Client: Level Six (and subsidiary Terra Outdoor Gear), an international apparel and water sports gear business.
Implementation Partner: Syncoria.
The Challenge: Migrating from a legacy, unsupported ERP (Visual Next/BlueCherry) to Odoo 19 within a highly condensed 4-to-5-month timeline, ahead of a strict January 2026 go-live deadline.
The Business Challenge
Level Six was operating on Visual Next (also referred to as Visual ERP or BlueCherry), a legacy system that had become unstable with multiple broken features and a lack of vendor support. The business required a robust system to handle complex B2B wholesale orders, high-volume Shopify B2C sales, multi-currency transactions (CAD, USD, EUR), and intricate international shipping and customs requirements. With their busiest season approaching in the spring, Level Six needed to go live by early January 2026.
Implementation Strategy & Customizations
Due to the rushed timeline, Syncoria utilized an Agile implementation approach, focusing on adapting Odoo to Level Six’s core operational requirements while pushing "nice-to-have" features to a Phase 2 backlog.
1. Advanced Inventory Allocation Logic A critical requirement for Level Six was maximizing available on-hand stock for immediate (ASAP) orders. Syncoria customized Odoo’s allocation logic so that if a B2B customer placed an order with a future delivery date, the system would bypass current warehouse stock and allocate the order against future incoming Purchase Order (PO) lots. A nightly script was built to continuously un-allocate and re-allocate inventory to account for canceled orders, new orders, and shifting PO delivery dates, ensuring the "first-ordered, first-served" rule was maintained.
2. Streamlined "Pack & Ship" Workflow: Odoo’s default warehouse workflow uses a 3-step process (Pick, Pack, Ship), which was incompatible with Level Six’s physical operations. Syncoria customized the barcode app to a 1-step "Pack & Ship" model. Warehouse staff use paper picking slips to gather items, then scan them directly into specific carrier packages (e.g., customized Uline boxes mapped to FedEx, UPS, or Canada Post) at a central station. Customizations were also added to force strict 1-to-1 scanning (disabling +1/+4 quantity buttons) to prevent shipping errors.
3. E-Commerce & B2B Integration Level Six operates three regional Shopify stores (.ca, .com, .eu) alongside a B2B dealer portal.
- B2B Catalog: Instead of building a complex new module, Syncoria leveraged Odoo's enhanced price lists to act as the B2B catalog, allowing Level Six to easily duplicate catalogs for pre-season or ASAP ordering and assign them to specific dealers.
- Shopify Sync: Syncoria's Marketplace app linked the stores to Odoo. A critical fix was implemented to ensure products synced via UPC barcodes rather than Odoo's internal reference numbers, as UPCs were the only stable identifiers across their historic Shopify data.
4. International Customs & Shipping Shipping to the US and Europe required complex documentation. Syncoria built customizations to handle consolidated shipments to 3rd-party logistics brokers like Strader Ferris (US) and Middle Logistics (EU). Because Incoterms (DDP vs. DDU) and valuations (Average Cost vs. Sales Price) vary drastically by order, Syncoria added a manual pop-up during invoice creation, giving Level Six the flexibility to override defaults and generate compliant U.S. Customs and EU Pro Forma invoices on the fly. They also coded the system to automatically pull mandatory manufacturer MIDI codes from the product master if lot records were blank.
5. Multi-Currency Accounting Solutions Accounting workflows were heavily optimized to reduce administrative overhead:
- Convera FX Payments: Odoo's default workflow required convoluted internal transfers for foreign exchanges. Syncoria approved a streamlined method where Level Six pays USD vendor bills directly from their CAD bank account, allowing Odoo to capture the exact CAD/USD exchange rate differential immediately and post the wire fee via an automated reconciliation model.
- Shopify/PayPal Reconciliation: To avoid managing dozens of currency-specific clearing accounts, Syncoria implemented a batch reconciliation workflow. Payments hit a single multi-currency Unreconciled Outstanding Receipts account, and when Shopify or PayPal deposits net funds into the bank, users process a batch payment and write off the gateway fees in one step.
6. Multi-Company Architecture To support Level Six's subsidiary, Terra Outdoor Gear, Syncoria configured a multi-company database environment. While contacts, vendors, and core customizations were shared globally, product categories and actual inventory were strictly isolated by company to prevent data contamination.
Go-Live Strategy & Data Migration
Because importing thousands of historical transactions is highly risky and time-consuming, Syncoria utilized a strategic financial import. They uploaded a detailed opening balance for the prior fiscal year and used lump-sum trial balance entries for the remaining months. Detailed line-item breakouts for AR, AP, and inventory were only loaded for the actual cutover.
To de-risk the launch during the busy Boxing Week sales period, Level Six initiated a parallel run starting January 5, 2026. Shopify B2C orders were processed end-to-end in Odoo to test live integrations, while B2B orders were processed in the legacy Visual ERP and manually duplicated in Odoo for team practice.
Outcomes & Conclusion
By early February 2026, the parallel run was concluded, access to Visual ERP was officially revoked, and Level Six successfully locked into Odoo as their sole source of truth.