Odoo Inventory Management in Syria: Dollar Costs, New Pound and Power Cuts

Four decisions shape an inventory project in Syria, and each is harder to change after go-live.

• Company currency: choose USD or the new pound before the first entry, because Odoo refuses to change the company currency once journal items exist. The other currency is then converted at the rate stored for each document's date, so decide who loads the SYP rate and how often.
• The new pound: since 1 January 2026, 100 old pounds equal 1 new pound under the same SYP code, so Odoo cannot tell the two scales apart. Decide whether to convert old-pound costs and price lists or to start fresh in dollars or new pounds.
• Accounts and costing: with no Syrian fiscal localization in Odoo, you start from Odoo's generic chart of accounts and adapt it, the taxes and each category's stock accounts with your accountant. Since Odoo 19, the costing method and perpetual or periodic accounting are set in Accounting > Configuration > Settings, and a product category can override the method. Landed costs need AVCO or FIFO.
• Hosting: Odoo Online, Odoo.sh or your own server.

On hosting, the US and EU lifted most economic sanctions on Syria in 2025, and the US removed Syria from its state-sponsors-of-terrorism list in August 2026. Targeted listings and some export controls remain, and Washington still reports on Syria every 180 days under the law that repealed the Caesar Act, so confirm with Odoo and your adviser what applies to your company before you subscribe.

Give each warehouse a code staff recognise, up to five characters: DAM for Damascus and, if you also hold stock in Aleppo, ALP. With Storage Locations on, tick Damascus under Resupply From on the Aleppo warehouse, then tick the route Odoo creates (named like Aleppo: Supply Product from Damascus) on each product and give it a reordering rule or the MTO route. A branch shortage then becomes a recorded transfer instead of a phone call.

Odoo can add input, quality-control, output and packing steps to receipts and deliveries, but most Syrian distributors should start with one step. Each extra step is another transfer to validate, and when power or internet cuts out, half-finished steps pile up. Put the effort into locations instead:

• Name them after what staff see, such as DAM/Stock/A-03 for aisle A, shelf 3, or a cold room.
• Validate each transfer in one sitting.
• Before closing, have a manager check Moves History with the To Do filter, so nothing waits half-done overnight.

Set reordering rules on imported items to Manual: Odoo then only lists the need on the replenishment dashboard, and whoever negotiates dollar-priced foreign orders reviews it weekly and clicks Order. Keep a higher Max on items whose supply is unreliable. Replenish on Order (MTO) suits made-to-measure furniture in Damascus, not fast movers, and an Aleppo fabric wholesaler can define a 50-metre roll as a unit relative to the metre, buy by the roll and sell by the metre.

Turn on Lots & Serial Numbers under Inventory > Configuration > Settings > Traceability, then Expiration Dates, which appears once lots are on.

Use lots for goods with a batch number and a shelf life, such as rice, cooking oil, baby formula or medicines. On the product, set expiration, best-before, removal and alert days, and set First Expiry First Out (FEFO) as the Force Removal Strategy on the product category, or as the Removal Strategy on the storage location, so pickers take the lot that expires first.

One detail matters for importers. Odoo counts expiration days from the day you receive the goods, not the day they were made, so stock that spent weeks in transit or at a border crossing gets a later date than the one printed on the pack. Type the printed expiry date on each lot at receipt; Odoo lets you overwrite the computed date. Odoo 20's Point of Sale warns when an expired product is selected, but test how expired lots behave at delivery rather than assuming they are blocked.

Use serial numbers for items sold with a warranty or after-sales service: generators, inverters and solar batteries. Recording the serial at receipt and delivery turns a warranty claim into one search: which supplier shipment the unit came from and which customer received it. The traceability report on each lot or serial number shows that whole path.

Go-live starts from one count, so plan it around the power supply, not only the calendar.

Counting happens in Inventory > Operations > Physical Inventory. Counted quantities are saved line by line, and stock does not change until someone presses Apply, so the real risk is not losing work but leaving a count unapplied while goods keep moving. Count and apply one location at a time, keep the router, access point and any local server on a UPS, keep scanners charged, and count when power and internet are most reliable.

A go-live order for Syrian companies:

• Settle the decisions above: company currency, USD/SYP rate policy, the treatment of old-pound figures and the costing method.
• Merge duplicate items from old spreadsheets so each has one product record, with its reference, barcode, unit, tracking and category.
• Enter opening unit costs in the currency you chose.
• Count every location on one date, with lots and printed expiry dates, and apply it as opening stock.
• After a few weeks of real movements, add reordering rules, then cycle counts: with Storage Locations on, give each location an Inventory Frequency in days, and keep the annual count date (31 December by default) for the full count.

Request a Count, which only Inventory Administrators can use, assigns lines to a person and a date. If your staff use the Barcode app, an Enterprise app, they see only the counts assigned to them and scheduled for today or earlier.

If your books are in dollars, freight, clearance and customs duties paid in pounds can still be added to the cost of the goods. Odoo handles this with landed costs. They need AVCO or FIFO as the products' costing method (the company default or a category override), a Service product marked as a landed cost and a validated receipt. Record each charge as a vendor bill in SYP, then create the landed cost from the bill and select the receipt. Odoo converts the pound amount into the company currency at the SYP rate stored for the bill date and spreads that converted amount across the goods, so a missing or stale rate flows straight into product costs.

For an owner who manages from abroad, three screens make a weekly review:

• Inventory > Reporting > Stock: quantity on hand, unit cost and total value per product.
• Moves History, filtered on Done: what moved and between which locations, including inventory adjustments.
• Accounting > Review > Inventory Valuation: whether accounting and inventory values agree.

Odoo documents its inventory reports as available only to users with admin access, so check your user's rights. On Odoo 20, the Aging Report in Moves Analysis also shows slow movers.

METCH, a certified Odoo partner with a team in Damascus, can set up your warehouses, currency and valuation with you before anyone counts a shelf. Book a free consultation to plan your inventory go-live.