Companies

A centralized management environment allows you to select multiple companies simultaneously and set their specific warehouses, customers, equipment, and contacts. It provides you the ability to generate reports of aggregated figures without switching interfaces, which facilitates daily tasks and the overall management process.

Manage companies and records

Go to Settings ‣ Manage Companies and fill in the form with your company’s information. If a Parent Company is selected, records are shared between the two companies (as long as both environments are active).

Overview of a new company's form in Odoo

Tip

Activate the developer mode to choose a Favicon for each of your companies, and easily identify them by the browser tabs. Set your favicons’ files size to 16x16 or 32x32 pixels. JPG, PNG, GIF, and ICO are extensions accepted.

View of a web browser and the favicon for a specific company chosen in Odoo

Switch between or select multiple companies by enabling their selection boxes to activate them. The grayed company is the one which environment is in use. To switch environments, click on the company’s name. In the example below, the user has access to three companies, two are activated, and the environment in use is of JS Store US.

View of the companies menu through the main dashboard in Odoo

Data such as Products, Contacts, and Equipment can be shared or set to be shown for a specific company only. To do so, on their forms, choose between:

  • A blank field: the record is shared within all companies.

  • Adding a company: the record is visible to users logged in to that specific company.

View of a product's form emphasizing the company field in Odoo Sales

Employees’ access

Once companies are created, manage your employees’ Access Rights for Multi Companies.

View of an user form emphasizing the multi companies field under the access rights tabs in Odoo
If a user has multiple companies activated on his database, and he is editing a record, the editing happens on the record’s related company.
Example: if editing a sale order issued under JS Store US while working on the JS Store Belgium environment, the changes are applied under JS Store US (the company from which the sale order was issued).
When creating a record, the company taken into account is:
  • The current company (the one active) or,

  • No company is set (on products and contacts’ forms for example) or,

  • The company set is the one linked to the document (the same as if a record is being edited).

Documents’ format

To set documents’ formats according to each company, activate and select the respective one and, under Settings, click on Configure Document Layout.

View of the settings page emphasizing the document layout field in Odoo

Inter-Company Transactions

First, make sure each one of your companies is properly set in relation to:

Now, activate the Inter-Company Transactions option under Settings. With the respective company activated and selected, choose if you would like operations between companies to be synchronized at an invoice/bills level or at a sales/purchase orders level.

View of the settings page emphasizing the inter company transaction field in Odoo
  • Synchronize invoice/bills: generates a bill/invoice when a company confirms a bill/invoice for the selected company.

    Example: an invoice posted on JS Store Belgium, for JS Store US, automatically creates a vendor bill on the JS Store US, from the JS Store Belgium.

View of an invoice for JS Store US created on JS Store Belgium in Odoo
  • Synchronize sales/purchase order: generates a drafted purchase/sales order using the selected company warehouse when a sales/purchase order is confirmed for the selected company. If instead of a drafted purchase/sales order you rather have it validated, enable Automatic Validation.

    Example: when a sale order for JS Store US is confirmed on JS Store Belgium, a purchase order on JS Store Belgium is automatically created (and confirmed if the Automatic Validation feature was enabled).

View of the purchase created on JS Store US from JS Store Belgium in Odoo

Note

Products have to be configured as Can be sold and must be shared between the companies.

Tip

Remember to test all workflows as an user other than the administrator.