SQL-Ledger vs Odoo Community
Odoo Community is the free, open-source edition of a very large ERP. It is an excellent CRM, sales, purchasing, inventory and website suite — and most people who install it for the accounting find, a few weeks in, that the accounting is largely in the paid edition. This page sets out what Community actually includes, where Odoo is the better choice regardless, and where SQL-Ledger is.
Reviewed August 2026 against Odoo 17 and 18 Community. Odoo moves modules between editions with each October release; if something below has changed, tell us.
Does Odoo Community have accounting?
Partly. Community ships the Invoicing app: customer invoices, vendor bills, credit notes, payments, taxes, a chart of accounts and manual journal entries. What it does not ship is the Accounting app, which is Enterprise-only and holds the parts an accountant needs:
- Financial reports — balance sheet, profit and loss, cash flow, general ledger, trial balance, aged receivables and payables, tax report. Community shows only the invoice and journal lists.
- Bank reconciliation — the statement-matching screen, and bank feed synchronisation.
- Assets and depreciation, deferred revenue and expense, budgets, analytic reporting, multi-company consolidation.
- Payroll — Enterprise, with localised rule sets sold per country.
- Documents, Sign, Helpdesk, Field Service, Quality, PLM, Studio and the mobile apps — all Enterprise.
The open-source community (OCA) maintains modules that put some of this back — financial reports, bank statement import, asset management, MIS builder — and a capable integrator can assemble a working accounting system from them. It is real work, it must be redone at each yearly upgrade, and the result is a set of add-ons rather than a product. Odoo’s own hosting (Odoo Online) is Enterprise-only, so Community also means running your own server or paying a host.
Side by side
| Odoo Community | SQL-Ledger (hosted here) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Software free; hosting, integration and upgrades are yours to pay for. The accounting features below are Enterprise, priced per user per month. | Free, hosted, unlimited users and companies. No paid tier holds features back. |
| Double-entry ledger | Yes, via journals; a chart of accounts per localisation. | Yes; every module posts into one ledger table, 60+ country charts. |
| Financial statements | Enterprise, or OCA account_financial_report. |
Balance sheet, income statement, trial balance, GL, ageing, tax reports, any period, accrual or cash. |
| Bank reconciliation | Enterprise; OCA statement import partially covers it. | Built in, per account, with cleared items carried forward. |
| Invoicing and orders | Strong: quotations, sales and purchase orders, invoices, online payment, customer portal. | Quotations, orders, invoices, packing and pick lists, recurring invoices, consolidation; no customer portal. |
| Inventory | Strong: multi-warehouse, routes, lots and serials, barcode, manufacturing (MRP). | Multi-warehouse, assemblies and kits, serial numbers, reorder and requirements; no routing or shop-floor MRP. |
| Point of sale | Yes, full-featured, including restaurant mode. | Yes, a counter till that posts as an invoice. |
| Payroll | Enterprise only. | Included: wages and deductions you define, posting to your own accounts. |
| Multi-currency | Yes. | Yes, with automatic gain/loss on settlement. |
| CRM, website, e-commerce, HR, marketing | Yes — this is where Odoo is far ahead. | No CRM or HR apps; an optional storefront that sells from the same catalogue. |
| Customisation | Python modules and Studio (Enterprise); large ecosystem of add-ons. | Perl and SQL in plain sight; templates edited in the browser; small changes that survive upgrades. |
| Upgrades | Yearly major versions; Community upgrades are manual and add-ons often lag. | Schema upgrades run at login; datasets from 2.x still upgrade in one pass. |
| Data ownership | PostgreSQL database; exportable, but the schema is large and version-specific. | PostgreSQL database; a dump of a few dozen readable tables, downloadable from the dashboard. |
| Footprint | Python, PostgreSQL, a JavaScript build; several gigabytes; needs a real server. | Perl CGI on PostgreSQL; runs comfortably on very little, fast over a poor connection. |
When Odoo is the right choice
- You need CRM, a website builder, e-commerce, HR, marketing automation and accounting in one system, and are prepared to pay Enterprise per user or fund an integrator to assemble Community.
- You manufacture with routings, work orders and bills of material that change per order.
- You want a modern single-page interface with a mobile app, and a large market of consultants and add-ons.
- Your accounting needs are light and the Invoicing app plus a spreadsheet will do.
When SQL-Ledger is
- The books are the point. You want statements, reconciliation, ageing, tax returns and year end without paying per user or assembling modules.
- You sell and buy goods and services, keep stock, perhaps run a till and a payroll, and want all of it posting into one ledger you can read.
- You want to be up in minutes, hosted, with backups and a manual, and to leave with a database you understand if you ever do.
- You have an old SQL-Ledger or LedgerSMB dataset already.
Moving from Odoo Community to SQL-Ledger
Customers, vendors, products and the chart of accounts export from Odoo as CSV and load through Import, with a saved column map for each; the sample files show the layout. Opening balances go in as a journal entry and open invoices as AR and AP transactions dated as they were. Transaction history can be brought across in full if you need it; send us a database dump and we will say what it involves.
See everything SQL-Ledger does · How SQL-Ledger works · SQL-Ledger vs LedgerSMB · User manual