Accounting: to Odoo, or to not Odoo?
When companies adopt Odoo as their ERP, one of the questions that pops up on the regular is wether accounting should be kept in Odoo, or done in an external specialized accounting software, such as Billit or Exact?
The short answer? It depends on your business, workflows... and probably the preference of your finance team. The long anwser? Let's break that down right here.
Odoo for accounting
For many businesses, Odoo offers more than enough to manage accounting smoothly.
It’s fully integrated with sales, purchases, inventory, subscriptions, timesheets, and expenses, which means fewer manual tasks and fewer errors.
1. One single financial source of truth
When invoices, payments, inventory movements, and purchase orders already live inside Odoo, doing accounting there removes friction.
2. Automated reconciliation & fewer manual steps
Bank syncs, payment matching, automated tax handling, intercompany flows: they’re all built in.
3. Faster month-end closing
Because the operational data is already in Odoo, finance teams spend less time on admin and more time on insights.
4. Lower total cost of ownership
One system means one license, one interface and one place to maintain.
For companies with straightforward accounting and more standard needs, Odoo is often the most efficient choice.
A specialized software for accounting
Sometimes, using Odoo’s accounting is not ideal. Often, finance teams already have strong preferences, regulatory requirements, or historical workflows that make an external system more suitable. Looking to connect your current accounting software
1. Your finance team or accountant wants to keep it that way
Changing accounting systems is one of the most sensitive transitions in any business.
If your finance department is deeply invested in certain workflows, reports, or tax flows, forcing a switch may cause resistance and errors. Sometimes the simplest solution is the one everyone already knows how to use.
2. You need stronger local compliance
Some software programs offers country-specific features, on which your team grew to rely - which Odoo might not natively offer. Yes, there are solutions or workarounds, but you'll have to see if the gains outweigh the custom development efforts.
3. You want a best-of-breed tool
Odoo's a good allrounder, but in some cases, you need that little bit extra. Specialized software will offer you that.
Our Exact x Odoo online connector
To connect Odoo with another accounting software, you'll need a solid connector does all the heavy lifting. Think things like syncing invoices & credit notes, mapping accounts and tax rules, preventing double encoding and making reconciliation faster.
We saw that many companies love Odoo for its flexibility and ability to streamline operations. But when it comes to accounting, not everyone is ready to abandon their existing tools - and we noticed a lot of our clients were already running their finances in Exact Online.
That's why we built our own, to guarantee our clients could keep running their operations flawlessly. Discover how our Exact-Odoo connector works and how to implement it easily.
So, what should I do?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Choosing Odoo accounting, or connecting to another software, is about finding the setup that keeps your team efficient, not about pushing one system over the other. We help companies assess their processes, map the data flows, and choose the approach with the lowest complexity and highest long-term benefit.
If you're unsure which path fits your business, we’re always happy to think along with you!
