Stoov scales smarter with Odoo and 360 ERP

When Stoov started looking for a new ERP system, two options eventually remained, with Odoo as one of the contenders. “We were looking for an ERP that could grow with us, support our internationalisation, and connect easily with our e-commerce setup,” Maikel Smit, Head of Finance at Stoov, says. “We got in touch with 360 ERP through another e-commerce company. We quickly got to know them as a highly pragmatic partner. We trusted that both Odoo and 360 ERP were a strong fit for the way we do business.”

Niek Bouwhuis, Financial Controller at Stoov, joined the company a few months after the implementation. “At that point, we were still busy getting Odoo properly set up and understanding how everything works. That was a fun challenge to start with.”

The order flow from Shopify was the most extensive part of the setup. Stoov works with Shopify Markets, different VAT scenarios, a separate B2B store, and multiple payment service providers. Add warehouses and international processing to the mix and you have exactly the kind of operation that makes standard connectors start sweating.

“You have one flow with all kinds of different VAT scenarios,” Niek explains. “Mapping out all those different ways of processing VAT into Odoo is complex. On top of that, we also have a B2B store, which is handled differently from a VAT perspective.” The warehouse setup also played a role. “We had multiple warehouses in different countries which also affects your VAT processing.”

One of the biggest challenges was reconciliation. Put simply, reconciliation means matching payments with invoices. Sounds boring but it is extremely important. “We want all payments and orders to enter the ERP separately,” says Maikel. “In e-commerce, that means quite a lot of transactions. In our case, hundreds of thousands. You really don’t want to do that manually.”

Stoov looked at external tooling but that didn’t feel like the right route to take. “That made me a bit sad,” Maikel says with a wink. “Yet another external tool, pulling data out of your source only to push it back in later. We wanted to keep the foundation in the source.” And that is where 360 ERP pleasantly surprised Stoov. Maikel: “They said: we’ll turn this into a use case and just sort this out for you.”

Together with Stoov, 360 ERP set up the order and payment flow in such a way that Shopify, payment service providers and Odoo work together properly. From Shopify, the full order automatically enters Odoo: which items were sold, whether they were sold at a discount, and which information is needed for inventory administration and Finance. Customer data stays in Shopify, but the order data needed for processing comes through neatly.

An important part of this was matching codes between Shopify and the payment service providers. “The code used for matching needs to come through in the same way from the payment service provider and Shopify,” Niek explains. “That was also a challenge.”

At first, Stoov used middleware for the integration layer. “Until 360 ERP said: we’ll just do that integration ourselves,” Maikel explains. The result is the integration layer developed by 360 ERP. Stoov now has a solid integration foundation: a scalable model on which new stores and flows can be connected.

According to Maikel, it says a lot about the way 360 ERP works. “They are straightforward, entrepreneurial and proactive. They regularly call us to say: we’re seeing this in your setup, maybe this would be smart or useful for you?” And that was exactly the idea. “From the beginning, we said: it needs to be as simple as possible. We want as little custom development as possible and as many standard processes as possible, so we can scale quickly.

The biggest win for Finance lies in automatic processing. When Niek joined, there were still thousands of transactions waiting to be matched. That number has now been reduced to a fraction. “The contrast with what is now processed automatically in reconciliation is huge,” says Niek. For Maikel, the win is also about scalability. “Thanks to Odoo and the setup 360 ERP created for us, we are able to process a large e-commerce administration neatly with a small team.”

The move to Odoo 18 also went smoothly. “That really was a big improvement,” Niek says. “And it also says a lot about the way we work together. At other companies, migrations can be long processes with months of preparation. 360 ERP were here for two days, and then everything was fixed. Of course, you always find a few things afterwards, but we pass them on and they get solved.”

Stoov values 360 ERP’s pragmatic and straightforwardt way of working. “If something can’t be done or simply isn’t smart, they just tell us,” Maikel explains. “They’ll say: if you want us to log the hours, fine, but it’s not useful for you. I’ve had very different experiences in the past.” For Stoov, the collaboration feels like learning, building and improving together. “My experience with ERP support companies is that, as a customer, you often have to push and pull to get things moving. With 360 ERP, you can easily move with the flow. They’re smart, fun people. We like diving into the unknown with them.”

Niek previously worked at corporate organisations, where system changes often moved slowly. “In the meantime, you end up building an Excel file that does the same thing. And that’s exactly what you don’t want.” At Stoov, his experience is different. “Odoo is one of the nicest systems I’ve worked with. It is intuitive, logical, and clear. I can do a lot myself without having to create complicated exports. We barely use Excel anymore, except for some calculations. The complete administration can simply run in Odoo.”

Stoov is already looking ahead. According to Niek, the next optimisation step lies in AI.

“360 ERP goes one step further: they develop AI Agents that don’t act like some disguised version of Google, but actually solve things for you and make our work more efficient.”

Stoov sees the strength of 360 ERP here as well: technical knowledge combined with a deep understanding of Finance. “At 360 ERP, it’s not just tech people. They also have people who really understand Finance inside out,” says Maikel.