Traceable batches, expiry under control, QC holds that actually hold.
The formula is a password-protected spreadsheet, the batch record is a binder, and answering "which fragrance lot went into that batch?" costs an afternoon. Meanwhile the warehouse picks whichever drum is nearest — not the lot expiring first. In a cosmetics plant, the gap between the paperwork and the floor is where an ERP has to start.
—— Where it hurts
What usually breaks first.
Traceability lives in a binder
A distributor reports a skin reaction and asks which raw-material lots went into batch 4127. The answer is in the batch record binder — if the operator wrote the lot number on the weighing sheet, and if the sheet was actually filed. One question, one afternoon, every time.
FEFO that only exists at stocktake
The warehouse picks whichever drum is nearest, so the fragrance lot expiring next month sits at the back until the annual count finds it. The write-off gets booked as shrinkage, and the finished goods shipped with eight months of shelf life come back from the retail chain that requires twelve.
Quarantine that is a shelf and a sticker
Incoming actives are supposed to wait for the COA and micro results, but the system shows them as available the moment they arrive. On a busy day production pulls an unreleased lot, and QC finds out after the batch is already mixed. The hold exists as a shelf and a sticker, not as a rule the system enforces.
One bulk batch, forty SKUs, no matching cost
A 300-kilogram batch of bulk becomes tubes, sachets and travel sizes across three markets, each with its own label and barcode. Fill yields vary, part of the bulk is held over for the next run, and by month-end nobody can reconcile bulk kilograms against filled units — so batch margin is a guess.
—— Modules
The modules this sector actually starts with.
—— How the rollout runs
A sector template, tuned to how you actually work.
Walk the process
We follow one real order end to end — quote to cash, or purchase to pay — before touching a configuration screen.
Configure the sector baseline
The modules this sector starts with go in first, configured against your master data rather than demo records.
Pilot with one team
One site, one team, one month. The pilot decides what scales, and its objections reshape the template before anything else ships.
Scale and hand over
Remaining sites onboard on a fixed rhythm, each with documentation and a trained super-user of its own.
—— FAQ
Questions teams ask about this service.
How do you cost a batch that becomes dozens of retail SKUs?
We model the bulk as a product of its own with its own bill of materials, so the mixing batch carries the cost of raw materials and machine time, and each retail SKU consumes bulk plus its packaging. With lot-based FIFO or average costing, and landed costs on imported actives, you get a real margin per batch instead of a blended guess.
Can Odoo give us the traceability a GMP audit or a recall demands?
Yes — lot numbers are captured at receipt, at every issue to production and on every delivery, so the traceability report answers both directions: which customers received a finished batch, and which raw-material lots went into it. To be clear, Odoo does not make you GMP-certified; it gives you the batch records and lot history the auditor asks to see.
Can it talk to our filling lines and scales?
Start with barcode scanning at the weighing station and the filling line — that is where lot capture actually breaks down, and it needs nothing more than a scanner. Odoo's IoT framework also connects scales, label printers and measurement devices; we wire up equipment where the payoff is clear and put the rest in a later phase, in writing.
Our formulas live in locked spreadsheets and stock in an old system. How does migration work?
Formulas import as bills of materials and are proven batch by batch — you mix from the Odoo BOM alongside the paper record until the yields match. Open lots migrate with their expiry dates and remaining shelf life intact, and the old system keeps running until a full cycle agrees in both. Each phase has a fixed written scope before it starts.
Let's find out whether Odoo actually fits your business.
A short call, an honest answer. If it isn't the right system for you, we'll say so.