A free zone company and a mainland company
Sales, stock and staff are split across two licences while one team works on both, and the two sets of books are reconciled in a spreadsheet.
Odoo Dubai
Odoo Dubai · ERP for UAE trading groups
One Odoo across your free zone and mainland companies.And every warehouse between them.
Azinove is an Odoo Partner, an engineering team in Strasbourg that works with entities in the Gulf. A UAE rollout starts with the shape of the group: each licence as its own company and ledger, stock and landed costs followed across warehouses, and books in AED next to the currencies you actually settle in.
- Odoo Partner
- Free zone & mainland
- Multi-warehouse
Talk to the engineers who would do the work
Tell us what you run today and what is not working. You get a considered answer, not a sales sequence.
How we frame the problem
Company structure and stock valuation are the decisions that stick.
Both are made when the database is created. Changing them after a year of postings is a data migration, not a setting.
- 01
The problem
A UAE group is often built as a single company in Odoo because the free zone and the mainland side share the same team, so sales between the two entities become internal transfers and freight and duty dissolve into a general expense account.
- 02
Our intervention
We map each licence to its own company, currency and ledger, decide what stays shared between them, and settle the costing method and the landed-cost rules before the first receipt is posted.
- 03
The intended result
Each entity reports its own stock and its own books, the group gets one consolidated view, and the cost of a shipment is known when it is received rather than when it is sold.
Let’s discuss the need
When this service is useful
When the licences and the warehouses decide the design.
A UAE group rarely has one licence and one warehouse. That structure shapes the system long before anyone picks modules.
Stock in several places, some of it still moving
Availability depends on what sits in the free zone store, what has cleared customs and what is still at sea — and the same goods later leave on a different set of documents for re-export.
The cost of a shipment arrives after the shipment
Freight, duty, insurance and handling are posted weeks after the goods, so the margin on a container is only known once it has been sold.
Teams from a dozen countries, documents in Arabic
The system is operated in English because that is the language the staff share, while some customers, banks and authorities expect the document in Arabic.
Example scopes
Three shapes a Dubai engagement takes.
Example scopes, not packages. What moves the effort is the number of licences and warehouses involved, and how much stock history has to come across.
First Odoo for a Dubai trading company
Configure one company end to end: purchasing, multi-warehouse stock, landed costs, sales and books in AED.
- Implementation
- Trading
- AED
Free zone and mainland under one group
Add the second licence as a company in its own right: its ledger, its stock, its documents and the flow of goods and invoices between the two.
- Multi-company
- Intercompany
- Consolidation
Repairing stock and costing on a running Odoo
Rebuild the warehouse model, the costing method and the landed-cost rules on an instance already in production, then correct the valuation it reports.
- Inventory
- Landed costs
- Valuation
Capabilities
What we do with Odoo for a UAE trading group.
Four areas, arranged around the two things a Dubai entity has to get right early: how the licences are kept apart, and how goods are valued.
01
Implementation & rollout
Scoping, configuration, data migration and go-live, across free zone and mainland companies alike.
02
Trading, warehousing & landed costs
Multi-warehouse stock, receipts, landed-cost allocation onto item cost, lot and serial traceability, and re-export flows.
03
Custom modules & integration
Modules written in Python and OWL, plus API integrations with freight forwarders, customs brokers, banks and the tools already running.
04
Hosting, support & local configuration
EU or Gulf hosting, upgrades and support, with Odoo set up for the invoicing and tax rules each of your entities has to meet.
Possible deliverables
What comes out of a Dubai rollout.
Every line names the entity and the warehouse it covers; the proposal says which ones are in scope.
- Company structure: one Odoo company per licence, with its own currency, ledger and document numbering
- Warehouse and location model covering the free zone store, mainland stock and goods in transit
- Landed-cost configuration: freight, duty, insurance and handling carried into item cost
- Intercompany rules for the goods and invoices that move between your entities
- Taxes, fiscal positions and document layouts set up for the rules confirmed for each entity, in English and in Arabic where a document needs it
- Migration plan with a validated stock count, opening balances and a reconciled item master
Odoo in Dubai
No commitment · Clear scope · No specification required
Guardrails
Where a vague answer becomes expensive here.
Entity structure and stock valuation are the two subjects that hurt most when they are revisited after go-live.
- We configure Odoo for the invoicing, VAT and accounting requirements that apply to each of your entities; whether a free zone company is treated differently from a mainland one is confirmed by your tax adviser or auditor, not by us.
- The costing method and the treatment of landed costs are agreed before go-live and with your auditor, because they are accounting decisions that are expensive to reverse once postings exist.
- Forwarder, customs-broker and bank systems differ in what they actually expose; we test an integration against real documents before writing it into a scope.
- Cut-over for a trading operation is planned around stock: a counted warehouse, a known list of goods in transit, and an agreed date for the last receipt on the old system.
Frequently asked questions
Questions from a Dubai GM or finance lead.
What decides the design of an Odoo in the UAE is the shape of the group and the way goods move through it.
01We have a free zone company and a mainland company. One Odoo or two?
One database, two companies inside it. Each keeps its own currency, chart of accounts, numbering sequences, document layouts and tax registration, with a consolidated view above them. What stays shared — items, contacts, users — and how sales between the two entities are recorded is decided during scoping, because it is hard to unpick later. Which entity invoices which customer, how each is registered for VAT, and what any e-invoicing requirement asks of the invoice itself follow your licences and your tax adviser; we configure what is confirmed to us.
02Can Odoo handle stock across several warehouses, including goods in transit?
Yes. Each warehouse carries its own locations and replenishment rules, and goods that have left the supplier but not yet arrived can be tracked and valued in a transit location of their own. Movements between the free zone store and the mainland warehouse become recorded operations with their own documents, instead of a quantity someone adjusts by hand. Re-export is handled the same way: the goods keep their origin, their lot and their reference from receipt through to the outbound document.
03How do freight, duty and insurance reach the goods?
Odoo can spread those costs across a receipt by value, weight, volume or quantity. The configuration work is choosing the basis, handling the forwarder invoice that arrives after the goods, and deciding what happens when it arrives after the sale. The point of doing it properly is that margin can then be read per shipment, not only per item.
04Our books are in AED but we buy and sell in other currencies.
The company keeps its books in AED while purchases, sales and settlements are recorded in the currencies they are actually made in: pricelists, bank journals and the handling of exchange differences are configured around that. The rate source, how often rates are updated and how differences on open items are treated are agreed with your finance team and your auditor, then applied in the system rather than corrected in a spreadsheet afterwards.
05How does a team based in Europe run a project in Dubai?
The gap is hours, not days: our morning is your midday, so most of the work happens live rather than through overnight email. The project runs in English, the language your teams share, and Arabic is added where a document or a counterparty requires it. The phases where being in the building matters — the stock count, warehouse training, go-live — are scheduled in advance, with named contacts and written decisions in between.
How the engagement runs
How a Dubai rollout runs.
Dubai is a few hours ahead of Strasbourg, so most of the working day overlaps. What needs planning is the warehouse, not the calendar.
- 01
Frame
Licences, companies, currencies, warehouses and the movements between them are settled first.
- 02
Configure
The model is built on a test database, using your own items, suppliers and shipment documents.
- 03
Migrate & validate
Stock counts, goods in transit, opening balances and printed documents are validated by your finance and warehouse teams.
- 04
Go live & support
Cut-over happens in an agreed window tied to a stock count, followed by support with agreed hours.
Let’s discuss the need
Which entity and which warehouse move to Odoo first?
Tell us about your licences, your warehouses, the currencies you settle in and how goods enter and leave. We will come back with a scope.
No commitment · Clear scope · No specification required
Talk to the engineers who would do the work
Tell us what you run today and what is not working. You get a considered answer, not a sales sequence.
Related capabilities
What a UAE rollout usually touches next.
The core Odoo offer, the neighbouring Gulf market, and the bespoke work built around the system.