Business accounting with Odoo

By Jonathan Corbet
October 3, 2017

Odoo is, according to Wikipedia, "the most popular open source ERP system". Thus, any survey of open-source accounting systems must certainly take a look in that direction. This episode in the ongoing search for a suitable accounting system for LWN examines the accounting features of Odoo; unfortunately, it comes up a bit short.

Odoo is the current incarnation of the system formerly known as OpenERP; it claims to have over two million users. It is primarily implemented in Python, and carries the LGPLv3 license. Or, at least, the free part of Odoo is so licensed; Odoo is an open-core product with many features reserved for its online or "Enterprise" offerings. The enterprise version comes with source code, but it carries a proprietary license and an end-user license agreement forbidding users from disabling the "phone home" mechanism that, among other things, enforces limits on the number of users. Online offerings are not of interest for this series, and neither is proprietary software (the whole point is to get away from proprietary systems), so this review is focused on the community edition.

Installing and running Odoo

Getting started with the community edition can be a little rough. Odoo offers Debian and RPM packages and instructions on how to install them. The version available through the indicated repository was old, though — version 9, even though version 10 was released in late 2016. The instructions say that PostgreSQL must be installed while failing to mention that one must create an odoo user — and that said user, needed for production use, must be a PostgreSQL superuser. There is a systemd unit file to start the system, but one has to dig to realize that the way to actually access the system is by pointing a web browser at local port 8069. While a determined user can get past these little obstacles, they may leave said user a bit concerned about the accuracy and completeness of the documentation.

The main screen offers an extensive set of functions, each of which must be "installed" before becoming available; your editor found "accounting" a fair way down the list. The system offers to install a set of demonstration data, an offer which was accepted to test the system until LWN's data could be imported — a step that never took place, as it turns out, for reasons that will be discussed shortly.

The accounting "dashboard" screen shows a menu of possible functions and a few line plots. It looks slick enough, but its limitations quickly become clear. There is, for example, no straightforward way to just get a list of transactions on an account. One can pull up a "statement" and see the transactions that were listed there, but that will work poorly on accounts that lack statements. There must be a way to, for example, obtain a list of transactions on a given expense account, but it's not obvious.

There is no "register" view that makes it easy to enter transactions. One can enter a transaction through what is essentially an HTML form; there is no support for useful features like autocompletion. It seems clear that the Odoo developers expect that the bulk of transactions will be imported from some other source. But that turns out to be a bit of a problem.

Getting data into the new system is a key part of switching away from QuickBooks. That, alas, is a place where the open-core nature of Odoo makes itself felt. A look at the "settings" screen to the right makes the problem clear. The ability to import data directly from banks, the Plaid interface, and the ability to import data from QIF and OFX files are all reserved for the enterprise edition. Version 10 added even CSV support to the "enterprise-only" list. Users of the community edition are not without choices, naturally; they can type their data in by hand or figure out the database schema and write their own import code. Odoo is open source, after all, so the job can always be done.

But the deliberate refusal to include such basic functionality in the free version makes it clear that this version is not intended for anybody wanting to put it to serious use. The list of reserved features also includes check printing — necessary for any real-world user, at least in the US — and, according to this list, "full accounting". This is discouraging for anybody looking for a free-software solution to the accounting problem.

The Odoo chart of accounts works more-or-less as expected, if one doesn't mind the lack of a list of transactions. The chart is flat, though, with no support for account hierarchies. There is a basic set of accounting reports (profit and loss, balance sheet) available, but they are primitive relative to QuickBooks or GnuCash. The customization options are minimal. There is no ability to click on, for example, an expense category in the profit-and-loss chart and see how one managed to spend so much money on beer. Anybody hoping for advanced features like pie charts will be sorely disappointed.

The use of PostgreSQL should allow Odoo to scale to relatively large accounting data sets, though that was not tested here. The system can also handle multiple users working simultaneously, something that neither QuickBooks (in the small-business edition) nor GnuCash can do. One thing any user should be aware of is that Odoo does not attempt to maintain database compatibility across major releases of the system. The company will migrate databases for a fee, naturally enough; there are also projects like OpenUpgrade trying to fill the gap. Companies tend to stay with an accounting system for a long time, so the upgrade issue is one that should be kept in mind.

Development community

The source for the Odoo community edition is maintained on GitHub. A quick look suggests that it is an active project with a non-trivial amount of community involvement. Your editor looked in vain for pull requests adding an "enterprise" feature like QIF import to see what the response would be, but there do not appear to be a lot of external developers trying to add larger features. Odoo requires contributors to sign a contributor license agreement allowing the code to be distributed under a proprietary license.

There seems to be a fair selection of books out there for those wanting to learn more about working with (or developing for) Odoo. One can also find active support forums and such. There does indeed appear to be a significant user community for this system. Odoo seems unlikely to disappear overnight or fade away in the near future.

Closing notes

As can be seen from the above text, your editor has found Odoo wanting when it comes to the task of basic company accounting. One thing should be pointed out here, though: this review was focused on accounting functionality, but Odoo aims to be a full enterprise system with features far beyond accounting. It offers customer-relationship management, project management, inventory control, sales support, a point-of-sale interface, time tracking, issue tracking, expense tracking, and more. It has add-on modules to "build your own enterprise web site", create and run surveys, conduct mass-mailing campaigns, manage calendars, manage fleets of vehicles, and coordinate lunch orders. Businesses in need of all that functionality may well be willing to overlook the shortcomings in the accounting module.

For a company that is focused on gaining control over its own accounting data, and that wants to keep said data locally and managed with free software, Odoo does not seem like an ideal choice. The open-core model will put Odoo-the-company in a conflict-of-interest position with regard to its free users; it seems certain that the community version will always lack some important features. But even the enterprise version come up short relative to some of the alternatives. Odoo might yet develop into a full-featured free accounting system, but it is not there now. The search for a suitable QuickBooks replacement will continue.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 3, 2017 23:45 UTC (Tue) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link] (27 responses)

Is it REALLY that hard to make a full business management suite in entirely free software, by the community for the community? I think about that a fair amount. This has GOT to be a far easier problem (in terms of code anyway) than the likes of the kernel, Blender, LibreOffice, PostgreSQL, etc. Why can't we do this? And what would happen if, say, I tried to start one?

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 3:49 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

Accounting is actually quite complex, especially if you want to do taxes. And it's not useful unless you have quite a bit of functionality, so there's a big entry barrier.

Feel free to start a project, but be warned that you'll likely despair halfway through it.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 5, 2017 0:38 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

As Cyberax says.. finance is incredibly complicated for something which looks like adding and subtracting.

Tax rules are very complicated because you have to take into account city/county/state/nation, then the various exceptions where X item is not taxed on this day but is on that one, and finally the rules of is this an operational expense or a capital expense.. how long do you need to hold onto that expense, and how much does it depreciate and the various ways that each one will depreciate differently (and possibly the same thing depreciating multiple ways depending on which "Generally Accepted Accounting Rules" that are applied.

Outside of the tax rules there are industry standards for different accounting sets which need to be put in place. If you are in one industry, you account for something as X but in another you account for it as Y.

And finally there are the internal business rules which need to be codified. For even a mom-and-pop there is "Sally is a waitress for 20 hours and then works the kitchen for 20." She gets paid one wage when she is a waitress and a different in the kitchen. Or that Bob gets paid from this contract but not another one.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 12, 2017 14:23 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And how about when you produce one set of accounts for the taxman, a different set for the board, and quite possibly a third set for the accountants? Not to mention the fourth set for the shareholders, and a fifth for the banks ...

I know that sounds a bit like the Mafia with the official books and the real books, but there are good reasons for wanting to do that. Depreciation for tax purposes is an obvious one.

Cheers,
Wol

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 13, 2017 3:35 UTC (Fri) by ras (subscriber, #33059) [Link] (2 responses)

> Accounting is actually quite complex, especially if you want to do taxes.

Yes, in doing real world accounting is complex. But that is not because accounting is fundamentally complex. Compared to the tasks most people here do, it's drop dead simple.

The issue is like anything else, create enough special cases and over optimise the system so it fits every real world circumstance, and you get something that is bloody complex.

I used to write accounting systems for a living. I dealt in two industries (well many, but these two serve to illustrate my point) - supermarkets and pubs (hotels). Supermarkets have 10's of thousands of different items for sale. pubs have maybe a few 100. The accounting tricks supermarkets ask you to do are simple. When you are managing stock levels of so many items there you have very little time for mucking around with prices.

Pubs on the other hand were a nightmare. Prices varies by time of day, and the where you bought it. So a beer in nightclub would be priced differently to the same beer in the same glass bought at the bar. The price of a shot of bourbon per litre will be different depending on what glass it is served in, and what else it is mixed with. Restaurants, that have only 10's of items, take the complexity up another level again.

They all of course want figures out the other end that tell them how much money a particular bar made, or whether they should stock a particular brand of beer.

My conclusion: basic double entry accounting starts out drop dead simple. Corporations then keep adding conditions, special cases, and complexity till the point only a very few highly paid people have a clue how it works.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 13, 2017 19:27 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

That sounds like agreeing with more words, in theory double-entry accounting is simple, in practice, as your pub example shows, it is very complicated.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 14, 2017 9:27 UTC (Sat) by ras (subscriber, #33059) [Link]

> That sounds like agreeing with more words, in theory double-entry accounting is simple, in practice, as your pub example shows, it is very complicated.

That's not quite how I see it. Double entry accounting *is* simple. The most complex part of the system is always the invoicing system. The invoice invariably results in just a transaction of just a few lines to the double entry accounting system - maybe line one to stock, one to sales, one to cash / bank or accounts receivable, one to tax, maybe one to discounts if you are keen. It doesn't matter how big or complex the invoice is - in double entry accounting terms, it always boils down to a post that simple. I have no doubt most people here could have it nailed down as well as any accountant in a week or so.

The issue is the invoice itself, which they seem to make as complex as possible. Think of a pizza order with it's 1/2 and 1/2, extra toppings, different bases and sauces and sizes, discount vouchers which you can or can't combine in various ways, buy 2 get 1 free. Creating an online ordering system is a major undertaking as a consequence, and it's never finished as the people in charge or marketing will forever be wanting to change it.

The double entry accounting on the other hand is the well understood, easily learnt from text books, pretty much the same everywhere.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 3:59 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (9 responses)

Kernel, Blender started as fun projects for individuals and picked up corporate support along the way. LibreOffice had its origins in StarOffice, a proprietary program that was acquired and open-sourced by Sun. PostgreSQL got its start at Berkeley and has a 30+-year history. Can a bunch of eager individuals, such as you, come up with something that good? Like those projects, it will take years and will likely need corporate support. The main thing, I think, is that the initial userbase is likely to be much tinier -- everyone runs an OS, nearly everyone needs an office suite, many people use databases, many people have fun with 3D. Far fewer people need an enterprise management suite, and for most of those who do, things like Odoo may be good enough. (My workplace recently moved its canteen billing system to Odoo. The in-house IT people implemented it, the canteen staff and admin seem happy with the result.)

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 4:45 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (4 responses)

Kernel, Blender started as fun projects for individuals

I wonder the the "fun" part is the key? Fewer people find writing accounting programs fun, and they do not sound challenging. But reading Jon's series I have come to understand a good accounting program really isn't easy to create.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 6:28 UTC (Wed) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (2 responses)

It's not true anyway: Blender started as the in-house tool for an animation studio, and was opensourced after that studio went broke and the community collected 100.000 euros to buy it from the creditors. I remember donating, back then in 2002.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 18:10 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Uhm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History

> When Neo Geo was acquired by another company, Ton Roosendaal and Frank van Beek founded Not a Number
> Technologies (NaN) in June 1998 to further develop Blender, initially distributing it as shareware
> until NaN went bankrupt in 2002.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 19:07 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Literally the next paragraph:

> On July 18, 2002, Roosendaal started the "Free Blender" campaign, a crowdfunding precursor.[7][8] The campaign aimed for open-sourcing Blender for a one-time payment of €100,000 (US$100,670 at the time) collected from the community.[9] On September 7, 2002, it was announced that they had collected enough funds and would release the Blender source code. Today, Blender is free, open-source software that is—apart from the Blender Institute's two full-time and two part-time employees—developed by the community.[10]

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 5, 2017 16:01 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

"I wonder the the "fun" part is the key? Fewer people find writing accounting programs fun"

Never underestimate human's ability to geek out over weird stuff. There are people into baseball statistics, transit timetables, and kernel internals. There are absolutely people that get excited about tax rules.

"and they do not sound challenging."

Pretty sure lack of challenges is not the problem.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 4:47 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

Blender started as a commercial software with a company that later got bankrupt. It was bought out after a crowd-funded campaign.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 5:18 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Sorry, I misremembered. Similar to the StarOffice story then. But the guy who ran the crowdfunding campaign was the original developer who had retained the code.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 6:52 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

Synfig was another animation software project that got open sourced after a company went under, but they voluntarily released it without the crowdfunding.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 28, 2017 21:50 UTC (Sat) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

The company was run by a liquidator because of the bankruptcy, and his/her task is trying to get the creditors repaid, not give away valuable assets for free. If the original developers would have released the source code as open source at that point (or even before the bankruptcy), that would have been fraud. That's why the crowdfunding was needed.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 7:03 UTC (Wed) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (1 responses)

> Is it REALLY that hard to make a full business management suite in entirely free software, by the community for the community?

Yes, it is hard, but it isn't as far away as it seems. The Odoo Community Association (OCA, distinct from the official "Odoo Community" version) has taken the Open Source parts of Odoo and filled in the gaps. If you want to build a "full business management", OCA just needs to be made easier to install and more bootstrapping docs. Their fork/branch is quite close. But it is a huge system, not just a small business accounting system. It competes with Oracle/SAP, not with Quickbooks. The glory:

* https://github.com/OCA

* https://odoo-community.org/

> This has GOT to be a far easier problem (in terms of code anyway) than the likes of the kernel, Blender, LibreOffice, PostgreSQL, etc

In terms of programming, it is "easy", well-known stuff for the Open Source community: built out of Postgres and Python. The hard part is finding programmers that know both accounting and python. Or inventory management, supply chain, payroll, etc.

I think OCA is getting closer.... I see them being the LibreOffice to Odoo's OpenOffice.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 11:08 UTC (Wed) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

Interesting, thanks. Perhaps our esteemed editor should try this version?

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 13:15 UTC (Wed) by dsommers (subscriber, #55274) [Link] (6 responses)

I've been involved in using both GNUCash and a closed source/proprietary solution for accounting over the last few years. And yes, it really is hard to make good accounting software.

The biggest challenge in accounting isn't necessarily the accounting itself, but the needed integrations with banking and not the least various tax and "government" reporting. You can do all that manually, but that is painful and full of traps. So you generally want something which is as automated as possible. And that leads to the next challenge, most accounting software seems to target just specific countries in regards to various integrations. For us coming from "smaller" countries (like the Nordics), the integration aspect is lacking at best.

We ended up using a closed/proprietary solution, provided by a local company which does all the integrations we need. That means, the year closure takes 1-2 hours, mostly being automated just needing to verify the various reports and its numbers ... instead of 1-2 days of filling out forms and calculating a lot of various numbers and double checking everything is correct. And the monthly reporting needed for taxation and payroll processing is done in 10-15 minutes. The manual process for the monthly taxation and payroll processing could easily take 3-4 hours if not more. So for us, we had to get pragmatic. What do we want to spend time on? What gives the best use of our working hours? As accounting is not our primary business, we took the proprietary path as the time saving was quite noticeable. Do I like it? Not at all.

How can this be improved so F/OSS based accounting software can really prosper? You need standardized APIs for banks and governments across all countries - and banks/governments being willing to provide such APIs to the public. Until that happens, the F/OSS alternatives will be highly geographically tied to which area the core developers focus.

LWN/Eklektix have the advantage of residing in a market region where these kind of integration challenges are less of an issue.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 13:57 UTC (Wed) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (4 responses)

This sounds something that should be standardised on an EU level.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 5, 2017 6:36 UTC (Thu) by kms (guest, #6679) [Link]

Banking APIs are being standardised and opened across to EU under Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2). In the UK we’re slightly ahead of this as the Competitions and Markets authority has mandated the standardisation and opening of banking APIs starting in January 2018 - see https://www.openbanking.org.uk and on GitHub: https://github.com/OpenBankingUK.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 5, 2017 14:11 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (2 responses)

You might be able to standardize some things but to get the full benefit you'd need to standardize everything, including taxes and I don't think there is very good odds of that.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 12, 2017 14:32 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, certainly in the EU our sales tax system (VAT) is very much standardised. Okay, the rates vary depending on what and where you're selling, but the basic rules are the same everywhere.

So we need to come up with a similar set of rules for Income Tax (and given that we have a lot of people working in one country, and being paid from another, and stuff like that) and there's certainly the pressure for that. Whether there's the will is another matter, but given that the EU is becoming more and more autocratic I can see it happening ...

Same thing with Corporation Tax, and the EU could - very soon - have a pretty integrated tax system.

If only the Eurocrats could go to the countries and say "This will be a good thing, let's design a new system that your old system could fit in with just a few tweaks" - for any of the 30-something countries' version of "your" - then I could see it happening quickly and easily. There can't be *that* many fundamental differences, can there? But I'm sure they'll come up with a central dictat and put everyones' backs up. That's their modus operandi :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 28, 2017 22:11 UTC (Sat) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

Considering that changes like that require agreement from the government(s) and parliaments of each individual country (so not even a majority would do), there is no way this would be fast or easy.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 5, 2017 1:57 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

I think coding a free accounting system that takes all this stuff into account might be called "tedious" rather than "hard." Obviously you have to be sure all your i's are dotted and t's crossed. But the calculations themselves are not rocket science.

This really seems like a problem that can be broken down into pieces such that a lot of different groups -- maybe students (accounting and CS) who want to get experience -- could tackle different parts of it. Just before doing that, subject matter experts would need to come up with detailed documentation of what exactly needs to happen at each step, and experts at large scale software system design would make sure there is a coherent blueprint for putting it all together (documenting all classes, APIs, and such). And make it test-driven development.

Maybe I'm dreaming, but it seems doable. Of course, if the OCA fork already provides a good system, perhaps there is no need.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 14:44 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> Is it REALLY that hard to make a full business management suite in entirely free software, by the community for the community

Both at the low complexity scale and at the high complexity scale the accounting software of choice is going to be spreadsheets and custom code. If you want to look at what people are doing in the high-end of the scale you have a combination of spreadsheets that plug into databases and custom programs.

Accounting software is for that 'squishy middle' were you have more complexity then you care to deal with yourself, but not enough complexity that you need a really custom solution.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 5, 2017 14:23 UTC (Thu) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link]

> Is it REALLY that hard to make a full business management suite in entirely free software, by the community for the community? I think about that a fair amount. This has GOT to be a far easier problem (in terms of code anyway) than the likes of the kernel, Blender, LibreOffice, PostgreSQL, etc. Why can't we do this? And what would happen if, say, I tried to start one?

It's hard. Because if you want to make the Linux kernel, Blender or LibreOffice available to other languages, you just need to translate where is needed. Still, most can well use an English locale, so a missing translation is not even a problem.

However, with ERP software, you need to adapt to each country (not only the language), because they tend to have different accounting and tax rules. The accounting and tax rules have to be abstracted, and be part of the software localization.

It looks cooler for a free software developer to work on Linux or Blender than on business accounting software.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 3:52 UTC (Wed) by xnox (subscriber, #63320) [Link] (1 responses)

Try Tryton? It is a fork of OpenERP born out of frustration. Older releases of OpenERP had a general journal for view and entry of accounts. Which was sort of a ledger, but not quite.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 5, 2017 8:16 UTC (Thu) by rhertzog (subscriber, #4671) [Link]

I second this choice. I was a former user of sql-ledger and I switched to Tryton (tryton.org) two years ago.

Tryton is a true free software project (I contributed several patches for the French chart of accounts). It handles database upgrades and regularly provides new releases and new features. It's not perfect and you must be ready to invest some time to use a custom invoice template for example (you need to install a new python module overriding the default one), but it works rather well and has a nice community.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 6:49 UTC (Wed) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (2 responses)

> There is, for example, no straightforward way to just get a list of [Odoo accounting dashboard] transactions on an account. One can pull up a "statement" and see the transactions that were listed there, but that will work poorly on accounts that lack statements. There must be a way to, for example, obtain a list of transactions on a given expense account, but it's not obvious.

The interface is a bit complex, but the subject matter is too. It takes some getting used to finding the flow of the application, but it is there. ;)

To get what I think you're asking about, go to Accounting --> Adviser --> Journal Items. Then do a search for the "Partner" you want.

> One can enter a transaction through what is essentially an HTML form; there is no support for useful features like autocompletion.

Entering transactions isn't directly into a ledger, it does require you to fill out a Sales Order or Purchase Order, for instance. (I should note, you *can* enter directly into the ledger if you want at Accounting --> Adviser --> Journal Entries, but it isn't the proper way in Odoo). The forms that I fill out do have auto completion, where available (such as completing a Supplier's name). We do a lot of entry into these web forms and it works. Automating it would be 100x better though. We're working on that with Mule integration.

> But the deliberate refusal to include such basic functionality in the free version makes it clear that this version is not intended for anybody wanting to put it to serious use.

This is 100% true. There is another branch maintained by the Odoo Community Association (OCA). This is distinct from Odoo themselves. They have many repos that fill in the gaps. OCA has some better reporting modules, for instance. They are strict about using open source licenses only. It is essential for a free software Odoo: https://odoo-community.org/

There is the "Official community" version, at:

* https://github.com/odoo/odoo

And the Odoo Community Association's, though a similar name, a distinct branch/port repo:

* https://github.com/OCA

We use the latter with 100+ users. OCA is basically the same folks as who do the OpenUpgrade script you mention. They do that, and a lot more. We have a DD-MRP (Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning) from them, for instance, which is a very complex task.

I agree though, Odoo/OCA isn't a good fit to use for LWN's accounting. It has way more to it that make it cumbersome for LWN's needs, I'm guessing. Thanks for the Odoo review, I've been eagerly awaiting. :)

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 7:18 UTC (Wed) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (1 responses)

> Accounting --> Adviser --> Journal Items

Hmm, I compared that to your screenshot and I see that you *don't* have that option available. I thought that was in the "official community" version, it was when I last used it.

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Jul 13, 2018 14:55 UTC (Fri) by astefanuk (guest, #125662) [Link]

I have a same experience

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Oct 4, 2017 13:50 UTC (Wed) by bokr (guest, #58369) [Link]

Is the esteemed editor possibly developing a spec defining his
minimal requirements? E.g., to serve as a request-for--mplementation
(RFI) checklist for gnucash?

Business accounting with Odoo

Posted Dec 13, 2017 10:34 UTC (Wed) by SISalp (guest, #120222) [Link]

Thank you for your accurate analysis.
Unfortunatly, with version 11, Odoo are willing to reserve accounting features to Odoo Enterprise edition (proprietary edition). Their marketing strategy is to discourage Odoo-Community edition users from using accounting.
In reality, accounting reports were already limited in Odoo Community edition version 10, and accounting capabilities and menus are hidden in Odoo Community edition version 11. As the accounting engine is still there, accounting might be reactivated by a third party module. No guarantee for next year version.
This confirms your overall recommendation.