Odoo vs. Simpro vs. AroFlo: An In-Depth, Granular Comparison for Growing Service Businesses
For many years, as accountants deeply embedded in the trade and service industries, Simpro and AroFlo were our go-to recommendations. Simpro is a field service management software specifically designed for trade and service businesses. When a client in the electrical, plumbing, or field service sector needed to get control of their job management, these platforms were the undisputed champions. We implemented them, we mastered their workflows, and we saw the incredible efficiency they brought to businesses drowning in paperwork and whiteboard schedules.
These are powerful, specialised tools. SimPRO and AroFlo are specialized field service management (FSM) platforms focused on trades, with SimPRO offering a robust, higher-cost solution and AroFlo providing a more accessible starting point with clear pricing. They excel at their core purpose: managing the entire lifecycle of a job, from the initial quote to scheduling technicians, tracking time, and invoicing in the field. These platforms also offer features allowing users to manage appointments, allocate resources, and collaborate on tasks, streamlining operations for both field and office teams. For a business focused purely on job management, they are often the right choice.
However, as Our Clients Grew, we began to see a familiar and challenging pattern emerge. Their success created new layers of complexity that stretched these specialised systems beyond their limits. A business that started as a simple service company began distributing parts, requiring complex inventory management. A contractor grew into a multi-division entity, needing sophisticated, multi-dimensional financial reporting. As businesses expand, they require platforms that support marketing efforts and empower the user to manage more complex workflows. Odoo's modular nature and scalability are ideal for growing, diversified businesses that plan to add new functions as they expand.
They were hitting an invisible ceiling, and the problem was no longer just about job management. The problem was a lack of a single, unified view of their entire business. This is what led us, and our clients, on a Journey to a true, all-in-one ERP: Odoo.
The Tipping Point: When a Job Management Tool Isn't Enough
The "best-of-breed" approach works until your business strategy evolves. A job management system like Simpro or AroFlo is the central hub for your operations, but it still relies on integrations with other systems for core business functions, most notably accounting.
This is where the cracks begin to show:
- Growing Inventory Complexity:
Your business starts importing goods or holding more stock. You need to manage landed costs, multi-warehouse transfers, and complex batch and expiry tracking. A job management system's inventory module, designed to track what's on a technician's truck, can't provide the deep financial control needed for true asset management. - The Need for Deeper Financial Insight:
You want to understand the true profitability of a specific service line, customer segment, or project. Because your operational data (jobs) and financial data (accounting) live in separate systems, getting this level of granular, real-time reporting is either impossible or requires a mountain of manual spreadsheet work. -
A Disconnected Customer View:
Your customer data is fragmented. A lead might be in your CRM, their job history in Simpro/AroFlo, and their invoice history in Xero. You lack a single, 360-degree view of the customer relationship, which hinders your ability to provide proactive service and identify new sales opportunities.
This is the fundamental difference in philosophy: Simpro and AroFlo are exceptional job management platforms that integrate with other systems. Odoo is a single, integrated system that includes exceptional job management. Odoo, SimPRO, and AroFlo offer project management and workflow automation, but have significantly different core strengths and integration capabilities.
The Accountant's Nightmare: The Peril of Disconnected Project Profitability
From a financial leader's perspective, the most dangerous blind spot in a disconnected job/service management system is the inability to see true, real-time project profitability.
We have seen this firsthand. A client was using a sophisticated system to manage their high-value machine installation projects. To allocate the necessary parts from inventory to a job, their team had to follow a convoluted and high-risk process: create a sales order to reserve the stock, perform a manual stock adjustment to "consume" the parts, and then delete the original sales order to avoid sending a duplicate invoice.
This workflow was not just a "waste of time," as the project manager put it; it was an accountant's nightmare.
- It Broke the Audit Trail:
Deleting transactions is a cardinal sin in accounting. It makes financial reconciliation and auditing incredibly difficult. - It Obscured True Costs:
Because the final project costing was only entered into the system at the very end of the job from a separate spreadsheet, the business was flying blind on its margins for weeks or months at a time. -
It Created Financial Risk:
Deposits for these large projects were being held in suspense accounts in Xero, completely disconnected from the operational progress of the job, making true cash flow and liability management a guessing game.
This is a classic symptom of a business that has outgrown its systems. A technical implementer sees this as a workflow problem. An accountant sees it as a fundamental threat to financial control.In Odoo, the Project, Inventory, and Accounting modules are not separate systems that sync; they are native components of a single database. When a part is allocated to a project, it is a single, real-time transaction that is immediately reflected in your inventory valuation and your project's work-in-progress account on the balance sheet. This provides a level of real-time financial integrity that a disconnected system simply cannot replicate.
The Granular Comparison: A Deep Dive to Track Progress for Financial Decision-Makers
Based on our deep experience implementing all three solutions, here is a detailed, granular breakdown for businesses evaluating their next strategic move.
Feature | Simpro / AroFlo (with Xero/MYOB) | Odoo |
Core Philosophy | Best-in-Class Job Management: A specialised platform for field service and trade businesses that integrates with a separate accounting package. | All-in-One Platform: A single, unified ERP where all business functions, including job management, share one database and one source of truth. |
Job & Project Management | Excellent: Purpose-built for trades. Robust scheduling, dispatch, mobile access, and compliance features, allowing users to manage appointments, assign tasks, and allocate resources efficiently. | Excellent & Integrated: Powerful project and field service modules that are natively connected to inventory, sales, and accounting for real-time profitability tracking, allowing users to schedule appointments, manage tasks, and oversee resources within a unified workflow. |
Accounting & Financials | Separate Systems, Synced: Relies on an integration to Xero or MYOB. Financial reporting is disconnected from live operational data, creating a time lag and limiting real-time insights. Users report syncs can be fragile, with issues around data mapping, duplicate contacts, and character limits.6 | Native, Unified Ledger: Every operational action—from using a part on a job to logging time—is a real-time accounting transaction. Provides true, drill-down financial visibility from a P&L report directly to the source job or invoice. |
Inventory Management | Good for Trades: Strong at managing van stock and job-specific materials.1 Can be limited for more complex needs. Simpro: Lacks native landed cost functionality. Costing is primarily based on supplier catalogues. AroFlo: Does not have a dedicated landed cost module.2 Inventory is limited to 50,000 items total. | Comprehensive ERP Inventory: A full-featured inventory module designed for complex needs. Includes multi-warehouse management, advanced routing (MTS/MTO), perpetual valuation (at an accountant’s standard), and a dedicated Landed Costs module to accurately calculate true COGS for imported goods. |
CRM & Customer Management | Job-Focused: CRM capabilities are centered around managing leads, quotes, and the job history for a customer. Lacks deep functionality for marketing automation or full-funnel sales pipeline management. | Full-Featured CRM: A complete CRM module for managing the entire customer lifecycle, from lead generation (web forms, email marketing) and lead scoring to marketing automation, sales pipelines, and long-term relationship tracking. Odoo also supports marketing efforts by allowing users to automate and track marketing campaigns for improved customer engagement. |
Reporting & Business Intelligence | Limited & Often Externalised: Simpro: Offers 70+ pre-built reports, but users report they can be inconsistent and lack customisation options, often requiring external BI tools like Power BI for deep analysis. AroFlo: Reporting is considered more basic, though it can report on custom fields. It lacks the deep, multi-dimensional analysis of a true ERP. | Native & Powerful: A robust, native reporting engine with customisable dashboards and a pivot table interface that allows for multi-dimensional analysis across any data in the system. Users can drill down from high-level financial statements to individual transactions with a single click. Integrates with external BI tools if needed, but provides powerful native tools out-of-the-box. |
Customisation & Flexibility | Generally Rigid: Simpro: Users report the system is “not flexible at all” and requires processes to be done in a very specific way. AroFlo: Offers custom fields, but these are limited by type and where they can be applied, restricting deep process customisation.12 | Highly Flexible & Open Source: Odoo is built on an open-source framework and includes the Odoo Studio app, which allows for deep, no-code customisation of views, reports, and workflows. This enables the platform to be precisely tailored to a business’s unique processes, allowing users to collaborate and customise workflows to fit their team’s needs. |
Both Simpro/AroFlo and Odoo offer robust solutions, but Odoo stands out for its flexibility, collaboration features, and user empowerment—allowing users to tailor workflows and collaborate across teams. Odoo's open-source platform allows for significant customization to meet unique workflows, requiring technical expertise or a partner. Each platform is designed with the user in mind, allowing users to easily manage daily operations, from scheduling appointments and tasks to allocating resources and tracking marketing efforts.
Our Journey: Why We Graduated to Odoo for Specific Business Needs
Our decision to shift our focus to Odoo was not because Simpro or AroFlo are flawed products. On the contrary, they are excellent at what they were designed to do. Our shift was driven by the evolution of our clients. Their ambitions grew beyond the boundaries of pure job management, and they needed a platform that could grow with them without requiring a new patchwork of integrations.
As accountants, our ultimate responsibility is to provide our clients with financial clarity and control. Odoo allows us to build a single source of truth where every operational decision is instantly reflected in the financial statements. It allows us to answer the questions a growing business needs to ask: What is the true margin on this project, right now? Which of our service lines is the most profitable? Where is our cash tied up in inventory?
For a business that has reached a certain level of complexity, a unified ERP is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity. We made the move to Odoo because it is, quite simply, a much better, more integrated, and more scalable long-term solution for the ambitious clients we serve.
Is your business being held back by the limitations of a disconnected system?
Schedule a complimentary, no-obligation Financial Process Audit with our team of accountants. We'll help you identify the hidden risks and inefficiencies in your current workflows and map a clear path to a unified, more profitable future.
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