WHAT WE SEE IN THE FIELD
The webshop works. Everything behind it is manual.
A customer places an order online.
- The website accepts the payment and sends a confirmation.
- Then the real work starts.
- Someone checks whether the product is actually available.
- The order has to reach the warehouse.
- Customer information may need to be created or corrected in the ERP.
- Shipping needs to be organised.
- Once the order is dispatched, Finance needs the invoice.
- If the customer returns something, another process begins.
The website may be doing its job perfectly.
The company behind it is still moving information between systems.
This is a common consequence of treating eCommerce as a digital sales channel rather than as part of the company's operational model. The online store becomes an additional source of orders, but Inventory, Sales, Accounting and Logistics still need to reconstruct what happened afterwards.
Odoo takes a different approach because the eCommerce transaction can remain inside the same environment as the processes that need to fulfil it.
The important question therefore becomes less about how the webshop looks and more about what happens after the customer clicks Buy.
ODOO ECOMMERCE IN PRACTICE
The online order should already be an operational transaction
In Odoo, the eCommerce order lifecycle connects the online sale with the Sales, Inventory and Accounting processes behind it.
When an online order is confirmed, it becomes part of the sales flow. Where physical products are involved, the Inventory process can generate the corresponding delivery operation. Invoicing then follows according to the company's configured commercial and accounting rules. Odoo describes the standard eCommerce lifecycle around those three connected stages: sale, delivery and invoicing.
That connection removes an important source of duplicate administration.
The website does not need to tell another ERP that an order happened.
The ERP already knows.
This has consequences throughout the process. The product sold online can be the same product managed by Purchasing and Inventory. The customer order can use the same pricing logic as other sales channels. The warehouse processes the online delivery from the same stock environment. Finance does not need to recreate the transaction before invoicing it.
For a business operating both B2B and B2C channels, this becomes especially relevant.
An eCommerce order and an order placed by a salesperson may have different commercial rules, but they are still consuming the same inventory and ultimately contributing to the same financial information.
The channel changes.
The underlying business does not.
HOW WE WOULD CONFIGURE IT
Start with the fulfilment model, not with the homepage
When companies think about a new eCommerce project, discussions often begin with navigation, product pages, banners and checkout design.
Those things matter to the customer.
They are not where we would start the ERP design.
First, we need to understand how an online order should actually move through the business.
Which warehouse supplies online orders? Is the same stock available to B2B customers and eCommerce customers? Can customers buy products that are temporarily out of stock? Are products shipped from the company's warehouse, dropshipped or collected from a store? Do different markets have different prices? When should the order become confirmed? What payment methods are available? And what should happen when a customer cancels or returns an order?
Odoo's eCommerce configuration already interacts with many of these operational decisions. Inventory settings can control whether customers are allowed to continue purchasing out-of-stock products and whether available quantities are displayed online. In multi-warehouse scenarios, stock availability can also influence Click & Collect locations.
So a decision that appears to concern only the website may actually be an inventory policy.
“Continue selling when out of stock” is a good example.
Commercially, it may increase conversion.
Operationally, it means the company is accepting demand before stock is available.
That may be perfectly reasonable if replenishment is predictable.
It may be a serious problem if lead times are unreliable.
The configuration therefore needs to reflect the supply model, not simply what looks best on the product page.
PRICING ACROSS CHANNELS
The online price should not become another price list maintained somewhere else
Pricing is another area where standalone eCommerce platforms often create parallel administration.
A company may already have different commercial conditions for retail, B2B customers, distributors, countries or currencies. If the webshop introduces another independent price database, maintaining consistency becomes increasingly difficult.
Odoo pricelists can be used across Sales and eCommerce and can define pricing based on criteria such as customer, currency, quantity, time period and market conditions. Pricelists can also be associated with specific websites or individual customers.
This is particularly useful in businesses where the public webshop is only one commercial channel.
A B2C customer may see the standard retail price.
A logged-in professional customer may have a different pricelist.
Another market may use a different currency or website.
Volume pricing may apply automatically above a certain quantity.
The objective is not to create as many pricing rules as possible.
It is to avoid rebuilding commercial logic specifically for the website when that logic already belongs to the company's sales model.
The same principle applies to promotions and discounts. They should be designed as part of pricing strategy, not as isolated website mechanics that Finance later has to explain.
FULFILMENT AND DELIVERY
The customer experience depends on what happens in the warehouse
An online store can promise next-day delivery very easily.
The warehouse has to make that promise true.
Odoo allows delivery methods to be connected to the online checkout, including fixed-price and free shipping options, Click & Collect and integrations with external carriers. Delivery methods can also use conditions based on the contents or destination of the order.
Once an eCommerce order is confirmed, Odoo can generate the relevant delivery order for physical products, after which the warehouse follows the configured fulfilment process. Depending on the operation, that could involve simple picking or more structured picking, packing and shipping flows.
This is why eCommerce design cannot stop at checkout.
Suppose the marketing team launches free next-day delivery for a campaign.
- Can the warehouse support the volume?
- Does the carrier integration support the expected service?
- Is the correct warehouse fulfilling those orders?
- Will replenishment keep enough stock available?
The customer only sees a delivery promise.
Behind it sits an operational process.
A good eCommerce implementation connects the two.
PAYMENTS SHOULD COMPLETE THE SAME TRANSACTION
Getting paid online is only useful if the payment reaches the rest of the process cleanly
Odoo supports multiple online payment providers and exposes the available payment methods during checkout according to configuration such as provider, country, currency and other availability rules. Depending on the provider, capabilities may include tokenisation, refunds and express checkout.
From an implementation perspective, however, the interesting part is not the number of payment methods.
It is what happens after payment.
The payment belongs to an order. The order belongs to a customer. It may need to be delivered, invoiced and eventually reconciled in Accounting.
Those connections should remain intact.
If the payment provider confirms a transaction but Finance later has to manually determine which customer order it belongs to, the online payment experience is only automated on the customer side.
A good eCommerce process should reduce administrative work on both sides of the transaction.
THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE
Treating the webshop as a frontend project
It is entirely possible to build an attractive Odoo website and still have a poor Odoo eCommerce implementation.
- The product pages look good.
- Checkout works.
- Payments work.
- But warehouse operations were never properly designed.
- Pricing rules are inconsistent with Sales.
- The company sells products online that it cannot fulfil reliably.
- Returns require manual intervention.
- Accounting processes were considered only after launch.
The implementation succeeded as a website project and failed as an ERP project. This usually happens because attention is concentrated on what the customer sees.
We would design from both directions.
- The customer journey must be simple.
- The operational journey behind it must be equally coherent.
The sale is only complete when the company can fulfil, account for and support what it has sold.
ANOTHER COMMON MISTAKE
Assuming integration means everything must happen in Odoo
There is another extreme.
A company already has a successful specialist eCommerce platform and assumes that implementing Odoo means replacing it.
That is not necessarily the right decision.
The relevant question is whether replacing that platform creates enough business value to justify the change.
In some organisations, using Odoo eCommerce gives significant advantages because the webshop can operate directly on the same product, inventory, customer and sales data.
In others, a specialised external platform may remain appropriate, with Odoo acting as the operational ERP behind it.
Integration architecture should follow the business case.
The objective is not to make Odoo own every interface.
It is to avoid fragmented processes and unnecessary duplication of information.
OXALYO'S TAKE
eCommerce should be another sales channel, not another company
A customer does not care whether their order originated in Odoo, a marketplace or another web platform.
They care that the price is right, the product is available, payment works and delivery happens when promised.
Internally, however, every new sales channel creates potential complexity.
- Another product catalogue.
- Another stock figure.
- Another price database.
- Another order queue.
- Another customer database.
- Another reconciliation process.
This is where Odoo can create significant value.
When the online store is connected to the same Sales, Inventory, Logistics and Accounting processes as the rest of the organisation, the company does not need to build a parallel operation simply because the customer bought online.
The eCommerce channel can have its own experience and commercial rules.
The underlying information remains shared.
That is the model we would aim for: one business, multiple channels, one coherent operational flow.
FAQ: ODOO ECOMMERCE
Does Odoo have its own eCommerce platform?
Yes. Odoo eCommerce includes product catalogue management, online ordering and checkout, delivery configuration, order handling and performance analysis, while integrating with other Odoo applications.
Does an Odoo eCommerce order update Inventory?
For physical products, confirmed eCommerce orders can generate delivery orders in Odoo Inventory. Stock availability can also be used to control how products are sold and displayed on the website.
Can Odoo use different prices for B2B and B2C customers?
Yes. Odoo pricelists can be assigned according to customers and websites and can support different pricing rules based on factors including quantity, currency and time period.
Can customers see whether a product is in stock?
Yes. Odoo can display available quantities according to the website inventory configuration. It can also prevent purchases when stock is unavailable or allow the business to continue selling out-of-stock products.
Does Odoo support Click & Collect?
Yes. Odoo eCommerce supports Click & Collect using configured warehouses as pickup locations, with product availability taken into account for the selected location.
Can Odoo integrate with delivery carriers?
Yes. Odoo supports configurable delivery methods as well as integrations with external shipping providers. Depending on the carrier and configuration, shipping rates, labels and tracking information can be incorporated into the fulfilment process.
Does Odoo support online payment providers?
Yes. Odoo integrates with multiple online payment providers and makes their available payment methods accessible in eCommerce checkout and the customer portal.
Can Odoo manage abandoned shopping carts?
Yes. Odoo's eCommerce order handling includes abandoned cart functionality, allowing companies to identify eligible incomplete orders and send follow-up reminders.
Is your webshop selling online while your team is still processing the orders offline?
If online sales create manual work across stock, fulfilment, invoicing and payments, the issue may not be the webshop itself. It may be the way eCommerce is connected to the rest of the business.
Talk to Oxalyo about your Odoo eCommerce setup.