A business with subscriptions earns recurring revenue: revenue that comes in again and again, on a cycle. Odoo Subscriptions manages that. This piece is about setting it up.
What subscription business is
A subscription is an ongoing arrangement with a customer that generates revenue on a regular cycle: the customer is on a subscription, and they generate business, and revenue, repeatedly, on a schedule, rather than each sale being a one-off. A subscription business has a body of these ongoing arrangements, and the revenue they generate, recurring revenue, is a distinct and valuable thing.
What Odoo Subscriptions does
Odoo has a Subscriptions capability for managing subscription business. The principle is that a subscription is set up once, as an ongoing arrangement with its cycle, and then the recurring nature is handled by the system: the recurring billing happens on the cycle, the subscription generates its business repeatedly, rather than each cycle being handled by hand. Setting up Odoo Subscriptions is configuring it to manage the business's genuine subscriptions this way.
Why subscription business needs this
Subscription business needs proper management because of its recurring nature. If a subscription's cycles were handled as a series of separate one-off sales, each created and billed by hand, that would be repetitive manual work, and it would be easy to miss a cycle. Subscription business managed properly means the recurring arrangement is set up once and the cycles are handled by the system: no repetitive re-creation, no missed cycles, the recurring business genuinely recurring because it is set up to. Setting up Odoo Subscriptions is what makes a subscription business's recurring nature managed rather than a manual chore.
Recurring revenue as a distinct thing
An important value of managing subscriptions properly is that it lets a business see and manage its recurring revenue as the distinct thing it is. Recurring revenue, the revenue from subscriptions, is, by its nature, more predictable than one-off revenue, because it is expected to repeat. A subscription business benefits greatly from seeing its recurring revenue distinctly, as the predictable base it has, separate from one-off business. Odoo Subscriptions, managing the subscriptions, is what lets a business see and understand its recurring revenue as that distinct, valuable thing.
Setting it up to match the genuine subscriptions
The practical work of setting up Odoo Subscriptions is configuring it to manage the business's genuine subscription arrangements: the genuine kinds of subscription, their genuine cycles and terms. Set up to match the genuine subscription business, Odoo Subscriptions manages the recurring arrangements and the recurring revenue as they genuinely are. A business should set it up to reflect its genuine subscriptions.
The takeaway
Setting up Odoo Subscriptions for recurring revenue configures the management of subscription business, the ongoing customer arrangements that generate revenue on a regular cycle. A subscription is set up once, and the recurring nature, the recurring billing, the repeated business, is handled by the system, so there is no repetitive re-creation and no missed cycles. This also lets a business see and manage its recurring revenue as the distinct, predictable thing it is. Set up Odoo Subscriptions to match the genuine subscription arrangements. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.