Odoo founder and CEO Fabien Pinckaers stood in Brussels in front of 65,000 registered participants and started by saying that he still loves his job after 20 years. You believe him, because he clicks through the demo himself – including the moments when someone in the audience calls the phone number he has just bought or logs into his demo database. It was entertaining. What matters more is what is inside Odoo 20, and that deserves a closer look.
The short version
- Timesheets: a widget everywhere in the system and an assistant that records locally. Odoo measures 12 percent of delivered work at customers that never reaches an invoice.
- AI: built into CRM, purchasing, accounting and the website editor – asking before every write access, and opening real reports instead of finished charts.
- E-invoicing: live in Belgium since the beginning of the year, including automatic posting. For German companies, a preview of 2027 and 2028.
- Pricing: the Custom plan becomes 20 percent more expensive, Standard and the free one-app edition stay as they are. New are light users at 7.90 euros per month.
The real problem is called timesheets
The strongest number of the keynote did not come from the AI part. Odoo measured at customers how much delivered work never reaches an invoice. Result: 12 percent. Sloppiness is rarely the reason. It is simply that on Friday afternoon nobody remembers how long Tuesday call took. On top of that come roughly one and a half hours per week that every person spends on the entry itself.
Odoo 20 attacks this from two sides. A timesheet widget now sits everywhere in the system and remembers which project you were on last – so there is no need to switch to a separate app. In addition there is an assistant that runs locally on the machine, records your own activities and turns them into suggestions: this mail, that meeting, the task from this morning. You accept, discard or merge. According to Odoo nothing leaves the device until you confirm it yourself.
For everyone who bills by effort this is probably the feature with the most direct effect on the result. Whether a team accepts an activity tracker on its own laptop is another question. In Germany the works council will want a say, and rightly so. That discussion is better had before the rollout than after it.
An AI that asks first
AI sits in practically every corner of Odoo 20: in the website editor, in CRM, in purchasing, in accounting. That alone would not be news in 2026. One detail stood out. When Pinckaers wanted a counting animation on his demo website, the assistant first asked whether it was allowed to touch JavaScript. Same when creating a project from a PDF: without approval it writes nothing into the database.
The second point is traceability. Ask ChatGPT for a revenue forecast and you get a chart and have to believe what it says. In Odoo the AI instead opens a real report. Filters, grouping and period can be changed, and every figure can be traced back to the record. In accounting the model does not calculate anything itself, according to Odoo, but pulls the values from the existing financial reports.
New on top of that are agents that work in the background along fixed rules, for example prioritising tickets or turning incoming order mails into sales orders. And there is an MCP server: external tools such as Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT can connect directly to the Odoo database – with the access rights the respective user has anyway.
Pinckaers could not resist one jab. The AI demo that Salesforce had shown a week earlier at its own Dreamforce conference had been rebuilt with standard Odoo tools in two hours. Salesforce charges extra for its AI platform, in Odoo it is part of the subscription. His explanation of why this works so well sounds like stage rhetoric at first: around 2 percent of the publicly available Python code worldwide is said to be Odoo code, so the language models know the system well. On second thought it is one of the more solid arguments for open source heard in a while.
E-invoicing: Belgium as a preview of Germany
In Belgium e-invoicing has been mandatory since the beginning of the year. More than 75,000 companies use Odoo there as an official Peppol access point, and over 20 million invoices have already run through the system – fully automated, according to Odoo.
What that means in practice became visible in the demo. Incoming e-invoices post themselves when nothing looks unusual. Duplicates and deviations stay in draft. Start and end dates on the invoice automatically create accruals, a purchased MacBook is recognised as an asset, and the garage invoice for the car ends up with the right vehicle in the fleet. This works because an e-invoice carries structured data and no OCR has to guess what is written on a PDF. Payment will happen directly from Odoo through your own bank, without QR code and without exporting a payment file. Whether that works with every German bank at launch remains to be seen.
For German companies this is not a future topic. They have had to be able to receive e-invoices since 1 January 2025. For issuing them the transition period ends in stages: from 1 January 2027 companies with more than 800,000 euros of prior-year turnover have to send e-invoices, and from 1 January 2028 the obligation applies to everyone. Anyone looking at their ERP right now should not treat this part as a side note.
Whoever is responsible for the closing will also be pleased that Odoo 20 reports the cumulative translation adjustment (CTA) automatically as its own balance sheet line and brings an intercompany reconciliation at the click of a button. Anyone who has ever done that in Excel knows how many hours that saves.
What else stood out
- Telephony: a business number can be bought directly inside Odoo, in the demo it took seconds. Call routing with voice menu and opening hours is built by drag and drop, calls are transcribed and attached to the lead.
- Quotations: sections can be saved as a template and given a quantity. Two conference rooms instead of one, and every line adjusts. The sales price can be calculated from purchase cost and target margin.
- Reordering: Odoo now proposes minimum and maximum stock levels from the demand of the last 30 days. If coverage drops below the lead time, the value turns red.
- Speed: the interface looks almost like version 19. The difference is that every click is meant to respond in under 10 milliseconds. When the connection drops you keep working and Odoo syncs later.
- Website: a new configurator builds a complete site from industry, positioning and colour choice in seconds. If a block is missing, you describe it to the AI.
And then the price
Pinckaers kept this topic for the end and announced it himself as „less exciting". The Custom plan becomes 20 percent more expensive. His reasoning: since the last price adjustment in 2022 inflation has been 26 percent, and the cost of AI and hosting keeps rising. Last year Odoo made a loss of around 36 million euros on a turnover of roughly 900 million.
The Standard plan and the free one-app edition stay unchanged. New are light users at 7.90 euros per month. They can request time off, submit expenses, record time and take part in appraisals. They may also use point of sale, barcode inventory, shop floor, planning and field service. Light users only exist from Odoo 20 onwards, and the upgrade itself is included in the subscription.
| Plan | List price per user and month | Status |
|---|---|---|
| One app free | 0 € | unchanged |
| Standard | 24.90 € (19.90 € in the first year) | unchanged |
| Custom | 44.90 € (35.90 € in the first year) | increase of 20 percent announced |
| Light user | 7.90 € | new, from Odoo 20 |
List prices from odoo.com/de_DE/pricing with annual payment, retrieved on 28 September 2026. The announced increase of the Custom plan is not yet reflected on the German price page at that point. Anyone calculating right now should check the figure before signing.
Companies with many people in the warehouse, in production or in a branch who previously had no access at all, or ran as full users, should come out well overall. Those with few full users on the Custom plan who do not need the light functions simply pay more. That belongs to the truth as well, even if the keynote phrased it more kindly.
What this means for your company
Three things deserve a slot in the calendar: timesheets, if you bill by effort; e-invoicing, if the sending obligation catches you in 2027 or 2028; and user licences, if you have people in the warehouse or in production. Everything else can wait until the release has settled into daily work.
Which of the new features matter for your setup, and whether moving to light users pays off – we are glad to look at that together, in the readiness check for your Odoo implementation or directly in a free initial consultation.
Which of the new features matter for your setup, and whether moving to light users pays off – we are glad to look at that together, in the readiness check for your Odoo implementation or directly in a free initial consultation.
Related reading: Odoo 20: release date, features and AI · The new vertical modules in Odoo 20 · Odoo ERP as a platform
Related reading: Odoo 20: release date, features and AI · The new vertical modules in Odoo 20 · Odoo ERP as a platform
Frequently asked questions about Odoo 20 (FAQ)
When was Odoo 20 released?
Odoo 20 was presented at Odoo Experience from 24 to 26 September 2026 in Brussels. The upgrade is included in the running subscription; individual additions such as the light users only exist from this version onwards.
What does Odoo 20 cost per user?
On the German price page, 28 September 2026 still shows 24.90 euros per user and month for Standard and 44.90 euros for Custom, each with annual payment. The keynote announced an increase of the Custom plan by 20 percent, which is not reflected there yet.
What is a light user in Odoo 20?
A light user costs 7.90 euros per month and may request time off, submit expenses, record time and take part in appraisals. Point of sale, barcode inventory, shop floor, planning and field service are included – meant for people in the warehouse, in production or in a branch who had no access of their own so far.
Does my company already have to send e-invoices?
German companies have had to be able to receive e-invoices in B2B since 1 January 2025. They have to send them from 1 January 2027 if prior-year turnover exceeded 800,000 euros; from 1 January 2028 the obligation applies without a turnover threshold.
How does the timesheet assistant handle data protection?
According to Odoo the assistant runs locally on the machine, and the recorded activities only leave the device once the user confirms a suggestion. In Germany such a tool is still subject to codetermination – the agreement with the works council belongs before the rollout.
Is it worth upgrading to Odoo 20 straight away?
That depends on three points. If you bill by effort, the new timesheet features have the fastest effect. If the e-invoicing obligation reaches you in 2027 or 2028, you should plan the date anyway. And if you have many people without their own access, the licence maths can work out cheaper with light users.
What is the MCP server in Odoo 20?
The MCP server lets external AI tools such as Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT access the Odoo database directly – limited to the rights the respective user already has in the system. Reports and routine tasks can then be handled from the familiar tool.
