Odoo CRM in Syria: A USD Pipeline with SMS Follow-up and Bank Transfers

In Syria, CRM design starts with currency, not stages. Expected revenue on every opportunity is held in the company currency, so pipeline, forecast and won figures all read in your books' currency. Companies that price and report in dollars often keep their books in USD; a business that is almost entirely local may keep SYP. Settle it before you go live, because Odoo will not let you change the company currency once journal items exist.

Then set up one pricelist per currency:

• Enable Pricelists in the Sales settings and create a USD list and, for buyers who need it, an SYP list.
• Set each customer's pricelist on their contact, so quotes start in the right currency without the salesperson choosing.
• Keep opportunity values in the company currency even when the quote will go out in SYP, so the pipeline stays comparable.
• A down-payment invoice takes the quote's currency, so the pricelist also decides how advances are billed.

Whether you may quote and settle in USD inside Syria depends on current Central Bank of Syria rules for your activity, so confirm it with your accountant before you set the default pricelist.

Leads, by contrast, are a quick decision: an optional qualifying step, off by default. A company with two showrooms and a manageable flow of inquiries can leave them off, so every inquiry lands in the pipeline as an opportunity. Switch them on in the CRM settings only if one person must first screen a large volume of vague requests.

Many Syrian companies sell through a Facebook page, the phone and the showroom floor more than through a website form. Odoo can take in all three, but only one of them arrives on its own.

Facebook and Instagram messages: Odoo 20 Enterprise can connect Messenger and Instagram direct messages to a live chat team, so operators reply from Odoo. In a live chat conversation, typing /lead creates a lead or opportunity and copies the transcript into its internal notes. Meta's platform rules may restrict pages or users in Syria, as they do for WhatsApp, so test the connection on your own page before you rely on it.

Phone calls and walk-ins: these have no automatic route, so logging them has to become a habit. The pipeline's quick-create card takes a name, phone number and expected revenue in seconds. Then open the card and set the Source on the Extra Info tab. Create sources that match how your customers really reach you, for example Phone call, Showroom visit and Facebook page.

Email: give each showroom team its own alias, say one for Damascus and one for Aleppo, so every email becomes an opportunity in the right team.

Fill in the source on every record. You can group pipeline reports by it to see which channel brings deals that actually close, and predictive lead scoring can use it as a variable. Without it, an owner cannot tell whether the Facebook page or the showroom is earning its cost.

Without a local payment gateway, the useful question about a deal is how far the money has moved. Name the stages after that and keep them few: New, Quote sent, Signed, Paid. Make Paid your only stage marked Is Won Stage, so pressing Won moves the card there.

The quote comes from the New Quotation button on the opportunity, once Sales is installed and a customer is linked. What happens next depends on two options on the quote:

• Online signature only: the customer signs from the portal with a signature generated from their name, drawn by hand or uploaded, and the order is confirmed.
• Signature plus online payment: after signing, the customer sees the payment methods, and the order is confirmed once payment is done.

No online payment provider in Odoo's documentation lists Syria, so use the two methods that need no gateway. Wire Transfer shows your bank details and a payment reference, and the order stays at Quotation sent until the transfer arrives and the bank transaction is matched to the payment. Pay on Invoice, added in Odoo 20, lets the customer confirm online and pay later against the invoice, which suits buyers who settle in cash.

Two things do not happen on their own. Neither signature nor payment moves the opportunity, so the salesperson drags the card to Signed and presses Won once the money is in. And a signed order is not yet an invoice: Create Invoice on the order produces one, in the quote's currency.

Follow-up in Odoo runs on activities, each with a due date: red when overdue, orange when due today, green when planned. For customer messages, plan around what works from Syria:

• SMS: Odoo's IAP SMS service lists Syria (+963) and supports a custom sender name there, on prepaid credits that do not expire. Customers cannot reply, so include a phone number. Arabic is Unicode: 70 characters fit in one SMS, and longer texts are split into 67-character parts, each counted as a separate SMS.
• Calls: Odoo Phone has three verified providers (Axivox, DIDWW, OnSIP); ask whether they serve Syrian numbers before you count on them. Another provider can work if it offers a SIP server over WebSocket and supports WebRTC, but Odoo does not verify it; otherwise, log calls as Call activities.
• WhatsApp: Odoo's Enterprise-only WhatsApp app needs Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform, whose country restrictions currently list Syria for businesses and recipients alike, so it cannot reach customers in Syria for now.

The step that slips most easily is the payment. Build an Activity Plan for it under CRM > Configuration > Activity Plans, and launch it when the customer signs:

• Signing day: a To-Do to text your bank details and the order reference, using the SMS button beside the phone number.
• Day 3: a Call activity if no transfer has arrived.
• Day 5: a To-Do to check the bank with the accountant, then register the payment on the invoice.

A plan only schedules reminders, so start each morning with the red ones.

Syria has no Odoo fiscal localization, and the gap shows at the invoice: taxes, chart of accounts and invoice layout are set up manually or with a partner. Syrian tax authorities have also required some sectors to link invoicing electronically with the tax administration; Odoo has no connector for that, so check your sector's obligations first.

For an owner following sales from abroad, a user account and CRM > Reporting > Forecast give a USD view of what should close each month; remove the default My Opportunities filter and save the view as a favorite. Digest Emails, in the general settings, can also mail them weekly counts of new leads and won opportunities, plus revenue in the company currency.

Predictive lead scoring uses a naive Bayes model trained on your own won and lost opportunities, always including stage and team. If you import old opportunities from Excel, set Consider leads created as of to a date after the import so the model learns only from deals recorded in Odoo, and treat early probabilities as rough. Salespeople can override a probability by hand; the computed figure stays visible and one click restores it.

Three habits keep the numbers trustworthy: log every phone call and walk-in, register transfers on the day they arrive, and keep the pipeline in one currency.

METCH, a certified Odoo partner with a team in Damascus, can set up your currencies, rate policy, payment stages and SMS reminders. Book a free consultation to build a pipeline around how your customers actually buy and pay.