Picking Odoo apps for small business use is mostly about restraint. Odoo has dozens of official apps and thousands of community modules, and installing them all at once gives you a cluttered menu and a long setup list. Start with the five apps below, get them working, and add more when a real need shows up. For each app we note which parts are in the free Community edition and which need Odoo Enterprise, checked against the Odoo 19 source code.
1. Invoicing and Accounting
Money in and money out is where most small teams start. In Community the app is called Invoicing; Enterprise replaces it with the full Accounting app.
- Community: customer invoices and vendor bills, payments, taxes and fiscal positions, multi-currency, and country localizations that preconfigure your chart of accounts and taxes.
- Enterprise only: automatic bank synchronization, the bank reconciliation screen, and financial reports such as the profit and loss and the balance sheet.
Setup tip: install your country's localization before you post any journal entry, so taxes and accounts are right from the first invoice. Track employee spending with the separate Expenses app, which is in Community.
2. CRM
Odoo CRM gives your sales team a Kanban pipeline from first contact to closed deal, so deals stop living in personal inboxes. The CRM app is in Community.
- Drag-and-drop pipeline with your own stages.
- Lead assignment rules and lead scoring.
- Email integration: replies to a lead are logged on the opportunity.
- Calendar integration for scheduling meetings.
- Pairs with Sales (quotations and orders) and Email Marketing, both in Community.
3. Inventory and Purchase
For anyone who sells physical products, Inventory replaces the stock spreadsheet with real-time stock levels and a full movement history. Inventory and Purchase are in Community.
- Community: multiple warehouses and locations, reordering rules that create purchase orders automatically, lot and serial number tracking, and delivery orders linked to Sales.
- Enterprise only: the Barcode app for scanning products during receipts, transfers and deliveries.
4. Employees and Time Off
Even a ten-person team needs one place for employee records. The Employees app holds profiles, documents and the org chart, and Time Off handles leave requests, approvals and a shared calendar.
- Community: Employees, Time Off, Attendances (clock in and out), Recruitment and Expenses.
- Enterprise only: Payroll, Appraisals and Planning (shift scheduling).
5. Website and eCommerce
Odoo's website builder shares a database with the rest of Odoo. Products from Inventory appear in your online store, and web orders flow straight into Sales and Inventory, with no sync tool between a shop and a separate accounting package. Website and eCommerce are in Community.
- Drag-and-drop page builder with responsive themes.
- Online store with stock levels from Inventory.
- Blog and landing pages.
- Payment providers such as Stripe and PayPal.
- Customer portal for orders and invoices.
Which Odoo modules to add next
- Project and Timesheets (Community) for service businesses that bill time.
- Point of Sale (Community) for a shop counter or restaurant.
- Manufacturing (Community includes bills of materials and work centers; Quality and PLM are Enterprise).
- Helpdesk and Field Service (Enterprise only) for support tickets and on-site work.
- Studio (Enterprise only) if non-developers will customize forms and automations.
Need a feature Community lacks? Check the free OCA modules before paying for Enterprise. For the full edition breakdown and Enterprise plans, see Odoo Community vs Enterprise.
Run these apps without a server
All five apps run on Easy Instance managed Odoo hosting, on Odoo 17 to 20, Community or Enterprise. Install them from Odoo's Apps menu, add community modules from the built-in marketplace or your GitHub repository (features), and let daily backups and monitoring run in the background. Pricing is $30 per worker a month with no per-user fees (pricing), and you can try it free for 10 days with no credit card. Comparing hosting options first? Read how to host Odoo.