Choosing an Odoo Implementation Partner in Syria: Outages, USD and Control

In most countries, a company looking for an Odoo implementation partner opens the partner directory on odoo.com, filters by country and compares a shortlist. A business in Damascus or Aleppo cannot do that. The directory's country filter covers 170 countries and has no entry for Syria; the Syria page simply falls back to the worldwide list of 4,447 partners (as of October 2026). That says nothing about who can serve Syrian clients, but it means you will usually compare firms registered elsewhere, and you have to ask each one how it actually delivers here.

Odoo's contact page lists no office in Syria; its Middle East office is in Dubai. The email support included in a subscription is offered in English, French, Spanish and Dutch, not Arabic, and once you work with a partner, that partner becomes your main point of contact. In practice your partner is your Arabic-speaking help desk, your project manager and often the person who knows your database best.

Three local facts raise the stakes:

• Odoo has no Syrian fiscal localization package, so the partner has to set up your chart of accounts, taxes and reports.
• The pound lost two zeros on 1 January 2026 while its code stayed SYP, so any migrated history needs a conversion plan.
• Power and connectivity are unreliable, so the project plan must work around them.

The rest of this guide is a checklist for testing a partner against those realities.

Odoo lists its official partners as Ready, Silver or Gold. The levels reflect net new Enterprise users sold in the last 12 months, certified staff and, from Silver up, customer retention: 10, 75 or 300 users, 1, 3 or 6 certified people, and 70% or 80% retention. Odoo reviews them every quarter.

For a Syrian buyer, those numbers say less than they seem. You will usually be comparing firms registered in other countries, so a level reflects the firm's whole business, not its work in Syria. None of the measures shows whether it can handle a distributor that sells in dollars and pays its costs in pounds, and a Ready firm may still have the right consultant for a 15-user company. So check the delivery, not the badge:

• Search the partner by name in the worldwide list. Note the country it is registered in and the countries of its listed references, then ask how many of those references are Syrian companies.
• Ask whether the certified consultants are its own staff or whether delivery is subcontracted to freelancers inside Syria, and whose certifications, on which Odoo version, will actually be on your project.
• Ask who will be on site in Damascus or Aleppo at go-live, and who will work remotely.
• Ask for two references in your industry, ideally one that kept USD and SYP books through outages, and call them yourself.

A sound proposal for a Syrian company sets out these steps in writing, whatever the partner calls them:

• Analysis: what standard Odoo covers, what needs configuration and what needs development, including your chart of accounts and taxes.
• Configuration: standard features first, with Studio or code only where a real gap remains.
• Migration: opening balances, open invoices and stock, plus a stated rule for converting old-pound history and for who enters SYP rates, from which reference and how often.
• Training: in Arabic, in short sessions booked when the power is on, ideally recorded so staff can replay them.
• Go-live: a cut-over date, tills tested in offline mode and UPS units on the tills and router.
• Support: a named contact, response times and agreed channels.

Standard first matters most for the Syrian layer. With no Syrian localization in Odoo, your chart of accounts, taxes and reports should be configuration: the chart imported, and taxes and report lines set up in Odoo's own screens, where a later partner can change them. If a partner offers its own Syrian localization module, ask whether it is configuration or code. Code means the Custom plan, hosting on Odoo.sh or your own servers, and porting to each new version before you can upgrade. Odoo ports it only for modules you pay its maintenance fee on; otherwise your partner bills the work. Staying behind is no escape: Odoo's subscription agreement adds a yearly fee of 25% of the annual price for databases older than the versions it covers.

Start with the Syrian question: who contracts, invoices and is paid for the Odoo subscription, and by which route? Sanctions rules have changed since 2025. The EU lifted most economic sanctions on Syria on 28 May 2025, which matters because Odoo SA is a Belgian company. In the US, an executive order of 30 June 2025 revoked the Syria sanctions programme, a Commerce Department rule of 2 September 2025 eased export controls, Congress repealed the Caesar Act in December 2025, and the State Department rescinded Syria's State Sponsor of Terrorism designation on 24 August 2026. Some restrictions remain, such as sanctions on people and companies on the SDN list and licence requirements for some dual-use items. Get the partner's answer in writing and check it with your legal adviser.

Then ask for the proposal in USD, with the exchange-rate rule for anything payable in pounds, and with licences, hosting, custom-code maintenance and the year-two price as separate lines. Check that it also covers what a Syrian project needs, even items you buy:

• On-site days in Damascus or Aleppo, priced apart from remote days.
• UPS units and a backup internet line for go-live.
• Offline testing of the tills before cut-over.
• Recorded training sessions.
• SMS credits for order and payment messages. Odoo's SMS service reaches Syrian numbers (+963), at a higher cost per message than many countries, while Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform, which Odoo's WhatsApp app relies on, is not available to businesses in Syria and does not deliver to WhatsApp users there.

If the owner manages from abroad, keep the subscription and the administrator account in the company's name, recoverable through a company email address rather than a manager's personal one or the partner's. Then plan for outages:

• Download backups on a schedule, from the database manager on Odoo Online or from Odoo.sh, and keep copies on storage the company controls.
• Check that a backup actually opens before you need it.
• On Odoo.sh, keep the code repository in your company's GitHub organisation, and have your contract give you ownership of custom modules, or a licence another partner can work under.

You can switch partner by giving Odoo 30 days' written notice, and Odoo's partnership agreement bars partners from blocking your access to the Enterprise licence without Odoo's written approval. After go-live, ask who answers in Arabic, at which hours and how fast.

Walk away if you see:

• No written rule for converting old-pound history.
• A go-live plan with no offline test of the tills and no UPS.
• Nobody named who can be on site at go-live.
• Vague answers on who holds the subscription and how it is paid.
• Admin passwords, backups or the code repository kept by the partner.

METCH, an official Odoo partner at Ready level with a team in Damascus, can review your go-live plan for power cuts and your old-pound conversion rule. Book a free consultation and bring your questions.