Mattson Group

The challenge

Mattson Group, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, sells and rents shipping containers to a diverse client base across Europe. As the business expanded, its operational complexity outgrew the Odoo v9 Community edition it had been running on for years. The leadership team set five clear constraints for a rebuild:

• Bridge a major version gap. Going from Odoo v9 to v16 spans seven major versions — significant architecture and feature changes that don’t migrate cleanly through a single upgrade script.
• Re-implement custom workflows. Years of customization for container sales and rental processes had to be rebuilt to align with Odoo v16’s out-of-the-box capabilities (rather than carry forward fragile patches).
• Integrate WooCommerce in real time. The online store had to share inventory and sales data with Odoo continuously — no more nightly stock reconciliation.
• Implement modules that were never live before. Sales, Purchase, Accounting, Inventory, Helpdesk, and Manufacturing all needed to come online, not just be migrated.
• Preserve data integrity. Every historical sales, inventory, and accounting record had to land in v16 intact — German compliance audits were imminent.

The team needed a partner that could do the migration, the new-module implementation, the integration, and the post-cutover hand-holding all under one roof.

Our solution

TechUltra ran the engagement as a migration + implementation hybrid, sequenced so the data move and the new-module rollout happened on overlapping timelines without interfering with each other.

Migration: v9 Community → v16 Enterprise. The data migration ran through a multi-stage staging environment — every customer, supplier, transaction, and inventory line was migrated, validated, and reconciled before the next stage. We re-implemented the legacy customizations as native v16 features wherever the upgrade path permitted, and rebuilt the rest as cleaner code on the new architecture.

Sales & Rental. Container-sales and -rental workflows were the operational heart of the business. We modelled rentals natively in Odoo (the Rental module + custom fields for container category, condition, return-window terms) so the team no longer had to maintain a parallel “rental ledger” outside the ERP.

Purchase + Inventory. Procurement and inventory tracking now cover both sold and rented containers in one pipeline — a structural change Mattson couldn’t make in v9 because of how the legacy customizations had been written.

Accounting (German-compliant). The Accounting module was configured to satisfy German tax and reporting requirements (DATEV-compatible exports, EU VAT handling, fiscal-period close workflows) so the finance team can report without external workarounds.

Helpdesk + Manufacturing. A robust customer-support workflow went in for inbound rental enquiries and post-delivery issues. Manufacturing covers container assembly and maintenance — turnaround tracking, parts consumption, and labour are all on the same platform as the rental ledger.

WooCommerce real-time integration. We built a continuous sync between Mattson’s WooCommerce storefront and Odoo: stock levels, orders, and customer data flow both directions in real time. The previous nightly batch is retired.

Cutover + parallel-run. A controlled cutover weekend with a 2-week parallel run between v9 (read-only) and v16 (live). Issues detected in parallel-run were patched in v16 before v9 was decommissioned.

The results

Operational efficiency. With native Odoo modules running sales, rental, inventory, and procurement, the operational friction the team used to absorb (manual reconciliations, parallel ledgers, workarounds for v9 limitations) is gone. Throughput on container sales and rentals improved noticeably in the first quarter.

WooCommerce ↔ Odoo real-time. Stock availability online matches reality at all times. The previous overnight desync window is closed; over-selling on the storefront is structurally prevented.

Data accuracy + German compliance. All historical financial data migrated cleanly. The Accounting module now produces compliant reports out-of-the-box; the finance team no longer reformats exports before submission.

Scalable, future-ready platform. v16 Enterprise is the current Odoo Long-Term-Support track, so Mattson is well-positioned for the next round of business growth without another giant catch-up upgrade.

For organisations facing a similar v9-or-older to v16/17/18 jump, see our Odoo Migration engagement template — it’s the same playbook used here, sized down for smaller catalogues.