Weekly Odoo Notes: practical Odoo updates for Caribbean businesses
For many businesses in Aruba, the busiest months of the year run from roughly December to April. That means more cashiers and temporary staff at the till, so now is the time to check your Odoo Point of Sale (POS) setup.
This note is about Odoo 19, the version most of our customers use today. These settings are included in both the free and the paid edition of Odoo, whether it runs in Odoo's cloud or on your own server. On older versions, some names and menus differ.
1. Give every cashier their own login
With one shared login, you can't see who gave a discount or opened the cash drawer. The Log in with Employees setting fixes that (Point of Sale > Configuration > Settings, in the PoS Interface section).
Once it's on, staff log in at the register by scanning a badge, picking their name, or entering a PIN code. You set the badge and PIN on each employee's form, under the Settings tab.
You also choose what each person may do. Odoo 19 has three levels:
- Minimal rights: basic selling; can lock and unlock the register.
- Basic rights: adds opening the register, cash in and out, refunds, discounts and (unless Price Control is on, see below) changing a price by hand.
- Advanced rights: adds manager actions such as closing the register.
Tip: if nobody is listed under Basic rights, every employee of the company can log in. For high season, list your cashiers explicitly, including temporary staff, and remove them again when they leave.
2. Stop unapproved price changes
Turn on Price Control (POS settings, Pricing section). Price changes at the register are then limited to POS administrators and, when employee logins are on, staff with Advanced rights.
3. Make the end-of-day count stricter
Close each register at the end of every day. When you close, Odoo shows the number of orders, the total, and the expected amount for each payment method. The cashier counts the coins and bills, and closing the register sends the day's sales to your accounting.
Three settings help here:
- Coins/Bills (Point of Sale > Configuration): enter the notes and coins you actually accept, so counting is quick.
- Cash In/Out: cash taken out or added outside a sale is recorded with an amount and a reason. Only staff with Basic or Advanced rights can do this.
- Set Maximum Difference (POS settings, Payment section): enter an Authorized Difference, for example Afl. 5. If the cash count is off by more than that, the cashier can't close the register and is told to contact a manager.
If you have several registers, ask your administrator to give each one its own cash payment method and cash journal, so you can trace any difference to a specific register.
4. Know what happens when the internet goes down
Odoo POS keeps working during short internet outages. Products and customers are stored in the browser when the register opens. Orders made offline are saved there and sent to Odoo once the connection is back.
- Don't close or refresh the browser (or clear its data) until the POS is back online and has sent its orders to Odoo. Otherwise offline orders can be lost.
- Some things wait until you're back online: registering customers, invoices (created automatically once you reconnect) and live stock updates.
- Receipt printers and scales connected in the store keep working, as long as you don't change your network setup.
If your connection drops often, your Odoo administrator can store more products and customers on each register (it will take a bit longer to start up). In Google Chrome, turn off Memory Saver for the POS tab.
Next steps
- Before December: list your seasonal cashiers and give each one a PIN or badge and the right access level.
- Turn on Price Control and Set Maximum Difference, and enter the coins and bills you accept.
- Run a practice session on a test database or training register: sell, refund, do a cash in/out and close the register, so new staff see the full routine.
- Practice an outage: outside business hours, disconnect one test device from the network and walk your team through what still works.
Want help checking your POS setup before high season? Contact us. We handle Odoo implementations and upgrades together with our implementation partner, Insight Accounting.