Run Every Project on a Single Kanban Board

What is Odoo Project?

Odoo Project is the project-management application inside the Odoo ERP suite. It organizes work as projects broken into tasks, displayed on Kanban boards with configurable stages and drag-and-drop progress updates—and, critically, it sits on the same database as Sales, Timesheets, Accounting, Purchase, Expenses, and Planning.

Each project is a Kanban whiteboard. Tasks move across stage columns, and task stages and statuses drive progress. The project dashboard shows the total number of tasks and an overall status overview, giving teams a single place to see what is in flight, what is blocked, and what is done.

Because Odoo Project is part of the wider Odoo suite, a task can pull in timesheets, sales orders, invoices, and purchase orders without leaving the application. That native integration is what separates it from standalone task tools such as Jira, Asana, or Trello: those tools track delivery; Odoo Project tracks delivery and money on the same record chain.

For Canadian and North American professional-services SMEs—agencies, consultancies, implementation partners, light field/services firms—the practical question is rarely "can we manage tasks?" It is "can we see billable utilization and project margin without a month-end spreadsheet?" Odoo Project is built for that second question.

Kanban, tasks, stages, and views

Odoo Project uses the Kanban project-management system. All projects are broken down into tasks, which are categorized on a whiteboard according to stages. Drag-and-drop task movement between Kanban columns updates task progress.

Task stages are displayed as columns in the project's Kanban view. Teams configure stages per project—for example New, In Progress, Waiting on Client, Review, Done—and each task's position reflects where it sits in the workflow. List, calendar, and Gantt views sit beside Kanban so the same tasks can be scheduled and sequenced without leaving Project.

Tasks can be created manually or automatically, including from emails or website forms. That means a lead submitting a form on your site can spawn a task in the right project with no manual entry. In Odoo 19, assignees can also be added in the To field when creating a task via email, and tasks support multiple priority levels.

Odoo 19 also ships project templates and task templates: you launch a project with pre-filled stages and tasks, assign roles on the template, then map people into those roles at creation time. Service products can point at a task template so sales-order confirmation creates standardized delivery work instead of an empty board.

• →Kanban whiteboard per project, with configurable stage columns
• →Drag-and-drop a task between columns to update its progress
• →List, calendar, and Gantt views on the same task set
• →Tasks auto-create from inbound emails, website forms, or sales order confirmation
• →Project and task templates (Odoo 19) standardize stages, roles, and delivery work
• →Dashboard surfaces total task count and project status at a glance

Sub-tasks, milestones, dependencies, and recurring work

Larger projects need more than a flat task list. Odoo Project provides built-in mechanisms to keep work structured without leaving the project surface.

• →Sub-tasks: a Sub-tasks tab lets teams split workload into smaller trackable units. Sub-tasks can be displayed in the Kanban view of the selected project, so a parent task and its children stay visible together.
• →Milestones: enabled per project under Project settings for tasks, milestones phase the project into deliverables so stakeholders see phased progress. Milestones are automatically enabled for projects created from a sales order for a service invoiced by milestone.
• →Task dependencies: enable Task Dependencies in Project settings, then link successor tasks to predecessors from the task form or by dragging dots between bars in Gantt. Odoo surfaces blocked tasks and manages progress based on those links.
• →Recurring tasks: a new task in a recurrence is created automatically once the status of the previous task is set to Done or Canceled, with daily, weekly, or monthly intervals—useful for monthly reporting, weekly QA, or retainer cadence.

From sales order to project, timesheet, and invoice

The operational core of Odoo Project for services firms is not the Kanban board alone—it is the chain from quoted service product to delivered work to invoice. Official Odoo documentation for time-and-materials invoicing describes the product setup that makes that chain automatic.

On a service product form, set Product Type to Service, choose an Invoicing Policy (commonly Based on Timesheets for T&M work), and set Create on Order to Project & Task (or Task into an existing project, or Project alone). When the sales order is confirmed, Odoo creates the linked project and/or task so delivery starts from the same commercial scope the customer signed.

Employees log time on tasks. With Timesheets activated for Project, approved hours can be added to the sales order and invoiced. For milestone billing, set Invoicing Policy to Based on Milestones, ensure at least one project has milestones enabled, and mark milestones reached so delivered quantities update for invoicing. Prepaid/Fixed Price recognizes a set amount independent of hours logged—useful for packaged delivery where margin is managed by efficiency, not rate × hours.

Worked example (illustrative flow, not pricing advice): a Toronto implementation partner sells "Odoo Implementation — T&M" as a service product with Based on Timesheets and Create on Order = Project & Task. Order confirmation opens Project "Acme Co. Go-Live" with a root delivery task. Consultants log 12 hours on discovery and 28 hours on configuration against that project. The partner invoices from the sales order for delivered timesheet quantities at the SO rate, while employee cost rates from HR settings feed the cost side of the same project's profitability dashboard. No spreadsheet reconciling Jira hours to a separate invoicing tool.

Timesheets and Odoo project profitability

Time is logged against tasks. The sum appears on each task's Timesheets tab, and timesheet entries feed both cost and revenue when the project is billable and linked correctly.

When a project is linked to sales of service products, Odoo shows profitability on the project dashboard (add Dashboard to the project's top bar, or open Dashboard from the project card menu). The profitability panel compares revenues and costs for every record linked to the project and its analytic account, with columns for Expected, To invoice/To bill, and Invoiced/Billed.

Revenues on the dashboard can include timesheets (broken down by the product's Invoicing Policy—Prepaid/Fixed Price, Based on Timesheets, or Based on Milestones), materials sold on linked sales orders, customer invoices, subscriptions, down payments, and reinvoiced expenses. Costs can include timesheet labour (from employee HR cost settings), posted purchase orders, materials on validated stock moves when Analytic Costs are enabled, approved expenses, vendor bills, manufacturing orders, and other analytic costs.

The same timesheet can appear on both sides: under Revenues at the amount the customer pays for the work, and under Costs at the wage/cost rate paid to the employee. That separation of customer billing rate (sales order) and internal cost rate (HR) is what lets services leaders manage utilization and margin without conflating "what we bill" with "what it costs us."

Partner and practitioner chatter in 2026 still clusters on the same pain: unbilled hours as silent revenue leaks, and the need for live project P&L rather than year-end surprises. Odoo Timesheets' link from task → timesheet → sales order → invoice is the structural answer; Project profitability is the management view on top of that chain. Odoo 19.2 also added Timesheets dashboard analysis of billing targets versus actual billable time—useful when utilization goals are set per team.

Project vs Timesheets vs Planning vs Sales

SMEs often ask which Odoo app "owns" delivery. In practice four apps collaborate; confusing them produces half-configured databases where time is logged but never billed, or shifts are planned but never tied to a commercial project.

If you only install Project without Sales service products configured for Create on Order, you get a task board without a commercial spine. If you log time without Timesheets linked to billable products, you get activity without invoices. If you staff only in spreadsheets, Planning never sees capacity. The services SME playbook is to wire all four before go-live—not to "add billing later."

Forecasting and capacity planning

For services firms that staff multiple projects at once, Odoo adds complementary planning layers on top of Project.

Odoo Project Forecasting is enabled via Project configuration settings for forecasting, with the Timesheet module installed and standard working hours set at the company level. It integrates timesheet tracking with resource forecasting, so planned and forecast hours sit side by side with capacity and actuals.

Odoo's separate Planning app provides a weekly Gantt view—by Resource, Role, Project, or Sales Order—and an Auto Plan button that assigns Open shifts (unassigned shifts) to employees with the matching role, including shifts linked to projects or sales orders. Odoo 19 improved Planning with auto-plan on flexible schedules and multi-day shift creation in Gantt; Project gained calendar drag-and-drop scheduling and auto-plan behaviour for flexible schedules on the task side.

Together, Forecasting and Planning turn Odoo Project from a task board into a staffing and capacity tool—still one database away from the invoice, not a second product's export.

What Odoo 19 changed for Project (2025–2026)

Odoo 19 (September 2025 release notes) focused Project improvements on templates, portal, scheduling, and prioritization rather than inventing profitability from scratch—profitability, milestones, and timesheet invoicing were already mature and continue under the 19.0 documentation tree.

Confirmed Project items in the Odoo 19 release notes include: project templates with role assignment; task templates and task templates on service products; task scheduling based on template when creating a project; multiple priority levels; assignees via email To field; drag-and-drop scheduling of existing tasks in calendar view; Gantt view for tasks on the portal; sharing private projects with portal users; and auto-plan for employees on flexible schedules.

Cross-app Gantt improvements in Odoo 19 (undo reschedule, grouped scheduling filters, buffer handling between dependent records, smart zoom, fold off-hours) apply whenever you schedule tasks on a Gantt surface. Minor releases after 19.0 continued the thread: Odoo 19.1 added assignable project roles and creating projects from opportunities; Odoo 19.2 added Timesheets billing-target vs billable-time analysis; Odoo 19.3 added printable task schedules from Gantt.

When evaluating vendor claims about "new in 19," separate genuine template/scheduling upgrades from long-standing profitability and milestone billing—so your selection criteria stay honest about what you must configure versus what a version bump alone unlocks.

Services SME playbook: margin, utilization, adoption

Implementation order matters more than feature count. A practical sequence for a 10–80 person services firm:

1) Define service products with clear Invoicing Policy and Create on Order behaviour before you open the first live project. 2) Standardize Kanban stages and a small set of project templates so every engagement does not invent its own workflow. 3) Set employee cost rates in HR and billing rates on sales order lines so profitability is meaningful on day one. 4) Enforce weekly timesheet approval—unapproved time should not silently bill or silently vanish. 5) Train project managers on the profitability dashboard columns (Expected / To invoice / Invoiced) so they manage pipeline of unbilled delivery, not just task WIP. 6) Add Planning once task hygiene is stable; capacity tools on dirty task data create false confidence.

Watch the failure modes competitors' long-form guides also call out: blended rates across senior/junior staff need careful SO line design; multi-entity delivery needs analytic and intercompany discipline; client portal access is excellent for status and milestone sign-off but is not a substitute for a commercial change-order process when scope expands.

Measure success with operational signals, not vanity dashboards: percent of hours approved within seven days, unbilled delivered hours aging, margin by project template type, and how often PMs open the profitability panel mid-project instead of only at close. Those behaviours are what convert Odoo Project from "another board" into the operating system of a services firm.

The Dynamics 365 equivalent (and how it differs)

For SMEs evaluating both platforms, Microsoft's counterpart is Dynamics 365 Project Operations. Microsoft describes it as an agile solution that brings together sales, resourcing, project management, and finance teams in a single application, managing the full project lifecycle from project sales to invoicing and accounting.

Where Odoo Project is Kanban-first and lightweight, Project Operations leads with a work breakdown structure (WBS): users break work into manageable tasks, estimate the time required, and sequence them on an interactive drag-and-drop Gantt chart. A Schedule Board provides a Gantt-style resource management view showing which resources are forecasted to be fully booked.

Project Operations comes in three deployment types: Lite (deal to proforma invoicing, Power Platform-based), Resource/Non-Stocked (service-based projects with finance integration via dual-write to Dynamics 365 Finance), and Stocked/Production (full ERP with stocked items and production orders). Project types—Fixed-price, Time and material, Investment, Cost, Internal—handle costs and revenue recognition differently.

We cover pricing, deployment depth, and SME fit for the Microsoft side in a separate guide.

• →Odoo Project: lightweight Kanban + Timesheets + Forecasting, native to one suite
• →D365 Project Operations: WBS scheduling, Schedule Board, three deployment types, deep finance integration
• →Both are credible; the right fit depends on ERP scope, finance complexity, and existing Microsoft licensing
• →For the deep Microsoft side, see our dedicated Dynamics 365 Project Operations guide

When Odoo Project fits (and when Dynamics 365 does)

Because Flectic implements both platforms, the decision is driven by the SME's operating model—not by vendor preference.

Odoo Project tends to fit SMEs that want one affordable suite covering CRM, sales, project delivery, timesheets, accounting, and inventory without a separate finance engine. The Kanban-first UX, native sub-tasks and milestones, template-driven starts in Odoo 19, and built-in profitability make it fast to stand up for professional-services, agency, field-service, and light manufacturing teams.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations tends to fit SMEs that already run on the Microsoft stack, need multi-currency or revenue-recognition automation, or plan to grow into a full Dynamics 365 Finance ERP. Its tiered deployment types let a team start with proforma invoicing and expand into resource-based or stocked/production scenarios over time.

• →Choose Odoo Project when you want an integrated, modular ERP at lower TCO
• →Choose Dynamics 365 Project Operations when finance depth and the Microsoft stack matter
• →Both can be implemented AI-accelerated, designed to deliver up to 3x faster

Frequently asked questions