Odoo 20 Accounting and Purchasing: What Changes

This is part 4 of our Odoo 20 series, for finance managers, controllers and procurement leads. The accounting changes in Odoo 20 are less about new screens and more about structure: how accounts are organised, how group payments are matched, and how reports are built. Purchasing gets a cleaner home for comparing supplier quotes.

Accounting

A chart of accounts that nests

In Odoo 19, accounts were grouped for reporting through a separate list of account groups, defined by account-code ranges. In Odoo 20 those groups are gone. Instead, an account can sit under a parent account, forming a real hierarchy.

For example:

• 1-1000 Current Assets
  • 1-1100 Cash and Bank
    • 1-1101 Cash on Hand
    • 1-1102 Bank BCA Operating
  • 1-1200 Trade Receivables

This is how most finance teams already think about their chart of accounts, and it makes subtotals in reports more natural. Odoo ships an automatic conversion for many standard charts of accounts.

What to check: if your management reports, consolidation or any spreadsheet exports were built on Odoo 19 account groups, review them after the upgrade. Also confirm with your partner how your specific chart is converted, especially if it has been heavily customised.

New and expanded reports

Odoo 20 adds report types including:

• an executive summary,
• an inter-company comparison, useful for groups with several PTs,
• report snapshots, so you can keep a saved version of a report, and
• deeper integration between financial reports and spreadsheets.

For management this means fewer exports to Excel just to rearrange numbers, and an easier way to compare entities side by side.

Inter-company payments in bank reconciliation

When one company in your group pays on behalf of another, matching that payment has traditionally been fiddly. Odoo 20 adds inter-company payment handling directly in the bank reconciliation screen. For groups that run a shared treasury, this means less manual adjustment at month-end.

Simpler bank and tax-ID master data

• The separate list of banks is gone. Bank name and address now live directly on each bank account record. That is one place to maintain instead of two.
• Tax ID (VAT number) validation is now part of the core system instead of a separate module.

Longer journal codes

Odoo 20 no longer limits the length of journal codes. Some businesses had a customisation just to allow longer codes. In Odoo 20 that customisation can be retired rather than migrated, which is a small example of how an upgrade can reduce what you have to maintain.

Purchasing

Comparing alternative quotes has its own home

In Odoo 19, comparing alternative requests for quotation (RFQs), meaning asking several suppliers for the same goods and picking the best offer, lived inside the purchase agreements feature. In Odoo 20 it is a feature of its own, with links to Sales and Inventory.

Why it matters: companies that want a simple "three quotes before we buy" discipline no longer have to switch on the full purchase-agreement feature to get it.

Quality checks connected to purchasing

A new link between Purchase and Quality brings quality control closer to the buying process. This suits businesses where incoming goods must pass inspection, for example food ingredients or production materials.

What to check before upgrading

1. Management reports built on account groups: rebuild or verify them on the new hierarchy.
2. Chart of accounts conversion: test on a copy of your database and compare the trial balance before and after.
3. Inter-company processes: decide whether the new reconciliation flow replaces your current manual steps.
4. Purchasing policy: if you require multiple quotes, set up the alternative RFQ feature as part of the upgrade.
5. Retire what core now covers. Review each finance customisation and ask whether Odoo 20 makes it unnecessary.

Planning your finance team's move to Odoo 20? See our services or contact the Keyklik team.

The Odoo 20 series

1. What's New for Your Business
2. Point of Sale for Restaurants and Retail
3. Inventory and Manufacturing
4. Accounting and Purchasing (this article)
5. HR and Attendance
6. AI Agents and MCP
7. Planning the Upgrade

Note (DYOR — Do Your Own Research): This article is based on our own comparison of the Odoo 19 and Odoo 20 source code, not on Odoo's official release notes. Changes to the chart of accounts and reporting affect your financial statements and tax reporting. Verify against the official Odoo documentation, applicable accounting standards and DJP/Coretax requirements, and consult your accountant, tax advisor and implementation partner before changing your chart of accounts or reporting structure.