Where we fit — and where we don't
Odoo, Salesforce and SAP are all bigger than us. That's not a weakness we're hiding; it's the reason we exist at a different point in your growth.
Where Odoo beats us
- Odoo hosts your website and online store. We don't — and we don't want to. Your website should outlive any back-office vendor, and it shouldn't be tied to their templates or their renewal date.
- Odoo has a full general ledger. We don't. You keep the accounting system you already use. Invoices, supplier bills and credits are raised here and sent to your accounting package as a file your bookkeeper brings in — each one once, with a log of what went. "And now change your accounting too" is how these projects die.
- Odoo has thousands of partners and a large app marketplace. We have us. If you need a vendor with an office in every country, choose Odoo.
- Odoo's Fleet app goes further than ours. Leasing contracts, a vehicle's full cost history, company cars assigned to staff. Ours is deliberately lighter: services by distance and renewals by date, worked out from the bills you already enter.
- Odoo is open source. If that matters to you, that's a real reason to pick them.
| Opterion-IT | Accounting package, top tier | Odoo | Salesforce | SAP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical size at first purchase | Five people or more | Small teams, up to its user ceiling | 25–250 people | Once the sales team is substantial | Large enterprise |
| Who sets it up | We do | You, or your bookkeeper | You, a Success Pack, or a partner | A partner, or an admin you hire | Consultants, over months |
| Who keeps it fitting you | We do — and a change we take on ships to every customer | You, within its settings | You, via Studio (Custom tier) | Your admin | Change request |
| Priced by | $500/mo incl. 10 users, then $45 a user falling to $25. One-time onboarding $4,000. | One flat monthly plan | Per user, per month, plus setup | Per user, per cloud | Enterprise contract |
| What a 10-person team pays | CAD $500/mo | The plan price — under ours | ~CAD $352/mo licence, plus setup | Varies by cloud | Enterprise contract |
| Your accounting | Keep it | It is your accounting | Replaced by theirs | Not included | It is the ledger |
| Website & online store | Not included | Not included | Included | Separate cloud | Separate product |
| Best reason to choose them instead | — | Books and jobs in one login, for far less | Website + ledger in one, open source | Deep pipeline & forecasting | Multi-entity, global scale |
Odoo figures checked against odoo.com/pricing, October 2026: One App Free; Standard CAD $35.20/user/month billed yearly; Custom CAD $57.90. Implementation and in-app credits are billed separately. Salesforce and SAP are described qualitatively on purpose — their published pricing moves too often to quote safely.
There's also a longer piece on Opterion-IT vs Odoo if you want the reasoning rather than the table — and a plain feature-by-feature list if you want more table.
Running jobs out of your accounting package?
If you're an electrician, a plumber or a renovation outfit, the alternative you're weighing probably isn't an ERP. It's the top tier of the accounting package you already have — which these days does estimates, job budgets, change orders, progress billing and purchase orders. Here is that comparison with the accounting left out, because that part isn't a contest.
Where your accounting package beats us
- It is the ledger. Payments, bank feeds, payroll, tax filing, year end — all there, none of it here. We hand it documents; it keeps the books.
- Your bookkeeper already knows it. Nothing we do asks them to learn anything new.
- It costs far less. If you quote off a price list and invoice when the job is done, its top tier is enough, and you should stay where you are.
| Accounting package, top tier | Opterion-IT, beside it | |
|---|---|---|
| Time-and-materials jobs | Billable expenses and hours passed through to an invoice, marked up one at a time. | Supplier quotes with good-until dates, your cost times a margin per section, re-priced as the real costs land. |
| Scheduling the crew | Not included. An add-on from another vendor. | A week board built from the hours you sold, with arrive and leave from the phone feeding the time card. |
| Kits and assemblies | Bundles on an invoice. Nothing is built into stock. | Kits that explode onto a quote, and builds that put finished units on the shelf at what they cost to make. |
| What to buy, and why | A reorder point per item, and a purchase order when stock falls below it. | One list of every need, each with the job driving it and the date it is due. |
| Supplier paperwork | Bills keyed against purchase orders. | The invoice ticked against what actually arrived, and a return raising the credit you are owed the day the parts go back. |
| Your customers | A name, a balance and a transaction list. | What each one buys and has stopped buying, what is straining the relationship, and who is doing something about it. |
| Time cards and leave | A separate time-tracking subscription, with its own per-user price. | In the same system as the jobs, so hours land on the job they were worked on. |
| How many people can use it | A fixed ceiling on users. | No ceiling. |
Their column is written from the published feature lists of the leading small-business accounting packages, checked October 2026. We don't name them, because Opterion-IT works beside whichever one you run — and you keep it.
You should probably not choose us
Four situations where we'll point you somewhere else.
You're under five people
A spreadsheet and a shared drive are usually fine at that size, and few businesses that small buy something like this. Nothing stops you if you want it sooner; most come back when the cracks start showing.
You want one vendor for your website too
If the store, the site and the back office must be the same login, Odoo does that and we don't.
You want to replace your accounting package
We work beside your ledger, not in place of it. If you're set on replacing it, we're the wrong tool.
You're 400 people across three legal entities
You've reached the size where a full ERP earns its cost. Go and buy one.
We'll tell you that on the call — not after the invoice.
$500 a month, with your first 10 people included.
That covers the system, your first 10 users, and support from the people who built it. Beyond 10, each band of users costs less than the one before. Getting you running — bringing your existing data in and training your people — is a one-time onboarding fee of $4,000. That's the whole price list.
| Users | Per user, per month |
|---|---|
| First 10 | Included in the $500 |
| 11–20 | $45 |
| 21–30 | $40 |
| 31–40 | $35 |
| 41–50 | $30 |
| 51 and up | $25 |
All figures CAD per month, except the one-time onboarding fee of $4,000.
Where we're not the cheapest
- Odoo's licence is a little cheaper at most sizes. 10 users on Odoo Standard is roughly $352 a month against our $500; at fifty it is $1,760 against $2,000. Their setup is billed on top; ours is the $4,000 above. We're not going to pretend the difference isn't there.
- So does the top tier of your accounting package. If it does everything you need, it is the right answer.
- What the difference buys is the people who built it. We set it up with you and we answer the same business day. Ask for changes whenever you like: we don't build one-off versions, so when we take a change on, every customer gets it — which is also why yours keeps improving on requests you never made.
Software people actually like using is worth paying more for. The cheapest system in the building is the one nobody opens.
Not sure which way to go?
30 minutes. Real scenarios. No hard sell. If Odoo is the better fit, we'll say so.