Hello Ana,

You're right to clarify! Let's break down how Odoo handles companies, branches, and warehouses to clear up the confusion:

Understanding Odoo's Structure

• Company: In Odoo, a "Company" represents a distinct legal entity. This is the highest level of organization. It's used for accounting, legal reporting, and overall business structure.
• Warehouses: Warehouses represent physical locations where you store inventory. They are linked to a specific company. You can have multiple warehouses within a single company.
• Branches: Odoo doesn't have a specific, built-in concept of "branches" as a distinct entity between a company and a warehouse. The way you model branches depends on your specific needs and how you want to manage your data.

How to Model Branches in Odoo

Since Odoo doesn't have a dedicated "branch" object, you have a few options for representing them, each with different implications:

1. Branches as Separate Companies:
   • This is what you're seeing now, and it's the most common approach if your branches operate with a high degree of autonomy, have separate accounting, or require distinct legal reporting.
   • Pros: Clear separation of financial data, easy to manage inter-company transactions (if needed).
   • Cons: More complex to consolidate inventory views across "companies" (as we discussed in the previous answer).
2. Branches as Warehouses:
   • This is the approach I mentioned previously, and it works well if your branches primarily function as inventory locations and don't need separate accounting.
   • Pros: Simple to manage inventory across "branches" (since they are just warehouses within the same company).
   • Cons: Less suitable if you need separate financial reporting for each branch.
3. Branches as a Custom Field/Tag:
   • You can add a custom field (e.g., a selection field) to products, sales orders, or other relevant objects to tag them with a "branch."
   • Pros: Flexible, allows you to filter and group data by branch.
   • Cons: Requires customization, doesn't provide the same level of separation as separate companies.

Answering Your Question

Given your clarification, if you want to treat branches as not separate legal entities, and you want to easily combine inventory across them on a website, the best approach is likely to model them as Warehouses within a single Company.

Steps:

1. Create One Company: In Odoo, create a single company (e.g., "ABC").
2. Create Warehouses for Each Branch: Create two warehouses: "Branch 1 Warehouse" and "Branch 2 Warehouse," both associated with the "ABC" company.
3. Manage Inventory: Track the inventory of "Product A" in each warehouse (e.g., 20 in "Branch 1 Warehouse" and 10 in "Branch 2 Warehouse").
4. Website Configuration: As before, create a website and do not assign a specific company to it.
5. Website Display (Customization): You'll still need the customization to sum the quantities from the different warehouses and display the total on the website. However, this customization will be much simpler because you're working within a single company. The code will just need to query the stock for "Product A" in the "Branch 1 Warehouse" and "Branch 2 Warehouse" and add them together.

Important Considerations:

• Accounting: If you need separate profit and loss statements or balance sheets for each branch, this approach (using warehouses) will not be sufficient. You would need to use separate companies.
• Reporting: Consider what kind of reporting you need. If you need to see sales by branch, you can use reporting tools to filter by warehouse.

In summary, if your primary goal is to combine inventory across branches on a website and you don't need separate legal accounting for each branch, model them as warehouses within a single company. This will simplify the customization required for your website.

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(Need further customization? Drop a comment—I’m happy to refine the solution!)