Should you upgrade to Odoo 20? Our honest take

Every September a new Odoo version lands, and someone in your team forwards you a screenshot asking if you should upgrade. Odoo 20 was released in September 2026. We have been working through the release notes and testing it, and here is our honest take.

What is genuinely useful in Odoo 20

• Offline mode: records can be created, edited, archived and deleted without a connection — a real gain for field, warehouse and sales teams on patchy networks.
• Accounting: bill lines are predicted from your history, matching rules are better, double payments are blocked in the payment wizard, and you can switch between tax-included and tax-excluded prices on orders and invoices.
• Valuation without Inventory: stock valuation can be managed in accounting without installing the Inventory app, useful for simpler businesses.
• Everyday usability: assign activities to roles as well as people, pin messages in the chatter, CC recipients on emails, and share a link to a view that keeps its filters and grouping.
• Mobile: improved date picker, bottom sheets on tablets and better form layouts.
• eCommerce: automated cross-sell suggestions, minimum order quantities per product and a preferred delivery date at checkout.
• Localisation: updates in more than 70 countries, including India payroll (printable TDS declarations, gratuity report), Saudi Arabia payroll (GOSI integration) and UAE updates.

What to be careful with

AI is the headline of this release: agents can now create and update records, work from uploaded files, run inside automated actions and connect to external systems through MCP. It is impressive, but every AI feature now consumes credits bought through Odoo's in-app purchases. Budget for that before you plan workflows around it, and start with one or two use cases where the time saved is easy to measure.

Also check your customisations: Odoo 20 replaces Font Awesome with Material Symbols icons, so custom modules and themes that rely on Font Awesome icons need to be reviewed.

Should you upgrade now?

• On Odoo 19 with light customisation: plan the upgrade in the next few months, after the first maintenance updates.
• On Odoo 16 to 18: upgrading to 20 lets you skip intermediate versions in one project — usually the better investment than a one-step hop.
• On Odoo 15 or older, or heavily customised: start with an upgrade audit now; the longer you wait, the bigger the jump.
• Relying on third-party apps: confirm each one has an Odoo 20 version before you commit to a date. All our Odoo Apps Store modules with 20.0 support are listed on our apps page.

How we plan an upgrade

Step one is always an audit of custom modules. Most pain in upgrades comes from poorly written customisation, not from Odoo itself. We score each module red, amber or green and quote based on the red ones.

Then we run a test upgrade on a copy of your database, list every breaking change, and rebuild only what genuinely earns its keep. With each release, some legacy customisations become replaceable by standard features, which reduces what you have to maintain.

Timeline you can actually trust

• Small Odoo (under 10 users, light customisation): 3 to 4 weeks.
• Mid (10 to 50 users, moderate customisation): 6 to 10 weeks.
• Large (50+ users, heavy customisation, integrations): 3 to 6 months.

Whatever the size, do the upgrade outside your busy season. Want to know what upgrading to Odoo 20 would involve for your system? Ask us for an upgrade audit.