One of the less glamorous Odoo 20 announcements may turn out to be one of the more important ones for businesses with a lot of employees.
Odoo has introduced the concept of a Light User.
For years, one of the questions we've had from customers is what to do with employees who need to interact with Odoo but don't need the same access as somebody working in Sales, Accounting, Purchasing or other core areas of the ERP.
A warehouse employee may only need to scan stock.
A technician may need access to information required to do their job.
An employee may need to submit leave or expenses.
Giving every one of these employees the same type of full Odoo user licence doesn't always make commercial sense.
Odoo's new Light User model is intended to address that.
What Is an Odoo Light User?
The easiest way to explain it is that not everybody who interacts with an ERP is an ERP administrator or full operational user.
Consider a company with 150 employees.
Perhaps only 35 people work extensively in Odoo every day.
They're processing sales orders, purchasing stock, managing customers, doing the accounting, running production or administering the system.
The other employees may still need Odoo, but for much narrower purposes.
That's where Light Users become interesting.
Odoo describes a Light User as either an employee record without login access or a user with restricted access to specific employee-related functionality.
The idea is quite simple:
Pay for full Odoo access where full access is required, and use Light User access where an employee only needs limited functionality.
For some businesses, that could make quite a difference to the licence calculation.
What Does a Light User Cost?
This is new and the pricing is still worth confirming carefully.
Odoo's current public pricing page lists Light Users at US$8.90 per user per month, while Odoo's September 2026 announcement described the new Light User offering at €7.90 per employee.
We've also seen rollout pricing information at US$7.50 per Light User per month.
Our advice at this stage is therefore not to build an Odoo 20 budget around one of these figures without confirming the applicable commercial terms.
Odoo itself currently advises customers interested in Light User licences to have their requirements reviewed and obtain a quotation.
The bigger story isn't really whether the eventual figure is $7.50, $8.90 or the applicable local equivalent.
It's that Odoo now has a lower-cost user category for employees who don't require normal full-user access.
That's the significant change.
Who Could Be a Light User?
This is where companies need to look at what their employees actually do.
Take HR as an example.
An employee doesn't necessarily need full ERP access simply because they need to submit a leave request, record an expense or maintain their personal information.
The same principle can apply elsewhere.
A warehouse employee performing permitted barcode operations has a very different requirement from the inventory manager responsible for products, stock rules, replenishment and warehouse configuration.
One employee is interacting with a process.
The other is managing it.
That distinction is important when deciding who could potentially qualify as a Light User.
Don't Choose the Licence Before Looking at the Job
This is probably the main point we'd make when assessing Light Users for a customer.
Don't start with:
"How many users can we move onto the cheaper licence?"
Start with:
"What does each group of employees actually need to do in Odoo?"
Take a warehouse team.
If an employee only needs the permitted operational functionality, Light User access could potentially be suitable.
But the warehouse manager may need considerably more.
They may need to manage products, investigate stock, work with replenishment, correct transactions or access functionality outside the Light User restrictions.
Trying to force that person into a Light User role simply to save on licence costs would create operational problems.
Licence optimisation needs to follow the business process, not the other way around.
This Could Matter for Manufacturing Businesses
Manufacturing is where we think the Light User discussion could become particularly interesting.
A factory may have relatively few people who administer the ERP but many employees who participate in processes.
Think about the difference between a production manager and an employee performing a specific operational task.
The production manager may need access to manufacturing orders, planning, stock availability, Bills of Materials, purchasing information and reporting.
That is clearly an ERP user.
The employee on the factory floor may have a much narrower requirement.
The same applies to maintenance and quality environments.
However, this is also an area where we'd be careful about assumptions. Exactly which Manufacturing, Maintenance, Quality and related functions are available under the final Light User terms needs to be confirmed for the customer's Odoo 20 environment and licence agreement.
If the access fits the job, there could be a worthwhile saving.
If it doesn't, use the appropriate full user.
The Numbers Can Become Significant
Consider a business where 40 people require full Odoo access but another 100 employees only need limited functionality.
Previously, the business might have had to make compromises.
Perhaps some employees weren't given Odoo access at all.
Processes remained on paper.
Information was captured by supervisors.
Or the company bought full licences for employees who used only a fraction of the functionality.
A properly designed Light User model could change that calculation.
Instead of asking whether every employee justifies a full Odoo licence, the business can potentially give more people controlled access to the processes relevant to their jobs.
That doesn't only have a cost benefit.
It can also improve the information being captured in Odoo.
If the person doing the work can record the relevant information themselves, there is less reliance on somebody else capturing it later.
Full Users Still Have a Very Different Role
It's important not to see Light Users as cheap replacements for normal Odoo users.
Odoo's current public description specifically restricts Light Users from core operational applications such as Sales, Purchase, Projects and Accounting.
A salesperson creating quotations and managing opportunities needs normal operational access.
An accountant processing transactions needs normal access.
A buyer creating and managing purchase orders needs normal access.
A manager working extensively with operational applications is unlikely to fit naturally into the Light User model either.
Light Users are intended for limited access.
That's precisely why they can be priced differently.
Existing Odoo Customers Should Review Their Users
This isn't only relevant to businesses implementing Odoo 20 for the first time.
Existing Odoo customers should look at their current user base as part of an Odoo 20 upgrade assessment.
We would break users into groups.
Who genuinely needs broad access to Odoo?
Who performs a specific operational role?
Who mainly uses employee functionality?
Who has a user account but hardly ever logs in?
And which employees currently don't have Odoo access because giving them a full licence didn't make financial sense?
The last group could be particularly interesting.
Light Users may not simply reduce the cost of existing users. They could make it practical to bring more employees into controlled digital workflows.
Don't Forget Security
Lower-cost access doesn't mean lower security.
A Light User should still only see what they need for their job.
HR information is an obvious example.
Documents are another.
Even operational information can be sensitive.
User groups, record rules, permissions and the design of the process still matter.
We'd therefore treat Light User design as part of the Odoo implementation rather than simply a change to the subscription invoice.
Our View on Odoo 20 Light Users
We think this is a sensible direction for Odoo.
The traditional idea that everybody accessing an ERP should be treated as the same type of user doesn't reflect how modern businesses operate.
A financial manager, salesperson, warehouse operator and employee submitting leave are all interacting with the same business system, but they're doing completely different things.
Their access should reflect that.
Odoo 20's Light User model gives businesses another option for designing that access.
For South African companies with larger workforces — particularly manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, field-service and other employee-intensive operations — it's worth investigating.
But we'd approach it from the process first.
Map out what each employee group needs to do.
Determine which functions qualify for Light User access under the applicable Odoo terms.
Keep full licences where they're genuinely required.
Then calculate the saving.
That will give you a much more realistic answer than simply multiplying your employee count by the cheapest available licence.
At AP Systems, we'll be incorporating the new Light User model into our Odoo 20 assessments so customers can understand where limited-access licences make sense and where full Odoo users are still required.
For some businesses, this may turn out to be one of the most financially significant changes in Odoo 20.