Better, smarter, faster: Odoo 16 is one of the most significant releases in the platform’s history.
Odoo’s development team spent the year heavily improving many existing features and building the ones users requested most. That work brought deeper business intelligence, new reporting for inventory and manufacturing (MRP), a rebuilt front-end website application, an overall performance boost, and more — alongside entirely new applications.
This release also introduces the new Knowledge app, built to help teams manage, collaborate on, and share information across the company. Alongside it, Odoo’s dashboards have been reworked and converted into spreadsheet-based reports.
With all the work that went into it, Odoo 16 is a genuinely strong release. Let’s take a closer look at what’s new.
What’s New in Odoo 16
A Story of Performance
Odoo 15 was already fast. Odoo 16 pushes performance further across the entire tech stack. Some headline numbers:
Opening an invoice from the backend is 3.7 times faster. There are 2.4 times fewer SQL queries per URL on average. eCommerce pages load 3.9 times faster.
For the more technically curious, here are some of the details behind those numbers.
On the web client, nearly all JavaScript components now use OWL 2, making backend views load significantly faster. The number of CSS lines dropped by 68%, chat performance improved thanks to a full refactor, and the number of remote procedure calls was reduced.
On the infrastructure side, latency was reduced by cutting the number of HTTP calls — a 35% reduction in average data size for views — and by using NGINX to serve large files.
On the features side, the team moved away from the older “compute” method toward stored computed fields. Previously, processing 50 requests with 50 lines each took 79.5 seconds; now it takes 19.44 seconds.
Server architecture was also significantly improved. With the introduction of asset bundle caching, the performance of every site page increased noticeably. Beyond the server itself, translated fields now use JSONB instead of separate translation tables, new optimized indexes are available, sessions are only stored when default values change, backend views are cached, and cold-loading of menus is faster.
On top of that, many Odoo Online servers have been upgraded to HTTP/2.
Better Accounting
Odoo Accounting benefited significantly from a full refactor this release, becoming one of the strongest real-time accounting applications available. The team focused heavily on making everyday processes as effortless as possible.
Navigation throughout the app was improved. Localization packages continue to expand, with 70+ countries now covered. The new bank reconciliation tool significantly improves the user experience — the whole process is clearer, cleaner, and faster.
With Accounting Firms mode, encoding invoices is faster than ever: set the contact and total amount, and you’re done. The reporting section was rebuilt from scratch, so finding the data you need is much simpler now.
Accounting analysis also got deeper: new analytic distribution models make analytic allocation and analysis easier, letting you break down financial reports according to analytic accounts and plans.
And that’s just the start — other new features include credit limit alerts, recurring invoices, early payment discounts, and Storno accounting support, among others.
When Dashboards Meet Spreadsheets
Reporting dashboards used to be fairly rigid to work with. Now, every dashboard — including the Dashboards app itself — has been converted into spreadsheet-based reports, so you can use them for pivots or advanced calculations directly.
The spreadsheet experience itself got a lot of attention too: you can now view records via the List function, convert XLSX files into Odoo’s spreadsheet format, and use a new set of functions to pull accounting figures.
Odoo also open-sourced its spreadsheet library under LGPL, making Odoo Spreadsheet the first open-source solution that lets you edit sheets collaboratively and import/export Excel files consistently — with support for tables, charts, frozen panes, hidden rows and columns, and 200+ functions.
Website and eCommerce: Organic and Polished
This release focused heavily on the UI and UX of the Website and eCommerce apps. Your site is now directly accessible by clicking the app icon — no need to go through the Website app dashboard first.
Menus were reworked to feel more intuitive. Products, loyalty programs, and more are all reachable in a single click, with more building blocks, options, and widgets available throughout. The Website app has never been this fast or easy to use.
The entire eCommerce app was rethought to be more intuitive while offering more features. New options mean your eCommerce catalog and pages stand out more. A new integration with Plausible.io also lets you track site and eCommerce metrics directly from your website.
Your sales funnel is more flexible than ever, too:
New payment providers, like Razorpay and AsiaPay among others, give customers more options. Customers can now enjoy express checkout and address autocomplete. Upselling blocks can now be customized. All attribute and variant features are now accessible from the front end.
And there’s more beyond that. The Website app now runs 2.4x fewer SQL queries per URL, while eCommerce pages load 3.9x faster — good news for your SEO too.
Smoother Manufacturing and Inventory Processes
Odoo also put real effort into improving its MRP and Inventory apps. New behaviors were added to Stock Moves, including Storage Categories and Last Count Date. All Inventory app reporting was redesigned as well, making it much easier to navigate thanks to reworked menus.
Odoo 16 also brings several other improvements: you can now choose whether backorders are automatically created per operation type, and automate replenishment for specific locations by setting them as Replenishment Locations.
Significant improvements were also made to the Bill of Materials and Cost report — redesigned and renamed “Overview.” On the configuration side, the Tablet View was improved to be more complete, including integration of an ECO popup.
You can now set operation conditions on the BOM that dynamically affect the preparation and status of work orders. Manufacturing orders can also be split for batch production and assigned to different employees or work centers — and the reverse is true too, letting you merge manufacturing orders for batch production or planning purposes.
Finally, manufacturing subcontractors can now register their production directly from their client portal, once granted the necessary access rights.
Managing and Sharing Knowledge Made Simple
Ever wondered how to properly manage your company’s knowledge? How to build an internal wiki your team can read and edit? Whether you can duplicate an article, or an entire hierarchy of them, without relying on external tools or tangled folder structures? With Odoo 16, the answer to all of that is yes.
Odoo 16 introduces a new, intuitive Knowledge app. It lets you create or duplicate articles and their hierarchy to share your company’s knowledge, and even make it editable company-wide.
Customization comes from several features, including a cover picker, nested articles, and embedded views (for pulling in data from other Odoo apps, for example). You can also embed tables of content, lists, and templates within articles to structure nested content.
And since the Knowledge app thinks of everything, deleted articles get a grace period before they’re permanently removed — because a stray click can always happen.
As you can see, Odoo 16 helps businesses grow in a lot of different ways — all of them covered in Odoo’s official release notes.
Should You Upgrade to Odoo 16?
If faster invoicing, spreadsheet-native dashboards, or the new Knowledge app would genuinely help your team, Odoo 16 is worth the move. As with any upgrade, the risk isn’t the new version — it’s skipping testing. Get a free upgrade assessment from Mediod Consulting before touching your production database.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the biggest change in Odoo 16?
Performance and the new Knowledge app stand out most — invoices open 3.7x faster, and teams get a built-in wiki for sharing company knowledge without external tools.
Is upgrading to Odoo 16 risky?
Not with proper testing. Our support team tests upgrades on a staging copy first, with a rollback plan, before touching your live database.
Do I need to migrate custom modules separately?
Yes — custom code needs to be reviewed and tested against the new version. This is usually the part of an upgrade that takes the most care.
Get Started with Mediod Consulting
Thanks for reading, and see you soon! Ready to upgrade or start fresh on Odoo? Mediod Consulting is a certified Odoo Silver Partner — contact our team for a free consultation. Prefer to explore first? start a free Odoo trial and email info@mediodconsulting.com for a 22% partner discount, before or after you buy.
