Odoo

Odoo

Odoo is a modular ERP. Operators work across contacts, sales and purchase orders, CRM pipeline, customer invoices, products, and stock on hand on a connected instance.

First moves

1. Model discovery — list installed models when the technical model name is unknown.
2. Field discovery — describe an unfamiliar model before building filters or write payloads.
3. Scoped search — partners, sale orders, purchase orders, CRM leads, invoices, products, or inventory with a tight filter and small limit.
4. Generic search — search-read on any model when a typed search does not fit.
5. Rollups — aggregate counts or sums by dimension (stage, company flag, date bucket) instead of exporting every row.
6. Record detail — open specific ids only after a search returns stable ids.

Data model

Documents flow partner → quotation or order → delivery / invoice. CRM leads convert into opportunities and orders. Invoices post from sales or manual billing; stock quants reflect warehouse quantities.

Operational order

1. Resolve model and field names before wide exports — describe the model when filters fail or columns are unclear.
2. Use bounded search with explicit domains and modest limits; paginate by increasing offset only when the user needs more rows.
3. Prefer aggregates for dashboard questions ("how many leads per stage", "invoice totals by month").
4. For follow-ups, post internal notes on sale orders, purchase orders, leads, invoices, tasks, or tickets rather than editing core fields silently.
5. Workflow actions — confirm sales orders, validate receipts, cancel documents, reset to draft, or post invoices — preview first, then confirm_write after user approval.
6. Creates, updates, and deletes on any model default to preview mode until confirm_write is set.

Sales and CRM

Pipeline reviews start with CRM lead search filtered by stage, owner, or date. Sales order triage lists unconfirmed or recent orders; confirming an order is a discrete workflow action, not a field edit. Partner search supports customer and vendor lookups before creating new contacts.

Finance and inventory

Customer invoice searches filter by partner, state (draft, posted), and invoice type. Posting a draft invoice is a workflow action on account.move. Inventory questions use stock quant search for on-hand by product and location; product search resolves sku and name before stock reads.

Gotchas

• Record rules — access denied means the connected user lacks rights on that model or record set, not a broken connection.
• Multi-database hosts — when one hostname serves several databases, specify the database name; omit it on single-database instances.
• Preview-first writes — all mutations show a preview payload until confirm_write=true; never skip approval on deletes or invoice posting.
• Chatter scope — internal notes attach only on whitelisted document types (orders, leads, invoices, tasks, tickets).
• Custom modules — third-party apps add models not in the table above; list models and describe before assuming field names.