What Is Odoo? A Plain-English Guide for Australian Businesses

Updated 5 October 2026: Odoo licence figures now use the Australian pricelist that took effect on 24 September 2026 (Custom A$64.00 for the first year, then A$80.00 at list; Standard unchanged).

Odoo ERP software is a suite of open source business apps from a Belgian company that started as TinyERP in 2002. Accounting, sales, inventory, manufacturing, projects, HR and a website run on one database. Odoo says it has 28 million users and 50 apps. In Australia it comes as free Community software or Enterprise from A$34.40 per user per month, with a Gold Coast office and 38 local partners.

At a glance

• Who it is for: Australian businesses of roughly 5 to 200 users that have outgrown accounting software plus a pile of add-ons, and anyone who has been told “you should look at Odoo” and wants the plain version first.
• Problem it solves: running sales, stock, purchasing, projects and the books in one system instead of five, with one customer record and one set of numbers.
• Platforms: Odoo Community (free, self-hosted) and Odoo Enterprise (Standard or Custom plan) on Odoo Online, Odoo.sh or your own servers; current version Odoo 19, with Odoo 20 due after the 24 September 2026 keynote.
• Typical cost: Enterprise licence A$34.40 to A$80.00 per user per month ex GST on yearly billing (Australian pricelist as at 5 October 2026, odoo.com/pricing); implementation A$25,000 to A$120,000 or more ex GST for most SMEs, per our Odoo implementation packages.
• Typical timeline: 2 to 3 months for a 5 to 15 user project on the core apps, 3 to 5 months with manufacturing and several integrations, 5 to 8 months for multi-company rollouts, per the same packages page.
• Last verified: 14 September 2026 against Odoo’s about page, the Odoo pricing page, the editions comparison and the Australian partner directory.

The question usually arrives sideways. A supplier’s invoice turns up from a portal with the Odoo logo on it, or a competitor’s job ad asks for “Odoo experience”, and someone in your business types “what is Odoo” into Google. What comes back is forty articles written for the American market by companies that sell it, none of which mention GST, BAS or what it costs in Australian dollars. This is the plain version, from a Brisbane team that implements Odoo and MYOB Acumatica and does not need you to pick one.

What is Odoo used for?

Odoo is used to run the day-to-day operations of a business in one place: quoting and invoicing customers, buying from suppliers, holding stock, building products, managing projects and staff, and keeping the accounts that the Business Activity Statement (BAS) is prepared from. It replaces the common small-business stack of an accounting package, a spreadsheet for stock, a CRM, a project tool and a web store that do not talk to each other.

The idea that makes it work is a single database. A customer exists once. A product exists once, with its cost, its sell price, its stock level and its GST treatment attached. When sales confirms an order, inventory sees a delivery to pick, purchasing sees stock to replenish, and accounting sees an invoice to raise, without anyone re-keying anything. Odoo’s own description is “a suite of open source business apps that cover all your company needs”, and the apps are the point: you install the ones you use and ignore the rest.

The app list is from Odoo’s product menu as at September 2026. Odoo counts 50 main applications it maintains itself, plus a community catalogue of more than 50,000 third-party modules.

Is Odoo ERP software, or something broader?

Both, and the distinction matters when you are comparing it with other products. ERP, enterprise resource planning, is the category name for software that runs finance, supply chain and operations on one database. Odoo qualifies. But it also includes apps that most ERP products leave to other vendors: a website and webshop builder, email and SMS marketing, e-signature, helpdesk, a knowledge base and a point of sale. That breadth is why the company dropped “ERP” from its name when it went from OpenERP to Odoo, and why a business of ten people can use it as much as a business of two hundred.

The breadth cuts both ways. Odoo’s accounting is thorough for a business of 5 to 200 users and includes the Australian localisation, but a finance-led group with complex multi-entity consolidation, or a large award-based payroll, will find deeper finance features in a mid-market product built around the ledger. We compare the two approaches in how Australian buyers decide between Odoo and MYOB Acumatica, and we implement both, so we have no reason to steer you either way.

Where Odoo came from

Odoo is made by Odoo S.A., based in Grand-Rosière, Belgium. Its founder and chief executive, Fabien Pinckaers, started the product as TinyERP in March 2002, renamed it OpenERP, and renamed it again to Odoo as the app range grew beyond resource planning, per Odoo’s own biography of him. The company now reports more than 8,000 employees, 21,000 partners and 28 million users, and lists a Gold Coast office among its sales and services locations, on its about page as at 14 September 2026. Odoo also describes itself as the most installed business software in the world on that same page as at 14 September 2026; that is the vendor’s own claim and we repeat it as such.

Two things about the company shape what buying Odoo feels like. It releases one major version a year, announced at its Odoo Experience conference in Brussels each September or October; Odoo 19 arrived in September 2025 and Odoo 20 is due after the keynote on 24 September 2026. And it sells mostly through partners, with 21,000 of them worldwide, so the company you deal with day to day is usually a local implementer, not Odoo itself.

Is Odoo free?

Partly. Odoo comes in two editions, and the editions comparison on odoo.com sets out the difference line by line.

Odoo Community

Odoo Community is the open source core, published under the LGPL v3 licence on GitHub. It is free to download, install and use for unlimited users. It includes CRM, sales, invoicing, inventory, purchasing, basic manufacturing, project, the website builder and more. What it does not include is Odoo’s full accounting app (Community has invoicing and a basic ledger, not the financial reports), the mobile apps, Studio, hosting, support or the upgrade service. You host it yourself, or pay someone to.

Odoo Enterprise

Odoo Enterprise is the licensed edition built on Community. It adds the full Accounting app with the Australian chart of accounts, GST tax codes and BAS report, plus Documents, Sign, Subscriptions, Rental, Field Service, Helpdesk, Planning, Quality, PLM, Studio and the mobile apps, together with hosting on Odoo Online, support and free version upgrades. Enterprise is what almost every Australian business we work with runs, because the accounting and localisation are the reason they came looking. Our Odoo Community vs Enterprise post covers the decision in detail, including the cases where Community is the right call.

There is also a free tier inside Enterprise: the One App Free plan gives one app, and the apps it depends on, to unlimited users on Odoo Online at no charge. Install a second app and you move to a paid plan.

What does Odoo cost in Australia?

Odoo publishes its subscription prices, which is rare for business software. On the Australian pricelist as at 5 October 2026, the Standard plan is A$34.40 per user per month and the Custom plan is A$64.00, on yearly billing and excluding GST, for the first 12 months on the users you order at signing; from month 13 they move to the list prices of A$43.00 and A$80.00. Both plans include every app for that one fee. Custom adds Studio, multi-company, the external API and the option of Odoo.sh or self-hosting. Only internal users who log in to create or edit records are charged; customers and suppliers on the portal are free, per the pricing page FAQ.

The licence is the small number. Implementation, hosting for custom code and the renewal mechanics are where the budget is decided, and our guide to Odoo pricing in Australia walks through all of it with the AUD figures. For the project itself, our published Odoo implementation cost in Australia bands run from A$25,000 for a 5 to 15 user core-apps project to more than A$120,000 for a multi-company rollout, ex GST.

“People hear ‘open source’ and expect either a free lunch or a science project. Odoo is neither. It’s a mature product with a published price, a yearly release and a partner channel. The open source part means you can read the code and own your data. It doesn’t mean nobody has to configure it.”

Josh Craig, Director, Auboros

Does Odoo handle Australian GST and BAS?

Yes, on Enterprise. Odoo ships an Australian fiscal localisation that installs the Australian chart of accounts and GST tax codes, produces the BAS report from the ledger, generates ABA files for batch supplier payments and connects bank feeds. How well it works depends on setup: the tax codes have to be mapped to the right products and accounts on day one, or BAS time becomes a cleanup exercise. We covered the mechanics in our posts on Odoo bank feeds in Australia and Odoo accounts payable with ABA payments.

Payroll is the one area we treat differently. On every Odoo project we scope payroll as its own decision, because Australian awards, Single Touch Payroll (STP) and superannuation rules are a specialist problem, and sometimes the right answer is a connected payroll product. Ask about it early.

Who is Odoo for, and who should look elsewhere?

Odoo fits a business that wants one flexible system across sales, stock, operations and accounting, is happy to adapt some processes to the standard apps, and has, or will hire, a partner to configure it. Wholesalers, manufacturers, trades and field service businesses, professional services firms and multi-channel retailers between roughly 5 and 200 users are the bulk of the Australian implementations we see, and the Australian partner directory lists 38 partners across the Silver and Ready tiers as at 14 September 2026.

It is a weaker fit in three cases. A single-entity business that only needs accounting is better served by a small business package until the add-ons pile up. A finance-led group that needs deep multi-entity consolidation, project accounting and native award payroll inside the ERP usually lands on a mid-market product built for that. And a business with no appetite for a project should not buy any ERP; Capterra’s 2025 research found that fewer than one in three Australian businesses successfully adopt the software they buy, and the failures are rarely about the product. Our Odoo alternatives in Australia post covers the other platforms for each of those cases.

How do Australian businesses buy and implement Odoo?

There are three routes, and Odoo’s pricing page describes them. Businesses under about 50 employees often buy direct from Odoo and use prepaid Success Packs, blocks of consultant hours bought from Odoo; we compared that route with a partner project in Odoo Success Packs vs partner implementation. Mid-sized businesses usually engage a local partner who scopes the project, configures the apps, migrates the data, trains the team and supports the system afterwards. Larger organisations deal with Odoo directly. Whichever route you take, you can also contact Odoo’s own support as an Enterprise customer, and the upgrade service is free to every Enterprise subscriber, not only to partner clients.

A typical partner-led project runs discovery, configuration, data migration, training and go-live over 2 to 5 months, then a hypercare period; our Odoo ERP implementation in Australia guide sets out each phase and the traps. Hosting is decided early, and our Odoo hosting in Australia post explains the Odoo Online, Odoo.sh and self-hosted options, including the Sydney hosting zone. If you would rather talk it through with someone local, our Odoo partner in Brisbane page describes how we scope and price a project.

Goes well with

• Odoo Community vs Enterprise: the Australian decision: whether the free edition covers you.
• Odoo pricing in Australia: the plans, the AUD figures and the costs quotes leave out.
• Odoo ERP implementation in Australia: cost, timeline and traps: what the project looks like once you decide to go ahead.

Still working out whether Odoo is the right fit?

Auboros is an Odoo partner based in Brisbane, working with businesses across Queensland and the rest of Australia, and we also implement MYOB Acumatica, so the first conversation is about your business, not about a product.

If you want a straight answer on fit before anyone quotes a licence, book a free consultation. Thirty minutes, no pitch, and you will leave knowing which questions to ask next.