Odoo 20 Is Here: What's New for Australian Businesses and Should You Upgrade?

Odoo 20 was unveiled at the opening keynote of Odoo Experience 2026 in Brussels on 24 September 2026. It is available now on Odoo Online, Odoo.sh and on-premise, and Odoo plans to support it until September 2029. This post covers what matters for Australian small and medium businesses, what changed under the hood for anyone with customisations, and when it makes sense to upgrade.

• Biggest themes: AI agents that can act on records, a built-in MCP server, and a long list of practical accounting, inventory and manufacturing improvements.
• Biggest surprise: the Field Service app has been discontinued and its features merged into Planning.
• For Australia: a new Basiq open banking integration for bank feeds. Payroll (STP Phase 2 and SuperStream) and the BAS carry over from Odoo 19.
• Pricing changed too: the Custom plan is now A$80 per user per month (billed yearly) and there is a new Light User tier.
• Our upgrade advice: if you are on 16 or 17, plan your upgrade now. If you are on 18 or 19, upgrade when a specific Odoo 20 feature solves a real problem.

AI agents and the MCP server

AI was the headline of the keynote, and Odoo 20 moves it from "chat assistant" to something that can actually do work:

• AI agents that create and update records. You can give an agent instructions, including by uploading a PDF of a procedure, and it works on Odoo records within the permissions it is given.
• Agents in automations. Agents can be triggered from automated and scheduled actions, so an agent can run as one step of a workflow.
• MCP server. Odoo can be connected to external AI tools through the Model Context Protocol, with tools to search, read, create and update records.
• Voice dictation to agents and automatic AI model selection.
• AI Website Assistant that can build or edit pages, forms and menus, including replicating a page from a URL.

Accounting

• Bill line prediction based on each vendor's bill history, and automatic customer invoice reminders.
• Two-level duplicate detection on bills and invoices, with red and yellow warnings.
• Bank consistency: entries that affect the bank must now come from bank transactions, which makes reconciliation cleaner.
• Renamed payment statuses: "In Process" is now "Paid", and "Paid" is now "Reconciled". Worth telling your accounts team before go-live, because the old "Paid" now means something different.
• Parent accounts replace account groups for structuring the chart of accounts, and account codes are now optional.
• Depreciation models replace asset models, and stock can be valued without the Inventory app installed.
• Expenses: the Employee Expenses menu is gone, and approved expenses now create draft vendor bills.
• Tax included or excluded can be switched per document on sales orders, purchase orders and invoices.

Inventory and manufacturing

• Suggested minimum and maximum levels for reordering rules, based on your history.
• Inventory at a past date and a new stock aging report.
• Landed costs on individual products and HS codes per variant, both useful for importers.
• Continuous production: record quantities on work orders as you go, and let the next operation start before the previous one finishes.
• Split an in-progress manufacturing order, reset an MO to draft, and see a provisional MO cost while it runs and the real cost when it is done.
• Flexible consumption is always on, so components can be consumed differently to the bill of materials. If you relied on strict consumption to catch errors, review your process.

Sales, CRM, POS and eCommerce

• Sales: a new sales dashboard, editable margins, section templates, numbered order lines, description-only lines and periodic pricing by period or weekday.
• Commissions: payment-based and manager commissions.
• CRM: lead rotation rules, projects created straight from opportunities, and lead generation now powered by Dun & Bradstreet instead of Clearbit.
• Point of Sale: service fees, multiple currencies at checkout, snoozing products, and "pay after your meal" for QR self-ordering.
• eCommerce: portal returns, preferred delivery dates, minimum order quantities, auto publish and unpublish based on stock, and tax-included or tax-excluded display per pricelist so B2B and B2C customers can share one site.
• Website SEO: structured data is added by default and llms.txt is supported.

Field Service is now part of Planning

This is the change most likely to catch Australian trades and service businesses out. The Field Service app has been discontinued in Odoo 20, and its features have moved into the Planning app: a live technician map, routing, travel fees, worksheets and a service request form for your website. If you run jobs through Field Service today, your upgrade needs a proper test of the new screens, any worksheet templates and any customisations built on Field Service. See our Odoo for field service page for how we approach these setups.

HR and payroll

• A revamped pay run workflow, net-to-gross simulation, and test printing a pay run before you commit it.
• Work entries have been removed and merged with time off types, and the Planning to Payroll integration has gone. If your payroll relies on work entries, this needs testing.
• Remote Work has been merged into the Employees app.

Australian payroll continues to support Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 and SuperStream through Odoo's Superchoice integration. We cover what is automated, what is not supported and what to check for Payday Super in Odoo 20 and Australian compliance.

What is new for Australia

• Basiq open banking: the only Australia-specific line in the Odoo 20 release notes is a new bank synchronisation integration through Basiq. See our Basiq post for how it works.
• Peppol e-invoicing: Odoo says it is compliant with Australia's Peppol requirements, but today validating an invoice for a Peppol customer downloads an XML file that you upload to the network yourself. Odoo says it is in the process of becoming an access point for Australia and New Zealand.
• BAS, TPAR and ABA files carry over from Odoo 19, which added support for all BAS types and default taxes such as luxury car tax, fuel tax credits, wine equalisation tax and FBT.

Pricing changed at the same time

Alongside Odoo 20, Odoo changed its prices for the first time since 2022. Standard is unchanged at A$43 per user per month (billed yearly), Custom went up to A$80, and a new Light User tier arrived at A$12.90. The catch is that active employee records without a login can now count as Light Users. We break it down in Odoo's 2026 price change in Australia.

Under the hood: what matters if you have customisations

• New platform requirements: Python 3.12 to 3.14 and PostgreSQL 16 or later (Odoo 19 needed Python 3.10 and PostgreSQL 13). Self-hosted servers may need an OS or database upgrade first.
• Record rules are gone. Access rights now carry a domain directly. Any custom module with its own record rules needs its security rewritten.
• Tracking values are gone. Chatter tracking messages are now generated on the fly.
• Material Symbols replace Font Awesome icons across the interface.
• Integrations: the old XML-RPC and JSON-RPC APIs are deprecated. Part of them was removed in Odoo 20, and the rest is scheduled for removal in Odoo 22. New integrations should use the JSON-2 API, which needs the Custom plan.

We go through each of these, and what tends to break in real upgrades, in Upgrading custom Odoo modules to Odoo 20.

Should you upgrade to Odoo 20?

• On Odoo 16 or 17: yes, start planning now. Both are past the end of standard support, which means no more security updates, and staying on an old version can attract a 25% extra fee on your subscription. See Odoo 16 and 17 are out of support for the options.
• On Odoo 18: supported until September 2027. Budget for an upgrade in 2027 and do it on your schedule, not in a rush.
• On Odoo 19: supported until September 2028. Upgrade when an Odoo 20 feature, such as AI agents, continuous production or B2B/B2C pricing on one website, solves a real problem for you.
• Starting a new implementation: we would normally start on Odoo 20, after checking that every third-party app you depend on has a version 20 release.
• On Odoo Online: Odoo requires major-version databases to upgrade every two years, so the timing may be decided for you. Check the upgrade notice in your database.

Sources

• Odoo 20 release notes (Odoo, September 2026)
• Standard and extended support (Odoo documentation)
• Australia fiscal localisation (Odoo documentation)
• Odoo pricing (AUD prices checked October 2026)