What Is Odoo and How Does It Work? Explained Without the Jargon

The starting point: programs that don’t talk to each other

In many companies, each department has its own tool: the orders spreadsheet, the accounting program, a customer address book, the warehouse tracked on paper. The same data is typed in several times and nobody sees the same picture of the company.

When something goes wrong, you have to ask three people and compare three documents.

What Odoo is: many applications and a single database

Odoo is business management software, what is known as an ERP. It is made up of applications that share the same information.

Think of a smartphone: you install only the apps you need, but they all use the same contacts. Odoo works the same way: the customer created by the sales team is the same one accounting sees, and the product the shop sells is the same one the warehouse counts.

How it’s built, in three layers

At the top are you and your team. You log in from your browser, phone or tablet, with nothing to install.

In the middle are the Odoo applications: sales, purchasing, inventory, invoicing, manufacturing and whatever else you need.

Underneath is a single database holding all of the company’s information. It can be in the cloud or on your own server.

One order, from start to finish

An accepted quotation becomes an order with one click. The order reserves the stock in the warehouse, the delivery note is issued with what is actually shipped, the invoice is generated from that data and the accounting entries are posted automatically.

Each step builds on the previous one: nobody retypes what is already in the system.

It adapts to your company, not the other way around

The Odoo base is open source (Odoo Community) and is extended with modules from the OCA community, Binovo’s own modules and, if needed, custom developments.

You can start with the essentials and add applications as you need them, without changing software.

What you gain by implementing it

• Data is entered only once and serves every purpose.
• You see your company up to date: sales, stock, collections and payments in real time.
• Fewer errors, because processes chain together automatically.
• Legally compliant invoicing with TicketBAI and Verifactu.
• You grow without changing software: you add users, applications or companies.
• Artificial intelligence inside Odoo, which reads supplier invoices or answers questions about your data. More at AI for Odoo.

How we do it at Binovo

A consultant who speaks your language analyzes with you how you work and decides which applications you need. Our in-house team configures and develops it, with reviews every 15 days.

Your Odoo is maintained on a common base that receives the same improvements and security patches as that of all our customers. We explain it in detail in Odoo implementation.