Landed Costs for Accountants

Create and validate landed costs without Inventory Administrator rights

Keywords: landed cost access, landed cost for accountants, landed cost permission, landed cost without inventory admin, freight cost allocation, customs duty allocation, accounting landed cost, landed cost access control, inventory valuation adjustment, landed cost accounting, stock landed cost permission, vendor bill landed cost, bill of lading cost, shipping cost allocation, import duty allocation, ancillary cost distribution, landed cost user group, landed cost role, accounting inventory access, cost allocation permission

The Problem

Native Odoo restricts landed cost management to the Inventory Administrator role. Accountants who need to allocate freight, customs, and other ancillary costs into inventory valuation must be granted full Inventory admin rights — which also unlocks Configuration, Adjustments, and all inventory operational menus.

This creates a security dilemma: either give accountants too much access, or force them to rely on inventory managers for every landed cost adjustment.

What This Module Does

Adds a standalone Landed Cost User group that grants accounting users the ability to create, validate, and manage landed cost records, without unlocking any Inventory operational or configuration screens.

Pure permission layer. No new models, no new database fields, no business logic changes. Safe to install and uninstall at any time.

How It Works

1. Enable the Group

A new Landed Costs checkbox appears in the user form under the Accounting section. Check it to grant the user landed cost management access.

The group is independent of the Inventory permission level. A user can be an Invoicing user (or Accountant) with Landed Cost access, without any Inventory role at all.

The Landed Costs toggle in user settings, under the Accounting section. Enable it for any user who needs to manage landed costs.

2. Vendor Bill Integration

Users in the Landed Cost User group see the same landed cost controls on vendor bills that were previously visible only to Inventory Administrators:

• Landed Costs stat button — shows the count of related landed cost records on the bill
• Create Landed Costs button — one-click creation of a landed cost record from marked bill lines
• Is Landed Cost checkbox — mark individual bill lines as landed cost items (freight, customs, handling, etc.)

Vendor bill showing the Create Landed Costs button and Is Landed Cost checkbox — now visible to the Landed Cost User group, not just Inventory Administrators.

3. Landed Costs Menu

A new Landed Costs menu appears under Accounting → Vendors. It shows the same native list and form views used by Inventory Administrators, giving the accountant full lifecycle management:

• Create new landed cost records
• Select receipts (pickings) to allocate costs to
• Configure cost lines (product, amount, split method)
• Compute cost allocation across products
• Validate to post accounting entries and update valuation
• Cancel if needed

Landed cost form view, accessible directly from the Accounting → Vendors menu. Full lifecycle management without Inventory Administrator rights.

4. Split Methods

All five native allocation methods are available:

Permissions Granted

* Write on stock.move and stock.lot is required because native Odoo updates move valuation and lot average cost during landed cost validation without using sudo(). Without write access, validation would fail with an AccessError.

What Is NOT Granted

The Landed Cost User group does not unlock:

• Inventory Operations menu (receipts, transfers, deliveries)
• Inventory Configuration menu
• Inventory Adjustments
• Inventory Reporting
• Any inventory create/delete operations

The group is purely additive. It does not imply any Inventory role and does not conflict with any existing permissions.

Typical Setup

Technical Notes

• Pure permission layer — adds one group, ten ACL lines, and one view override. No new models, no Python code, no business logic changes.
• Implies Invoicing group — enabling the Landed Cost User checkbox automatically grants Invoicing rights, ensuring journal entry creation works during validation.
• Safe to uninstall — removing the module reverts all permissions and menus instantly.
• No performance impact — group membership and ACLs are standard Odoo security mechanisms.
• Multi-company compatible — native multi-company rule on stock.landed.cost applies to the new group automatically.
• No conflict with Inventory roles — Odoo merges ACLs with OR logic. Users who also have Inventory User or Administrator retain their full access.
• Standalone module — no dependency on any other SuiteState module. Works with any combination of native and third-party modules.
• Dependencies: stock_landed_costs (native Odoo module, installed when Landed Costs is enabled in Inventory settings).
• Compatibility: Odoo 19.0 Community and Enterprise.

License & Support

Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPL-3.0-or-later). The full license text is included in the LICENSE file shipped with the module.

Maintained by SuiteState (ElectroState FZCO). For questions, bug reports, or feature requests, visit suitestate.com or contact hello@suitestate.com.