Master Data

Master data is the relatively stable information that identifies the entities a business repeatedly works with: products, customers, suppliers, employees and accounts. Transactions refer to these entities when recording an order, receipt, invoice or payment.

A product record describes what an item is. A purchase order records a particular purchase of that item. Maintaining one consistent product identity allows purchasing, stock and sales records to refer to the same business object.

In Odoo, master data is maintained through the relevant applications, including product and contact records. Master Data is a cross-application concept, rather than the name of a single Odoo feature.

Odoo’s import tools support products, contacts and other business records. External IDs identify imported records, preserve relationships and allow subsequent imports to update records without creating duplicates. The documentation recommends checking field mapping and using Test before importing. Keeping identifiers stable is essential when exchanging reference data with other systems.