The problem it solves
Odoo is software used to manage everything in a company: sales, purchases, inventory, but also very simple things like requesting time off or checking your schedule. Until now, an employee who only did these small things paid the same license price as a salesperson who uses the software all day to sell.
There were already a few exceptions. Clocking in on a terminal, or selling at a till with a simple 4-digit code, required no individual license: only the person who opened the till in the morning needed one. But for everything else, requesting time off, viewing a record, receiving a notification, you had to pay, up to the previous version of Odoo, the same price as for a full-time user.
Odoo 20 changes that. It automatically detects who really uses the software extensively and who only touches it lightly, then adjusts the price accordingly.
How it works, concretely
Every person who has an account in Odoo is automatically placed in one of these two categories:
- Reduced rate (“Light”): the person only performs personal actions, without ever managing a third party's affairs.
- Full rate (“Standard”): the person has access to a real management function: selling, buying, managing inventory, running a project.
The most important thing to understand is that nobody needs to touch anything. The software looks at what each person is allowed to do, and deduces the rate on its own. Give someone a new right, and they automatically change category, with no setting and no call to your provider. Remove it, and the person goes back to the reduced rate just as automatically.
Who stays at the reduced rate
Three broad families of situations stay at the reduced rate. The detail matters, because that is precisely where the real savings hide, along with the misconceptions.
Jobs that produce real work, within a limited framework
A warehouse worker who scans parcels at receipt or shipment with a scanner or a tablet does real work every day: they record receipts, shipments, and inventories, create labels, and track serial numbers. Yet they stay at the reduced rate, because Odoo built them a separate tool, apart from the rest of the software.
A quality controller who records their checks and triggers alerts in case of defects also stays at the reduced rate, as long as they work in this dedicated quality tool.
An employee who refers a candidate for hiring, tracks their referral points, and invites their contacts to apply also stays at the reduced rate: Odoo has put this case in a category of its own, very explicitly named in the software “referral user only”.
Strictly personal uses
Requesting your own time off, clocking your own hours, viewing your own payslip, choosing how you receive your notifications, reading the pages of an internal documentation space you have access to. Everything that remains strictly personal, without ever touching someone else's information, stays at the reduced rate.
One point deserves detail, because it often surprises: an employee who has the right to read the pages of an internal documentation space stays at the reduced rate, even if they are authorized, on a given page, to edit it. In practice, a person at the reduced rate will never be able to validate a modification, whatever permission is granted on that particular page. The reduced-rate limit always prevails over the one-off authorization.
Settings that stay light, without giving a real right of use
This is the most misleading family, and the one that must be detailed most carefully. Several screens or options stay at the reduced rate even though they belong to heavy modules, without giving the right to actually use them.
- The tablet screen used in the manufacturing workshop remains accessible at the reduced rate for display. But a worker who actually wants to modify a manufacturing order from this screen needs full access, which is at the full rate.
- Deciding who in the company has the right to create or modify templates of documents to be signed electronically remains a reduced-rate setting. Signing a document yourself, however, does not depend on this setting.
- Enabling the tracking of environmental and social indicators (the famous ESG reporting required of more and more companies) remains a reduced-rate setting, unrelated to actually producing this report on a daily basis.
- Displaying an entry assistant to help fill in timesheets stays at the reduced rate: it is an entry aid, not a right to manage the time of an entire team.
- Displaying stock moves linked to rental contracts stays at the reduced rate in read mode, without giving the right to manage those moves.
The common point of all these cases: they are checkboxes in the settings, not rights to act. Many companies think they will save more than they actually can because of this nuance, confusing “the screen exists and remains accessible” with “the person can really use it”.
An example to get a sense of it
Take a team of 20 people: 6 warehouse workers who scan, 4 technicians who work at customers' sites, 3 people on the HR side who only do self-service, and 4 sellers/buyers plus 3 managers who really manage inventory, projects, or production.
Result: 13 people out of 20 stay at the reduced rate. More than half of the team. Of course, this is only an example: the real ratio depends entirely on your company, your jobs, and how you organize work.
The questions we are asked most often
Our technicians have their interventions signed on a tablet, and sometimes offer an additional part or service directly at the customer's site. Do they stay at the reduced rate?
The answer comes in two parts. Having an intervention signed stays at the reduced rate: it is a right included as standard for a technician who manages their own appointments. Proposing and getting an additional quotation accepted, however, moves them to the full rate, because selling something, even in the field, requires a right of access to sales, which is never at the reduced rate.
Concretely, a company must choose: either all its technicians move to the full rate so they can sell on site, or only part of the team, a dedicated sales role for example, has this right, while the rest of the technical team stays at the reduced rate.
A warehouse worker who scans all day, but sometimes makes a correction in the classic inventory management screen, do they stay at the reduced rate?
No, not as soon as they touch that screen. Scanning alone (receipt, shipment, inventory) stays at the reduced rate. But as soon as the same person gets the right to open the classic inventory management screen, even for an occasional, rare correction, they switch to the full rate. What matters is not frequency of use, it is the right granted: even used once a month, this right is enough to change the rate.
And our accountant?
An accountant is always at the full rate. Keeping accounts, validating entries, and managing finances requires full access to accounting, which is never at the reduced rate. Only a few ancillary settings (cash rounding, the delivery address on an invoice, the definition of a fiscal year that does not last 12 months) stay at the reduced rate, but they are never enough on their own to run an accountant's workstation.
Our HR manager approves their team's time-off requests, does that stay light?
No. Requesting your own time off always stays at the reduced rate, for any employee. But approving someone else's request is a management function in its own right, and it requires a different right, which moves this profile to the full rate, even though, on paper, it is only about time off.
Our employees consult our internal documentation (procedures, operating instructions). Does that move them to the full rate if they have the right to edit it?
No, and it is a special case worth knowing. Reading always stays at the reduced rate. Even if an employee is explicitly given the right to edit a specific page, as long as they stay at the reduced rate, that modification will remain forbidden to them in practice: the rate limit applies first, over any authorization granted page by page.
The table to remember
| Profile | Stays at the reduced rate? |
|---|---|
| Employee who requests time off, clocks in, views their pay | Yes |
| Employee who reads internal documentation | Yes |
| Warehouse worker who works only by scanning | Yes |
| Quality controller | Yes |
| Employee who refers a candidate | Yes |
| Technician who has interventions signed | Yes |
| Salesperson who creates quotations | No |
| Buyer who confirms purchase orders | No |
| Warehouse worker who opens the classic inventory management screen | No |
| Accountant / management controller | No |
| HR manager who approves team time off | No |
| Employee who edits an internal documentation page | No |
| Technician who sells an additional service in the field | No |
| Project manager, recruiter, communications manager | No |
What to remember
This new system can noticeably reduce the cost of your Odoo licenses, especially if your company employs a lot of field or production staff. But there is no universal rule: everything depends on who does what, day to day, in your organization. The settings that stay light without giving a real right of use, described above, are often the main source of confusion when doing the math: better to know them before calculating your expected savings than to discover them afterward.
Want to know what it means for you? ANOR works with you, from the actual list of your users, to assess the split between reduced rate and full rate, and the savings it represents on your next Odoo project. To discuss it: