Made-to-order furniture, where no two cutting lists are the same.
Every piece that leaves your factory is slightly different — a wider wardrobe, a different veneer, one more drawer — and every change means a new cutting list, a new nest, a new cost. The office quotes from a spreadsheet, the CNC runs from the nesting software, and the two agree only if somebody re-types carefully. We work with furniture and wood factories in Thailand, the USA and India, and that gap is where we start.
—— Where it hurts
What usually breaks first.
A new BOM for every order
A made-to-order wardrobe is the same product on paper and a different bill of materials in reality — width, wood species, hinge count, finish. So someone rebuilds the cutting list in a spreadsheet for every confirmed order, and when the customer changes a dimension after the deposit, the version at the saw is not the version that was quoted.
Sheets in, parts out — the count never matches
You buy plywood by the sheet and timber by the cubic metre, but the factory consumes components cut on the CNC — and the yield lives in the nesting software, not on the stock card. So the system says forty sheets while the rack holds twenty-six plus a pile of offcuts nobody has ever valued. Every physical count ends as an argument about where the wood went.
Finishing is where the schedule dies
Cutting and assembly run to plan; then the piece joins the queue for sanding, staining and three coats of lacquer with drying time between each. A work order that looks ninety percent done can still be a week from packing, because the spray booth and the drying racks are the real bottleneck no schedule shows. So delivery dates get promised from the assembly date, and finishing quietly breaks them.
The margin is discovered after the truck leaves
Made-to-order pieces get quoted from the cutting list plus a factor, but the third recut after a grain mismatch, the walnut substituted for out-of-stock oak, and the extra fitting hours never land back on that order. The job closes, the invoice goes out, and whether it made money is a feeling, not a figure. The orders that quietly lose are usually the biggest ones.
—— 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.
We price made-to-order pieces from a cutting list. Which costing method fits us?
Usually FIFO or average cost for the timber, with each sales order driving its own manufacturing order so material and work-order hours land on that specific job. The quote and the production BOM come from the same record, which means quoted-versus-actual is a report, not a reconstruction. We agree the costing method in the written scope before the first phase starts.
Can we trace which batch of timber went into a finished piece?
Yes — receive timber and boards with lot numbers carrying the kiln batch, supplier and certificate, and Odoo records which lots each work order consumed. When a customer reports warping a year later, you trace the piece back to the pallet and the supplier instead of guessing. The same lot record is where FSC or mill certificates get attached.
Our CNC runs from its own nesting software. Does Odoo replace it?
No, and it should not — nesting and CAM stay where they are good. Odoo issues the work order and takes back the part list and yield, by file import or API depending on what your software exports, so stock is consumed at the figure the nest actually achieved. That integration is scoped and priced in writing as its own phase, not assumed.
We run on spreadsheets and a local accounting program today. What moves first?
Usually sales orders, BOMs and inventory — the chain that produces the cutting list — with accounting following once the stock figures are trusted. Your current tools keep running until a full order-to-delivery cycle matches in both systems. The Odoo Community licence is $0, and if you need Enterprise, Odoo bills you directly — we never mark the licence up.
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.