. The second hadn't been built for hospitality, and its reporting was a struggle to pull and wouldn't slot cleanly into an income statement.
So the brief was simple. They wanted the basics done reliably: trustworthy support with a real human, expenses tracked alongside sales, and software that produces a proper income statement and balance sheet. Plus two non-negotiables, a bilingual English and French interface and support for US dollars as well as francs, since hotel guests arrive from abroad.
The approach
The project ran on Odoo's "Quick Start" method: build about eighty percent from standard features and reserve twenty for real customization where needed. People mattered as much as software, so a lead consultant owned configuration and training while one designated client contact kept decisions moving, avoiding the endless re-explaining that a rotating contact had caused on an earlier project.
Building it, piece by piece
The Coca-Cola question was answered by shaping the POS around how the business actually works, consolidated to the main outlets with products in clean categories, so every sale traces back to the outlet and service that produced it. Analytic accounts per point of sale give the per-service view the owner had wanted from day one.
The co-working and events sides got their own treatment. Offices run on Odoo's Rentals app, which handles time-based pricing and tracks each desk through reserved, in-use, and returned. The guest who stays the night and also runs up restaurant charges now gets a single consolidated invoice, with the right co-working discount applied automatically. The events menu was folded into a tidy set of packages that scale to headcount rather than spawning a new product for every variation. Inventory was centralized across both locations with real-time transfers and minimum-stock alerts, and monthly co-working members are billed through a subscription app.
Two practical calls finished it: specced compatible hardware up front so no money was wasted on kit that wouldn't work, and drew a firm line on scope, shipping the urgent core first and pushing secondary features to a clearly labeled Phase 2, rather than overwhelming a brand-new team.
The part the others got wrong
The clearest lesson from the earlier systems was that software without support and training doesn't stick, so the training was built to last. The model is train-the-trainer: key users learn first, then train the rest. Every session ends with SOPs, short videos and guides each covering a single task. Behind it all is a direct line over WhatsApp or phone with a real person who answers, not a chatbot. And the handover is gentle, staff keep the old system until they're confident, then switch, because an adoption forced too early never takes.
What it adds up to
Stripped down, this was about turning a fragmented, hard-to-read operation into a system that tells the truth about itself. The business came in with five revenue streams it couldn't tell apart and reports it couldn't trust. It's moving toward a single Odoo setup where sales are tracked by source, guests get one clear bill, stock updates live across both locations, and the staff can run the whole thing themselves.
For an owner who only ever wanted to know which Coca-Cola got sold where, that's the entire point.