Odoo 15 - Accounting Module
Accounting and controlling in an ERP-system
25 April, 2022 by
Odoo 15 - Accounting Module
manaTec GmbH, Hendryk Knuth
 


The Odoo Finance module is a fully integrated, modern accounting software. Virtually every business and individual in our society needs to use professional financial accounting systems when dealing with creditors, government agencies and non-profit organizations. Odoo's accounting module is ideal for companies that want to streamline their business processes, improve their financial performance and streamline their operations in one place.

The Finance module can be deployed in the cloud, on your own server, or via hybrid integrations. With this seamless integration, we can save precious time and effort and increase our productivity exponentially. Numerous companies around the world are using this esteemed open source ERP system along with the Finance module to manage their finances and operations more efficiently.

First of all, we would like to draw your attention to the six access rights in the Finance module.

Access rights in the accounting module.
Access rights in the accounting module.

The lowest level contains only the authorization to generate invoices, the next one shows additionally accounting functions with read rights. The next level is called "Show full financial accounting", then comes the "Accounting administrator" and last but not least the "Consolidation user", which has unlimited access rights to the full range of functions. If we choose no access rights, the user will not see the module in his dashboard and will also not be able to access it through the search.

In the menu we find the items Dashboard, Customers, Suppliers, Financials, Reporting and Configuration. Let's first take a quick look at the configuration area before we move on to the individual focus topics. Starting with the default tax settings, with which we define the input tax/sales tax as well as the import tax/acquisition tax. Furthermore, we can determine in which periods we want to set the frequency of the tax return. In addition, we can decide whether the system should apply the rounding method to the total tax amount "line-based" or to the "complete total". Some settings in the screenshot show the options for the U.S. market.

For e-commerce users, the option "Intra-community distance sales in the EU" is quite helpful. It covers cross-border sales of goods and services to a private consumer (B2C) in another EU member state when the seller does not meet the customer in person. Businesses must ensure that VAT on distance sales is paid to the Member State where the goods or services are supplied.

With the "Verification of Value Added Tax (VAT) IDs" option, we automatically verify the VAT IDs with the European VIES service. In addition, we still specify the tax country where our accounting is kept. Now we need to define the main currency. Currently there are 167 currencies in the system. In the other sections, such as Customer Invoices, Customer Payments, Vendor Invoice and Vendor Payment, we make the basic settings for our debtors and creditors.

If we use the Documents module, we can automatically capture our vendor invoices with 95% accuracy via OCR. We can test how well this works live here. Within the supplier invoices, the system can even predict the accounts per invoice line based on previous invoices.

The Outgoing Invoices section gives us the ability to define shipping settings for our invoices, add terms and conditions to the end of quotes, purchase orders, and invoices, and add alerts to the customer.

We can have our customers pay directly from Odoo online through many different service providers. Grouping payments into a single batch simplifies the reconciliation process - our accountant is happy about this. In addition, we can display a QR code on the invoice for our customers as a payment option.

Furthermore, we can manage as many bank accounts as needed in our database. When we configure this, we ensure that all bank data is up to date. This provides the basis for reconciling our journal entries for sales and purchases.

At "Bank & Cash" we can specify which import formats we want to use for our bank accounts. We currently have the following import formats available: CSV, CAMT, OFX, QIF. Last but not least, we can define the tax year and activate the cost centers and budgets in the configuration.

Configuration in the accounting module.
Configuration in the accounting module.

In the Finance module dashboard we can see the most important journals from our company. First of all, we see the outgoing invoices, with the invoices to be validated and unpaid invoices in the total, as well as the due dates. For each journal, Odoo shows us at a glance the sales for the last four calendar weeks, as well as the open payables for customer and supplier invoices.

The dashorad in the accounting module.
The dashorad in the accounting module.

Each journal contains a small configuration menu, where we can see the following settings and views:

  • under "View" we can reconcile invoices, credit notes and bills
  • under "New" we can create or upload invoices and credit notes directly
  • the "Reports" show us the invoice statistics, overdue receivables and dunning reports
  • with the bright colors we can color-code our journal
The journal configuration for outgoing invoices.
The journal configuration for outgoing invoices.

The yellow asterisk puts our journal as favorites and lets our dashboard start filtered with the favorites. With the item "Configuration" we navigate to the settings of each journal. Here we can define, among other things, the journal types, for which company the journal is valid in a multi company environemnt and which chart of accounts applies by default.

The journal types.
The journal types.

The main difference between the journal Incoming Invoices and the customer journal is that we can record payments from our suppliers and issue credit notes here. In terms of type, this account is our purchase account.

The journals configuration for incoming invoices.
The journals configuration for incoming invoices.

With the Journal Bank, as mentioned above, we can create any banks, obtain bank statements automatically, enter them manually or import them as CAMT, CSV, OFX from our bank. We will describe how we synchronise our bank online in one of our next blog posts.

The bank journal.
The bank journal.

Once we have maintained the incoming and outgoing invoices in Odoo and stored the account details cleanly on the debtor or creditor, the reconciliation is done and matched in no time at all with a click of the mouse. After clicking the "Reconcile" button, we are taken to the bank reconciliation overview. If Odoo does not find an automatic assignment, we have the option of performing a manual reconciliation of payments and expenses.

The validation for debitors and creditros.
The validation for debitors and creditros.

We can track posting transactions via the following method.

The accounting procedures.
The accounting procedures.

The bank journal can be used for different account types if needed, as well as other journals. Here we can see the settings of the default bank journal, which is pre-installed. In the "Transaction records" tab we can see the general account information, on the right side we can set the import of external bank statements from our bank.

The confirmation in the bank journal.
The confirmation in the bank journal.

We get full control over our financial system, if we have the appropriate authorization, through the settings options in the top menu, where we enter the management of our financial flows, reports and other configurations.

In the configuration menu we can find the following main settings, among others:

  • Billing (payment terms, dunning level, delivery terms).
  • Bank directory (add bank account, reconciliation models, online synchronization)
  • Finance (chart of accounts, taxes, journals, currencies, tax allocation)
  • Payment providers (Paypal, Alipay, Stripe, SEPA, etc.)
  • Product categories that allow us to control revenue and expense accounts, as well as product allocations
The menus in the accounting module.
The menus in the accounting module.

If we have booked everything correctly, we should be able to output daily updated financial evaluations in our most important P&L and balance sheet reports, in order to be able to use them as an important basis for our monthly tax return for export to DATEV, Lexware or Adisson, etc. GOBD-compliant.

In summary, Odoo's online accounting scores with the following advantages:

  • Reduction of data entry
  • Collaborative work on documents
  • Payment reconciliation of multiple invoices
  • Easy setup compared to other financial systems
  • Easy setup compared to other financial systems
  • Access from various mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets
  • Online payments via PayPal, Stripe, Ingenico, Adyen, etc.
  • Manual or automatic reconciliation of customer and vendor payments via our journals
  • Support for multiple currencies and companies
  • Performance reports with daily updated balance sheet, P&L, cash flows and cash reports
  • Subscription and recurring revenue management
  • Asset management and depreciation
  • Budget management via analytical accounts
  • Prepaid expenses
    DATEV export of debtors and creditors (additional module) according to GOBD conformity

Are you looking for an ERP system with which you can map your complete financial world in addition to your business processes, or do you have questions about the Finance module? Contact us now and we will be at your side as an experienced Odoo partner!


Sources: www.odoo.com

 
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