Setting up an Odoo system is no easy task. Many companies get into trouble believing that they can just install the software and throw in some data. Inevitably, the scope of the project grows and what was supposed to be a simple system ends up a confusing mess. Fortunately, Odoo's modular design will allow you to take a systematic approach to implementing Odoo for your business.

If you have installed Odoo on your own server you will need to first create a database. As you add additional applications to Odoo, the necessary tables and fields will be added to the database you specify.

If you have just installed a fresh copy of Odoo, you will be prompted automatically to create a new Odoo database:

In the preceding screenshot, you can see the Odoo form to Create Database.

Odoo provides basic instructions for creating your database. Let us quickly review the fields and how they are used.

After clicking on Create Database, it can take a little time depending on your system before you are shown a page that lists the available applications:

This screen lets you select from a list of the most common Odoo modules to install.

There is very little you can do with just an Odoo database with no modules installed. Now we will install the Sales Management module so we can begin setting up our business selling t-shirts:

Click on the Install button to install the Sales Management module.

During installation of modules and other long operations, you will often see a Loading icon at the top center of your screen. Unlike previous versions of Odoo that prompted for accounting and other setup information, Odoo now completes the installation unattended.

After the installation of the sales order application, Odoo 10 now takes you to the Discuss menu where your inbox and other communication activities are located. You will also notice that Odoo provides small purple tear drops that provide helpful tips:

As you can see, the application menus are across the top of the interface. Click on the Sales menu to bring up the sales application. This takes you directly to the Sales dashboard. As we have just installed the application, there is very little to see in the dashboard, but we can see the available menu options along the left edge of the interface.

The menus along the top allow you to change between the major applications and settings within Odoo, while the menus down the left side outline all your available choices. In the following screenshot, we are in the main Sales menu:

In the dashboard, each sales team is represented with their own panel. In this case we can see the Direct Sales and Website Sales team...

Helpful instructions prompt you to begin entering your first customer into Odoo by clicking the Create button:

This is the Odoo Customers form. Clicking Create will generate a customer record.

Silkworm sells t-shirts to both businesses and retail customers. For this example, we will use a fictional customer named Mike Smith who wishes to purchase several t-shirts. Odoo offers flexibility in collecting customer information, and by default, most fields are not required. If you see a field that is purple, that is a required field. In Odoo 10, the only required field for customers is the name.

The rest of the fields are optional. Later we will learn how you can configure Odoo to make additional fields required.

In this example, we have filled out some of the basic fields for our fictional customer, Mike Smith:

Now that we have a customer, it is time we enter some products to sell to our new customer. For our example, we are going to enter a medium white cotton t-shirt. Click on the Products item in the menu on the left:

Creating products in Odoo

Create a new product by clicking the Create button.

The following screenshot is for the General Information page of the product form for entering a product record into Odoo:

Product Name

The Product Name is what will be displayed on the sales orders, invoices, and in all other screens that refer to this specific product. For our example, we are selling a Medium White T-Shirt.

Can be Sold

Much like the customer active flag, you can use Can be Sold to remove products from showing up on product lists by unchecking Can be Sold. For our example, we want to sell this t-shirt to Mike Smith so we will leave the option checked.

Can be Purchased

Even though we have not yet installed the purchasing system, Odoo 10 lets you specify whether if...