Duration: 25:29
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context and why it matters 💼
This talk, led by Kristoff Club (Product Owner for Odoo Accounting), showcases a new, integrated way to produce annual financial “audit brochures” by combining Odoo Accounting with Odoo Knowledge. Drawing on work by his colleague Luc (Product Owner for Knowledge), Kristoff demonstrates how Odoo 19 streamlines the creation of a narrative-rich, data-accurate financial report—what many companies publish each year to summarize their performance with statements, analyses, auditor opinions, and sign-offs. The core idea: when your accounting data and your documentation live in the same platform, the result is faster, more accurate, and easier to collaborate on. 🧠
Traditional pain points—copy-pasting figures from disjointed tools, static PDFs that go stale after last-minute adjustments, limited collaboration, and cumbersome publishing—are precisely what this feature aims to eliminate. The outcome is a unified authoring and publishing flow with live financial data and clear governance, reducing friction from draft to final PDF.
What’s new in Odoo 19: Accounting x Knowledge ⚙️
Odoo introduces a new Audit Report entry in the Accounting “Audit/Review” menu—essentially a structured Knowledge article powered by live accounting data. Users start from a curated template reflecting common sections in public company reports (e.g., balance sheet, profit & loss, asset details), then tailor the content to their context. You can drag-and-drop sections, remove items that don’t apply, reinsert standard sections, and add specialized topics like R&D costs or any custom analysis. Under the hood, it’s a Knowledge document with added accounting-aware capabilities.
The magic is the mix of manual narrative and automated data. Financial statements (e.g., Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss) are embedded as dynamic blocks with the exact reporting parameters you select (like comparing one or two prior years). Dynamic placeholders (e.g., period end date, period totals) auto-resolve when generating the report, so you don’t need to update boilerplate text every year. You can also include supporting documents (like your external auditor’s PDF) to be bundled in the final export, and add eSignatures via Odoo Sign for leadership, auditors, or other stakeholders—natively integrated.
For narrative content, the Knowledge editor provides full-featured authoring plus optional AI assistance for drafting, polishing, and translating text (with the clear caveat: don’t let AI author your financial analysis). The editor handles images and rich content, so teams can add visuals and explanations that complement the numbers.
Collaboration, control, and auditability 💬
Because the report is a Knowledge article, collaboration is built in. Access starts private (sensible for finance drafts) and can be selectively shared. Co-authors benefit from Discuss mentions, notifications, and real-time editing. The version history enables compare/restore workflows when content changes or sections are removed accidentally. This balances agility with accountability—a critical need in financial reporting.
From template to polished PDF
When ready, you export to PDF with options to include sub-articles and supporting PDFs. The output creates a clean, navigable document (with table-of-contents-like links), embeds the dynamic statements (with your column selection preserved), includes logos, and appends attachments like the auditor’s report. From there, you can share via Documents or publish via Website, keeping the end-to-end flow inside Odoo.
Known limitations and what’s next
- Design flexibility: The base template ships with a predefined look. You can tweak content and structure, but deep visual/theming changes currently require advanced template customization.
- Translations: The base report template was presented in English. Odoo’s translation team is rolling out localized versions across supported languages over the coming weeks.
- Advanced analytics in-line: Fully dynamic computed fields and live graphs from other Odoo views aren’t available yet. You can insert static visuals today; dynamic analytics are on the roadmap for future template versions.
- Formal external validation: The structure is based on public company reports and Odoo’s own practices; it hasn’t been formally certified by accounting firms. It’s a strong starting point that you tailor to your jurisdiction and auditor expectations.
Impact and takeaways 💡
By merging Accounting and Knowledge, Odoo 19 turns the annual financial report from a manual, error-prone assembly into an integrated, collaborative flow. Users get: - Fewer copy-paste risks thanks to live, contextualized financial statements and dynamic placeholders. - Faster coordination across finance, leadership, and auditors with built-in collaboration, versioning, and signatures. - A repeatable process anchored in templates that can grow with evolving needs (e.g., ESG sections in future). It’s a practical example of Odoo’s “better together” philosophy: numbers and narrative, in one place, ready to publish.
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
When we connect apps, the complexity should go down, not up. This audit brochure is a small example of that principle: accountants shouldn’t fight tools; they should tell the story of the business with confidence that the numbers are right. By bringing Accounting and Knowledge together, we remove the swivel-chair work and let teams focus on insight rather than formatting.
The community will take this far—new templates, localization, ESG, and more. Our job is to keep the foundation simple, integrated, and open. If reporting feels like writing a good article with live data, then we’ve done it right.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo’s integrated authoring experience is compelling, especially for mid-market teams that struggle with fragmented reporting workflows. The collaboration, signatures, and dynamic financial blocks reduce friction. The question for larger enterprises will be how this scales with complex consolidations, stringent audit trails, and industry-specific compliance, where long-standing controls and separation-of-duties models are non-negotiable.
Design flexibility and enterprise-grade narrative control (e.g., advanced templating, XBRL tagging, multi-GAAP layouts) will be critical points of differentiation. Still, the UX simplicity and speed are strong; if Odoo evolves the template engine and compliance depth, it could pressure incumbents in the upper mid-market.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.