Technology, AI & ERP — explained in plain English
Odoo 20 adds native read-replica support, letting the framework route dashboard, report and API reads to PostgreSQL replicas while writes stay on the primary — an architecture Odoo positions for deployments beyond 10,000 concurrent users. This article explains how the routing works, which reads stay on the primary for consistency, and which organisations actually need it.
Odoo 20 refines the three apps that decide who works when: leave can deduct working or calendar days, attendances gain single check-in mode and rule-based overtime, and Planning absorbs Field Service for shift scheduling. This tour separates what is genuinely new in 20 from the long-standing machinery underneath.
Odoo keeps structural pricing in pricelists and behavioural pricing in discount and loyalty programs, and Odoo 20 sharpens both with periodic pricing, packaging rules, single-use discount codes, and expiring loyalty points. This guide explains how the two engines fit together, the documented rule priority, and what is genuinely new in 20.
Landed costs fold freight, insurance, duty, and brokerage into product valuation so margins reflect what goods truly cost to land. Odoo 20 adds per-product landed costs, a visible Valuation Adjustments trail, and — in the India localisation — a bill of entry flow that routes import customs duty straight into inventory costing.
Barcode scanning in Odoo is a real-time interface to the same receipts, deliveries and counts — this guide covers enabling the Barcode app, Default vs GS1 nomenclature, labelling products, packaging and locations, and the scanner hardware settings that make it work.
Odoo 20 renames agent topics to skills — collections of instructions and tools that define how an agent behaves in a specific context. The new name fits agents that now create and update records, run inside automations, and can update themselves, and it changes how you should scope and write them.
Odoo 20 removes record rules entirely and folds record-level filtering into a single ir.access model, where each access right carries its operations plus a domain. This article explains the old two-layer system, the new grant-versus-restriction semantics, the new ir.access.csv format, and a step-by-step migration plan for custom rules.
Odoo 20 removes the standalone Employee Expenses menu item from Accounting: approved expenses now generate draft bills in the default expense journal, reviewed and posted alongside vendor bills. Here is what changes for employees, managers, and accountants — plus the new consolidated report, per-position expense limits, and salary rules for expense products.
Odoo 20 removes the standalone Mondial Relay pickup module — still available via Sendcloud — and drops SOFORT, which no payment provider supports anymore. This guide covers the impact of each removal and the honest migration path before you upgrade.
Odoo 20’s Barcode app gets floor-ready upgrades: backorder decisions in the app, product creation by scanning, suggested batch receipts, pre-encoded vendor packages, bulk lot and serial generation, and buttons that stay in one place. It also covers light users scoped to Barcode only, and offline mode for warehouse dead zones.
FIFO and AVCO split the same purchase costs differently between cost of goods sold and closing stock. This article runs both methods over Odoo’s official worked example — 8 at €10, 4 at €16, deliver 10, 2 at €6 — and gives a category-by-category framework for choosing.
All Odoo 20 AI features require IAP credits, and no plan includes them — yet Odoo does not publish a simple per-credit price in its release notes or pricing page. This guide maps where credits are consumed, explains how to budget per agent and workflow, and gives a pilot method for measuring your real cost per accepted output.
Odoo 20 removes work entries — and the Planning-Payroll integration — from the payroll flow, merging work entry types into time off types and replacing the old cleanup queue with a revamped, warnings-focused Payroll dashboard. This article covers the enhanced pay run workflow, protected contract dates, simpler working schedules, reusable salary rules, indexation, and net-to-gross simulation.
Odoo 20 strengthens checkout with category-scoped extra steps, editable Pay Now buttons, minimum order quantities, preferred delivery dates, and tax display per pricelist. Together with stock-based publishing and portal returns, these small changes remove friction exactly where shoppers hesitate.
Odoo 20 streamlines stock tracking: reordering rules now suggest minimum and maximum levels from demand history, the replenishment dashboard has a single Order button, returns lose the wizard, and the stock report can show inventory at a past date. This guide explains each change, how they fit together, and a practical order for adopting them.
Landed costs fold freight, insurance and customs duties into the valuation of the receipt that caused them, instead of leaving them in an expense account. This guide covers the FIFO/AVCO prerequisite, service landed-cost products, the five split methods, and the bill-to-valuation workflow in Odoo.