VAT Solutions, a company that keeps on growing
VAT Solutions is an independent firm specializing in VAT and customs consulting. Twelve employees, split between Luxembourg and a subsidiary created in France in 2018. The company advises its clients on their VAT and customs challenges.
A tight-knit team, demanding cases, an international clientele. And until 2021: Excel for everything.
"At the beginning of VAT Solutions, I was on my own. Excel was the go-to tool for accounting, assignments, and invoices. It worked for a few years until the growing number of clients forced us to truly professionalize." - Karine Bellony, Founding Partner of VAT Solutions
This niche positioning requires precise, transparent, and auditable billing processes, something the original tools could no longer reliably deliver.
Karine Bellony, founding partner of VAT Solutions, readily admits it. It worked. Until it didn't. Growth too fast, processes too manual, tools too limited. The firm had grown, and it was time to change, quickly and effectively.
One-click invoicing. What it actually changes
Karine is a consultant. Her time is her product. Every minute spent reconstructing hours, checking rates, and formatting an invoice is a minute not spent serving her clients.
Today, she logs her hours in Odoo as she goes. She clicks and the invoice is sent. With the full breakdown of services and the agreed hourly rate.
"A single click to send the invoice to my client with the full breakdown of time spent and the agreed hourly rate. It's extremely transparent for them, extremely simple for us. On my end, the time savings are phenomenal." - Karine Bellony, Founding Partner - VAT Solutions
"Phenomenal" is her word, not ours.
One ERP, one website, and a web agency partner
Most integrators stop at the ERP. Captivea went further. Alongside the Odoo deployment covering accounting, invoicing, CRM, projects, timesheets, employees, and recruitment modules, Captivea's Web Agency teams handled the migration of the WordPress site to Odoo. Blog, webinars, quizzes, service pages. A complete digital presence managed from a single interface. But it's the SEO aspect that deserves a closer look.
Migrating a website is daunting. One bad redirect, URLs changing without a safety net, and months of SEO work can simply vanish. Dylan Carasco, Operations Director of VAT Solutions France, was well aware of that.
"Our main concern was the loss of search engine ranking due to the migration. Captivea's integrators helped us avoid that issue through redirects, but they also did a significant optimization effort in parallel. The result: not only no drop in rankings, but an improvement of the site and an increase in both the number of visitors and their quality." - Dylan Carasco, Operations Director VAT Solutions France
A migration that improves SEO isn't a coincidence. It's a matter of method.
Why VAT solutions chose Captivea and not the others?
A VAT consulting firm is not an industrial SME. The stakes are different. Time-based billing, client transparency, multi-entity management between Luxembourg and France, none of that can be improvised in Odoo. VAT Solutions needed someone who understood the business before touching any settings.
Florian Allegre, project manager consultant at Captivea Luxembourg, knows this type of case well.
"We supported them in setting up task management automations, day-to-day project handling, and billing tracking." - Florian Allegre, Project Manager Consultant Captivea Luxembourg
Captivea starts from the existing processes, understands them, and translates them into Odoo, while supporting the VAT Solutions teams to help them fully take ownership of the tool.
Captivea Luxembourg: a partner, not just an implementer
It was Captivea that earned VAT Solutions' trust at the time of the switch to Odoo V16. The mission: implement task automation, day-to-day project management, and billing tracking.
"We began our collaboration with VAT Solutions when they were looking for a new integrator partner at the time of Odoo version 16. We supported them in setting up task management automations, day-to-day project handling, and billing tracking." - Florian Allegre, Project Manager Consultant Captivea Luxembourg
The challenge wasn't purely technical. It meant understanding the constraints of a consulting firm, training the teams, and adapting existing processes.
The trap 90% of growing firms fall into
You know that moment, the one where you realize your organization is held together with band-aids.
"From 2021 onwards, with a strong growth in the number of our clients, we realized we really needed to professionalize everything related to invoice preparation, invoice sending, and accounting management." - Karine Bellony, Founding Partner - VAT Solutions
The diagnosis is clear: this isn't about changing for the sake of changing, it's about building an infrastructure capable of supporting what comes next. VAT Solutions was looking for an ERP and an integrator able to guide them through it.
What nobody had anticipated: A collaboration that redefines the rules
The rest of the story, VAT Solutions and Captivea hadn't planned it. Through working together, the two teams realized something: their areas of expertise fit together naturally. When a Captivea client faces complex VAT challenges — partial deductions, taxable services abroad, mandatory invoice mentions — VAT Solutions can step in directly.
A client-provider relationship that transformed into a partnership. Karine Bellony, Founding Partner of VAT Solutions, shares an anecdote.
"From a client-provider relationship, we're gradually moving towards a partner relationship. Which is extremely interesting."
And what lesson does Karine draw from these first few years.
"We truly realized, through the first years of Odoo without Captivea, that being supported by a good integrator is essential to success." - Karine Bellony, Founding Partner VAT Solutions
Discover the VAT Solutions Reference Sheet and all our client testimonials.
Captivea supports service firms and growing businesses in their Odoo deployment by seeking to understand your business processes?