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Answers to common questions about the Odoo integration.

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General questions

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What Odoo versions are supported?

Verified against a self-hosted Odoo 18 instance. The underlying JSON-RPC protocol (common.authenticate, object.execute_kw) is stable across recent Odoo versions and isn’t scheduled for removal until Odoo 22 (fall 2028), so earlier 16/17 installs should work too, though they haven’t been explicitly tested.

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Does the merchant need a paid Odoo subscription?

They need a running Odoo instance with the Accounting/Invoicing app installed — the free Community edition is enough for the data types Sync2Books currently supports (customers, suppliers, chart of accounts, bills).

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Can a merchant’s Odoo be hosted anywhere?

Yes — that’s the point of collecting url, database, username, and apiKey explicitly. Unlike QuickBooks Online, Odoo isn’t a single vendor-hosted API; every merchant’s Odoo is its own independent server, and it can live on completely different infrastructure from Sync2Books itself. The only requirement is that Sync2Books’ servers can reach the given url over the network.

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Can I connect multiple Odoo databases?

Yes. Each company in Sync2Books gets its own connection with its own url, database, username, and apiKey — there’s no assumption that multiple companies share one Odoo instance.

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Authentication

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How does authentication work with Odoo?

There’s no OAuth flow. Sync2Books calls Odoo’s own common.authenticate RPC method with the supplied credentials and creates the connection immediately if they’re valid — see Set up the Odoo integration.

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Where does the merchant get their API key?

From inside their own Odoo instance: Preferences → Account Security → New API Key. See the step-by-step screenshots in Set up the Odoo integration.

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My connection worked yesterday and fails today

Almost always an expired API key. Odoo’s “New API Key” dialog defaults the validity duration to 1 Day — a merchant who didn’t change this will have a key that silently expires. Generate a new key with a longer duration (or “No expiration” if offered).

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I get “Odoo rejected the supplied credentials”

Check, in order:
  1. Is the database name correct? (See Set up the Odoo integration.)
  2. Has the API key expired?
  3. Is username the merchant’s actual login email, not a display name?
  4. Is url reachable from the public internet (not localhost, not behind an unauthenticated firewall)?

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Data sync

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What can I sync to Odoo today?

Customers, suppliers, chart-of-accounts entries, and vendor bills. See the coverage table in Odoo overview — invoices, bill payments, expenses, tax rates, and tracking categories aren’t built yet.

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Why can’t I create bill payments or expenses in Odoo?

Both require Sync2Books to know which Odoo bank/cash journal to post through, which is a different concept from a chart-of-accounts account — Odoo’s account.payment model needs a journal_id, not an account id. This isn’t collected anywhere yet, so both operations return a deliberate 501 Not Implemented rather than guessing. See Odoo overview.

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How are suppliers different from customers in Odoo?

They’re not, structurally. Odoo has one contact model, res.partner, for both — a supplier is a partner with supplier_rank > 0, a customer is a partner with customer_rank > 0. A single Odoo contact can be both at once.

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Does Odoo push changes back to Sync2Books?

No. Odoo has no equivalent to QuickBooks’ webhook push — inbound sync (Odoo → Sync2Books) isn’t built for this connector and would require polling if added.

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Troubleshooting

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Connection status shows an error immediately after connecting

The connect call validates credentials synchronously — if it returns connected, Odoo already accepted them. If it instead returns a 401, see “I get ‘Odoo rejected the supplied credentials’” above.

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A sync silently fails for a supplier/account/bill

Check the sync batch status — as with other integrations, failed sync items carry an error message. If the error mentions QuickBooks-shaped fields (like an OAuth token) for an Odoo connection, that’s a routing bug — contact support.