Glossary

Terms used throughout this documentation. Odoo vocabulary often differs from ordinary business vocabulary, and the mismatch causes real misunderstandings in client meetings.

Odoo platform

Module

A self-contained unit of functionality that can be installed or uninstalled. What business users call a "feature" is usually one module or a small group of them.

App

A module marked as user-facing, appearing as a tile in the Apps menu. Every app is a module; not every module is an app.

Dependency (depends)

Modules that must be installed before this one. Odoo installs them automatically, which is why installing one module can pull in a dozen others.

Manifest (__manifest__.py)

The file declaring a module's name, version, dependencies and data files. The authoritative source for what a module is.

Community Edition

The free, open-source Odoo. What NestERP is built on.

Enterprise Edition

Odoo's paid edition. Contains modules unavailable to us — full Accounting (account_accountant), Studio, Sign, official payroll, IoT.

Model

A business object stored as a database table — res.partner (contacts), account.move (journal entries), stock.picking (transfers).

Field

One attribute on a model. Relational field types matter for documentation: many2one (this record points at one other), one2many (this record has many children), many2many (both sides have many).

View

A UI definition — list, form, kanban, pivot. Customisation usually means inheriting and extending a core view.

Record rule

A row-level access restriction. How multi-company and multi-branch separation is enforced.

Access group

A permission set assigned to users. Determines menu visibility and create/read/write/ delete rights per model.

Upgrade (-u)

Reloading a module's data definitions — views, menus, access rules — into an existing database. Distinct from restarting the server, which is what reloads Python code.

Accounting

Journal

A book of account entries of one kind — sales, purchases, bank, cash, miscellaneous. Every posted document lands in a journal.

Journal entry

A double-entry accounting record. Model account.move. An invoice is a journal entry with a customer-facing presentation.

Chart of accounts

The complete list of a company's accounts. Each account's type determines whether its balance appears on the Profit & Loss or the Balance Sheet.

Analytic account

A cost centre. A parallel classification used to see cost and revenue by department, project, branch or activity, independent of the general ledger.

Fiscal position

A rule set that swaps taxes and accounts for particular customers — exports, exempt bodies, different countries.

Reconciliation

Matching payments against invoices, or ledger entries against a bank statement.

Lock date

A date before which entries can no longer be created or edited. The only real protection against back-dated changes to a closed period.

Anglo-Saxon accounting

Cost of goods sold is recognised when goods are delivered. Under Continental accounting it is recognised at invoicing. Set once, at configuration, and not safely changed mid-year.

Inventory

Picking

Any stock movement document — a receipt, delivery or internal transfer. Model stock.picking.

Stock move

One product moving from one location to another. Pickings contain moves.

Location

A place stock can sit. Internal, customer, vendor, or virtual (scrap, inventory loss).

Valuation

The monetary value of stock on hand. Real-time (automated) valuation posts accounting entries on each movement; manual/periodic does not.

Costing method

How unit cost is computed — Standard, FIFO, or Average (AVCO). Set per product category.

Bill of Materials (BoM)

The component list required to manufacture a product.

Human resources and payroll

Contract

The employment record carrying wage, salary structure and validity dates. Payroll cannot compute without one.

Salary structure

The ordered set of salary rules applied to produce a payslip.

Salary rule

One computation line — basic pay, an allowance, PAYE, NSSF, a deduction. Tanzanian statutory rules live here.

Payslip

One employee's pay for one period. Model hr.payslip.

Payslip batch (payslip run)

A group of payslips generated and processed together, usually one per month.

NestERP specific

Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3

Our dependency classification. Tier 1 is Odoo core, Tier 2 is third-party (Cybrosys, Heritage, OCA), Tier 3 is CodeNest custom. Tier drives who is accountable for a defect.

OpenHRMS

Cybrosys' free HR suite. The base our HR and payroll extensions build on.

TRA

Tanzania Revenue Authority. thalia_tra_reconciliation reconciles recorded transactions against TRA records.

EFD / VFD

Electronic and Virtual Fiscal Device. Tanzanian fiscal receipting hardware and services. Not integrated by any Odoo edition — see Product Scope Out of scope.