And if you’ve already been utilizing Odoo Accounting for a couple of months, then you’d already be aware that it’s not some regular bookkeeping tool. It’s merely one aspect of a complete ERP solution that has the potential to expand as your business does. And the catch-all nature of it. It can be easily configured according to your firm specifications or requirements—be it a shop, an organization that deals with projects, or manufactures products.
In this tutorial, I will explain how to customize Odoo Accounting to fit your process—and not vice versa. If you need to manage taxes smarter, automate journal postings, or enhance project monitoring, then you’re fortunate.
Why Customizing Odoo Accounting Is Important
No two businesses are alike, although their industries may be similar. One will be battling monitoring expenses on a project-by-project basis, while the next will be facing higher state-to-state or country-to-country retail tax compliance.
That is where Odoo Accounting shines. It allows you to tailor your financial operations, reporting, and automation so you can free up your time, reduce errors, and gain insights that matter.
Understanding the Core of Odoo Accounting
Before customizing, let’s go back to the most significant building blocks of Odoo Accounting:
Key Elements:
Chart of Accounts (CoA): Your accounting foundation. Everything flows through here.
Journals: Batch and aggregate postings—sales, purchases, bank, etc.
Fiscal Positions & Taxes: Define how taxes are computed and reconciled.
Reconciliation Models: Auto-reconciled bank statements to invoices.
Multi-currency & Multi-company: Enable advanced global or multi-company operations.
With these blocks, you can now proceed and construct the system as per your business rules.
Step 1: Define Your Business-Specific Needs
Any decent customization starts here:
“What do I need to monitor so that I can make smarter decisions?”
Let’s break it by industry:
Retail & eCommerce:
- Region-based tax laws (e.g., U.S. sales tax or EU VAT)
- Warehouse and POS-related stock
- Real-time profitability margin and sales reporting
Services & Agencies:
- Task- or project-based invoicing
- Billable hour tracking
- Billing customers in various currencies
Manufacturing:
- Direct cost of goods sold on the production order
- Options for inventory costing (FIFO, average, standard)
- BOM and work center costing
Construction or Real Estate:
- Milestone- or progress billing
- Tracking contract retention
- Project-level P&L and forecasting
With that outlined, what your business must track, it’s much more thoughtful—and a lot less daunting—to customize Odoo Accounting.
Step 2: Customize the Chart of Accounts
Picture your Chart of Accounts (CoA) as wiring in the wall behind you—all the activity flows through it. Odoo has a standard CoA to kick-start you, but it is easy to configure.
Tips:
- Utilize parent-child structures to maintain it structured and simple to report on.
- Designate codes (e.g., 4000 for Revenue) to make it easier to search and report.
- Connect certain accounts to products, services, or taxes to enable automated postings.
For global or multi-business deployments, get your CoAs synchronized so that you roll up the financials later.
Step 3: Configure Taxes & Fiscal Positions
Tax administration is tricky when you’re running short on time—no problem with Odoo.
With fiscal positions, you simply set tax percentages and accounts depending on who you’re selling to and where they’re located.
Examples:
- Reverse VAT charge for EU B2B customers.
- 0% for non-profits or out-of-state sales.
- Region- or customer-type flexible income/expense accounts.
Automation rule: “Set and forget, let Odoo do it.”
Step 4: Analysis with Analytic Accounts & Tags
Want to analyze profitability at the project level, departmental level, or campaign level? Introduce Analytic Accounting.
Analytic Accounts:
- Tracking income and expense by project, client, or cost center.
- Creating profit & loss by dimension.
- For grant reporting, job costing, or internal budgeting.
Analytic Tags:
- Add a second level of filtering (team, region, campaign).
- For multi-phase or cross-functional business projects.
If you haven’t yet set up analytic accounting, it’s one of the fastest ways of getting to know your business.
Step 5: Automate & Simplify Workflows
Automation is where Odoo Accounting starts to pay its way.
What you can automate:
Recurring journal entries: Rent, insurance, leasing fees, etc.
Invoice flows: Let Odoo automatically create invoices from timesheets or projects.
Approval workflows: Configure approval levels on expenses.
Bank reconciliation templates: Let Odoo automatically match payments against unpaid invoices.
You can even alter fields and views without ever having to touch code with Odoo Studio.
Need a consultant or dev team? Level it up with custom modules, integrations, and custom API connections to automate your entire finance stack.
Step 6: Build Custom Reports That Make a Difference
Odoo’s built-in P&L and balance sheet reports are pleasant-looking—with a pinch of customization, great.
Reports You May Find Useful:
- Department, project, or product line P&L
- Team lead Budget vs. Actuals
- Customer category or sales region billings
- Grant or campaign expense
Custom dashboards for each employee even—yours, your CFO’s, your sales manager’s, or your project manager’s—with their most important numbers.
Conclusion
Odoo Accounting customization does not have to be torture. Start with what’s most important to your company—tax, reporting, or automation, perhaps—and start to build from there.
And don’t you hate playing guessing games? Let one of our Odoo wizards take you through developing a lean, mean accounting setup from scratch.
Whether you’re starting fresh or adjust your Odoo implementation, we’re here to help tailor Odoo Accounting exactly to how your company operates.
Have Odoo Accounting work exactly as your company does.
