Migrating Accounting to Odoo

Quick summary

I would like to share a few practical insights from our migration to Odoo Accounting.

My conclusion is simple: Odoo can be a powerful and cost-efficient accounting platform for complex organisations — but its implementation requires serious planning, realistic expectations and a deep understanding of your processes.

When I joined my current organisation as CFO, one of my main challenges was migrating the accounting function from Google Sheets and an accounting tool called PlanFact to a scalable and efficient accounting system.

To understand the level of complexity:

• the organisation consists of 15 legal entities across several jurisdictions;
• internally, we have around 500 employees;
• operations are divided across 4 major business units, each with its own business processes, IT systems, HR, AP and AR structures;
• the company manages around 20 different products/projects;
• the relationship between business units and legal entities is not clearly aligned. A single business unit can operate across several legal entities, while one legal entity may support multiple business units simultaneously.

With that level of complexity, my beloved Xero simply was not enough.

NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance probably could have handled it — but the price tag would likely have had another zero attached to it.

So Odoo became the chosen one.

The migration took two years and cost approximately €70K, including a three-year Odoo Enterprise subscription for 20 users.

I acted as both project owner and project manager, working with only one Odoo developer.

Could it have been done faster? Certainly. With a larger implementation team and significantly more pressure on the finance department, the timeline could have been shorter — but the costs would probably have grown exponentially.

Could it have been done cheaper? Honestly, unlikely.

Some takeaways

1. Odoo is flexible — but it is definitely not “out of the box”

Odoo is incredibly flexible. With the right developer, you can customise almost anything.

But if someone tells you that Odoo Accounting works perfectly out of the box for a complex organisation, be careful.

If your accounting requirements are relatively straightforward, I would honestly suggest going with Xero or — may God bless your soul — Intuit QuickBooks instead.

Some Odoo modules feel like they were designed by aliens for aliens.

The Budgeting module, for example, completely defeated me. I genuinely tried to understand the logic behind it and eventually gave up.

And I still do not personally know a single company using Odoo Payroll exactly as delivered.

2. Bank reconciliation in Odoo can become a special circle of hell

Bank reconciliation in Odoo remains surprisingly painful.

In 2026, parts of it still feel worse than Xero or QuickBooks did ten years ago — especially when reconciling transfers between your own accounts. Anyone working with Stripe, PayPal or similar platforms will feel the pain.

Using temporary liquidity accounts to balance both sides feels clumsy, inaccurate and, in some cases, arguably conflicts with proper GAAP logic, particularly around cash transfers and ASC 860 considerations.

After adding transfers between different currencies and situations where neither currency matches the entity’s functional currency, you may start questioning your life choices. I certainly did.

3. Want to save money? Find a Ukrainian Odoo developer

A practical recommendation: hire a Ukrainian Odoo developer.

I will not mention exact rates in case they read this and adjust their pricing accordingly — but trust me, the value-for-money ratio is exceptional.

In my experience, you can achieve outstanding results without compromising quality.

4. The hardest part of migration is usually not technical

The most difficult part of migration is often people, not software.

Ironically, the employees most resistant to change are often the same people who built and maintained the existing system — especially if that system lives in Google Sheets or Excel.

At the same time, those people are incredibly valuable because they understand the processes better than anyone else.

What worked for us was identifying “champions” inside the organisation — people who genuinely wanted improvement — and involving them early in the development process.

Gradual adoption works far better than forcing a full revolution overnight.

What is next?

AI integration with Odoo

We experimented with connecting Anthropic Claude to Odoo, but the results were mixed. At the moment, it is honestly still easier to export data into Excel, work with it there, and upload it back into Odoo.

That said, the potential is clearly there, especially with Odoo introducing more integrated AI functionality in the latest versions.

Further automation

The next major step is deeper automation through integrations between Odoo and:

• external/internal systems;
• service providers;
• banks;
• payment gateways.

That is where the real long-term efficiency gains begin.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely.

The migration allowed our finance team to move away from manual spreadsheet-driven processes and focus more on analytics, strategic planning, profitability, liquidity management and decision support.

Despite all the implementation challenges, Odoo gave us something we lacked before: a scalable financial infrastructure capable of supporting a complex multi-entity organisation.

Even some of the colleagues who were initially sceptical about the migration now acknowledge that many processes have become faster, more transparent and easier to manage.

Odoo is not a perfect system, and it requires significant effort to implement properly. But for organisations with complex structures and limited ERP budgets, it can be an extremely powerful solution when combined with strong internal ownership and the right technical expertise.