Odoo for Exporters: How Australian Businesses Handle Multi-Currency Sales and GST-Free Invoices

Selling overseas changes the shape of your admin. Quotes go out in US dollars, the ATO expects the goods gone within 60 days if you’re not charging GST, and your freight forwarder keeps asking for documents your accounting file has never heard of. The scale of this is bigger than most people assume: the most recent ABS Characteristics of Australian Exporters release counted 56,274 goods exporters, and well over half were small businesses. That release covers 2019-20, the last full census of the exporter population the ABS published, but the pattern it captured still holds. Most Australian exporters are small teams doing export admin on the side.

This guide covers what Odoo does well for export sales, the settings that matter, and the jobs that stay with your customs broker no matter what software you run.

Setting up Odoo for exporters: where to start

Getting Odoo export-ready is mostly configuration, not custom development. Four pieces do the heavy lifting:

• Currencies and pricelists. Activate the currencies you sell in and build a pricelist per market. Your US distributor sees USD prices on every quote without anyone converting figures on a calculator.
• A dedicated GST-free export tax. Export sales still appear on your Business Activity Statement (BAS), they’re reported as GST-free rather than left out. A separate 0% tax for exports keeps them visible and easy to reconcile.
• Default incoterms. Odoo lets you set a default incoterm that fills itself in on every new invoice, so FOB or CIF terms stop depending on someone’s memory.
• Delivery connections. Carrier integrations and stock traceability are covered in our Odoo inventory guide, and everything there applies double when the carton is crossing a border.

Why bother pulling this into one system? MYOB’s 2025 ERP Trends research found 45% of Australian decision makers say disconnected systems are limiting their growth. Exporters feel that pain earlier than most because a single order touches sales, the warehouse, a forwarder, an overseas bank and the BAS.

Multi-currency sales without the spreadsheet

Odoo’s multi-currency system lets you set a currency per sales order or invoice, and the whole document follows it. You can hold bank accounts in foreign currencies, register payments in the currency they arrived in, and run reports on your foreign currency activity.

The part that saves real time at month end: when the exchange rate moves between invoice and payment, Odoo posts the exchange difference to a dedicated journal automatically. Nobody calculates the gain or loss by hand. We’ve gone deeper on rates, revaluation and keeping the BAS in AUD in our multi-currency accounting guide.

GST-free exports and the 60 day rule

Exports are one of the main categories of GST-free sales, which means you don’t charge GST on the sale but you can generally still claim credits on the costs of making it.

The catch is timing. Under the ATO’s export rules, goods need to leave Australia within 60 days of the earlier of receiving payment or issuing the invoice. Paid by instalments? The clock runs from the final one. If production or shipping delays will blow the window, you can ask the ATO for an extension through Online services for business, but you have to ask before assuming the sale stays GST-free. This is general information rather than tax advice, so check your specific arrangements with your adviser.

Most export problems we untangle aren’t system problems, they’re sequencing problems. The invoice went out in USD, the goods shipped six weeks later, and nobody checked whether the 60 day clock started at payment or invoice. Set the workflow up once so the paperwork follows the goods, and BAS time stops being an archaeology exercise.

Bill Alvarez, Practice Manager, Auboros

In Odoo terms: your quotation, invoice and delivery order live on the same record, so the dates you need to prove the timeline are already in one place.

Incoterms and the paperwork your buyer expects

Overseas buyers and their customs agents expect documents in a particular shape. Odoo covers the commercial side of that trail. Incoterms print on invoices once configured, and the pro-forma invoice feature lets you send a preliminary invoice straight from a quotation or sales order. Pro-forma invoices are commonly used for customs purposes before the commercial invoice exists, which is exactly the gap exporters need filled. One quirk worth knowing: Odoo won’t send a pro-forma once a down payment invoice has gone out on that order.

Where the broker takes over

Some jobs stay outside your ERP, and it’s better to know that up front. Export declarations to the Australian Border Force, certificates of origin under free trade agreements, and quarantine paperwork are typically prepared and lodged by your freight forwarder, customs broker or chamber of commerce. Odoo’s job is to be the reliable source they work from: product weights, customs descriptions, values and dates that don’t contradict each other.

And if you import components to make what you export, the flow works in reverse too. Our guide to landed costs and deferred GST covers that side of the border.

If you’re weighing up whether Odoo fits your operation more broadly, our Odoo services page explains how we scope and deliver implementations.

---

Exporting from Australia on Odoo, or planning to?

We’re a Brisbane based Odoo Silver Partner and we set up multi-currency sales, GST-free invoicing and export workflows for Australian businesses selling offshore. If your export admin currently lives in spreadsheets bolted onto your accounting file, book a free consultation. We’ll map what Odoo can take over and give you a straight answer on what it can’t.