Your boatyard, your peak summer, and your care roster do not fit one off-the-shelf ERP
A custom ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for a Mandurah business runs $85,000 to $210,000 and ships in 5 to 9 months. You build instead of buying NetSuite, SAP or Odoo when your operation has to hold three clashing rhythms at once: a marine yard that schedules boat pens and slipway slots by tide and hull length, a tourism arm that triples in volume from December to February, and an aged-care or maintenance backlog that never gets the staff hours. Off-the-shelf forces you to pick one model and run the other two on spreadsheets.
You bought NetSuite or Odoo because someone wanted one place for jobs, stock and invoices, and for a quiet winter it worked. Then summer hit, the canal moorings filled with weekend boats, the slipway booked out three weeks deep, and the system had no idea a 38-foot hull needs a different cradle and a different bay than a 24-foot runabout. NetSuite treats a slipway slot like a calendar appointment, not a tide-and-draft constraint, and Odoo's project module can't tell your foreman which job is blocked because the antifoul hasn't cured.
So your yard runs the real schedule on a whiteboard by the office door, the tourism side closes its season takings in a second tool, and the aged-care maintenance list lives in a notebook the supervisor carries. The ERP holds the tidy parts and none of the parts that decide whether you survive January.
Where the off-the-shelf tools fall short
- NetSuite books a slipway slot as a flat appointment, ignoring tide window, hull length, draft and cradle type, so the real yard schedule lives on a whiteboard
- Odoo's project module can't express job dependencies like cure time or a part on backorder, so the foreman re-sequences by memory every morning
- Summer demand triples but the ERP has no seasonal capacity model, so peak bookings collide with the standing aged-resident maintenance backlog
- Three operating rhythms, one chart of accounts, and a year-end that needs the whiteboard, a notebook and a spreadsheet to reconcile
Custom erp: what Mandurah teams actually get
A custom ERP lets you model Mandurah's actual constraints: a slipway and pen scheduler that respects tide, draft and cradle, a seasonal capacity layer that knows December is not June, and a maintenance backlog that can be sequenced against crew hours instead of dropped. You stop paying for manufacturing modules you never touch and stop running the decisions that matter on paper by the door.
- You run marine, tourism and maintenance or care under one entity with clashing seasons
- Tide, draft and cradle constraints decide scheduling and your ERP can't express them
- Year-end already depends on a whiteboard and a spreadsheet the ERP can't replace
- You're a single-line business that fits NetSuite or Odoo's standard model cleanly
- You have no tidal or seasonal-capacity logic to encode
- You need to be live in eight weeks and can accept the vendor's process
- A slipway and boat-pen scheduler that enforces tide window, hull length, draft and cradle type, so the office stops guessing what fits
- A seasonal capacity model that flexes crew and bay allocation between winter trickle and summer flood
- A maintenance backlog you can actually sequence against available tradie hours rather than a notebook that gets longer
- One reconciled year-end instead of an ERP plus a whiteboard plus a season-takings spreadsheet
- A schema you own, so the next jetty expansion or new tour operator slots in without a re-purchase
- You own the scheduling logic a vendor would otherwise maintain, so a new cradle type or tide rule becomes your build queue
- No Odoo community app store to lean on; every marine or care integration is yours to write and keep alive
- Twelve to eighteen months before the lower running cost overtakes the upfront spend
- Key-person risk if the original build team disperses without documentation and tests
Feature priorities for Mandurah teams
Mandurah ERP: the full scope
The engagements Mandurah teams bring us most often: NetSuite customization, SAP integration, Odoo development, Microsoft Dynamics 365, ERP migration, cloud ERP and manufacturing ERP.
The honest cost picture for Mandurah
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Core ledger + one arm (marine or care) | $85,000 to $125,000 | 5 to 6 months |
| Multi-arm with slipway scheduler + seasonal capacity | $130,000 to $180,000 | 7 to 8 months |
| Full build with maintenance backlog + integrations | $180,000 to $210,000 | 8 to 9 months |
Timeline: what happens, and when
Exactly what you get
You get one ledger that holds Mandurah's three rhythms: a slipway and pen scheduler that respects tide, draft and cradle, a seasonal capacity layer that knows January is not July, and a maintenance backlog you can sequence instead of carry in a notebook. Finance closes once across marine, tour and care takings. Pair it with your field service management software for the mobile tradies, your inventory management software for the chandlery, and your business intelligence dashboards so the three share one product and finance spine.
How to choose a developer in Mandurah
Pick a team that can whiteboard how a slipway slot gets blocked by tide and cradle before they talk price, and that has shipped seasonal-capacity logic, not just a calendar. Mandurah's marine and trades community is small and reference-checkable, so call the yard or builder they claim to have built for. Favour a firm that ties the ERP to your accounting software and booking software rather than treating them as afterthoughts you wire up later.
- !They've never modelled a tide or draft constraint; ask how they'd schedule a slipway by hull length
- !They quote ERP as a fixed product before seeing your three operating rhythms; ask how summer surge changes the plan
- !No data-migration plan from your current Odoo or NetSuite; ask exactly how history moves
- !They promise full replacement in under four months; ask which arm they're quietly cutting
- !No mention of job dependencies; ask how a cure-time block shows up in the schedule
If erp is on the roadmap, internal tools, shopify, inventory management usually follow within the year. Budget them as one conversation.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Can one ERP handle a boatyard, a tourist season and a care roster?
Yes, but only a custom one. NetSuite and Odoo carry a single scheduling and capacity model; a custom ERP lets you run a tide-aware slipway scheduler, a seasonal capacity layer and a maintenance backlog in one database, so finance still closes once.
How does a custom ERP handle slipway and tide constraints?
It books slots against tide window, hull length, draft and cradle type rather than as flat appointments, and warns when a job is blocked by cure time or a part on backorder. That replaces the whiteboard most Mandurah yards keep by the office door.
What does a Mandurah ERP build cost?
Expect $85,000 to $210,000 depending on how many arms you build. A single marine or care ledger sits near the floor; a multi-arm build with slipway scheduling, seasonal capacity and a maintenance backlog reaches the ceiling.