Odoo handles rentals through its Rental app, which only exists in the Enterprise edition: from €19.90 per user per month in the first year, €24.90 from the second (Italian and French list price, October 2026), plus setup. It is good at orders, calendars and invoices. It does not do three things that matter more than invoices in a rental shop: hold the deposit on the customer’s card, check who the customer is, cover the item if it comes back broken. Below is what it really does, what it costs a two-person shop, and when another route makes more sense.
A disclosure first. Sharepact is a rental platform and a business account costs €90 a year, so read the numbers knowing who did the sums. Where Odoo is the better choice, we say so.
What the Odoo Rental app does
A product becomes rentable with one checkbox, “Can be rented”. For each product you set prices by period: hourly, daily, weekly. A rental order starts as a quotation with dates, then goes through two stages, pickup and return, and each one prints a PDF receipt. You can set a padding time between one rental and the next, for cleaning or checks, and an automatic penalty for late hours or days.
Everything else comes from the other apps. Sales for quotations, Inventory for stock moves, Invoicing for the paperwork, Sign to get the contract signed from the customer portal, Website and eCommerce if you want online bookings. Anyone already running their accounts on Odoo finds it all in one place, which is why accountants and consultants like to propose it.
Two details you only find out by using it. On pricing, Odoo applies a single price line per calculation and picks the cheapest, so a discounted week and a weekend surcharge do not coexist without tweaks. And the Rental app is not in the free Community edition. On the official forum the answer is one line: Enterprise only.
What Odoo does not do in a rental shop
The deposit
In Odoo a deposit is a product line. You add it to the order, invoice it with the rental, collect it, and refund it by hand when the item comes back. There is no hold on the customer’s card, the thing a hotel does at check-in. A camera rental business asked for exactly this on the Odoo forum, with the example of a Sony FX3 at $38 a day and an $800 deposit. The only reply came from an integrator who had written a custom module for their own clients, not for sale.
In practice: for a €2,400 e-bike the customer pays you a €250 deposit, you keep it in the till or on the account for two days, then you process a refund. For every rental. Or the deposit goes back to being cash in an envelope, and Odoo never sees it.
The ID
Odoo does not verify identity. The customer field accepts any name. The photocopy of the ID card stays in the binder, with everything that implies under GDPR: a shop that stores strangers’ documents is a data controller and has to behave like one.
Damage
At return, Odoo records that the item is back. There is no item condition with photos before and after, and damage is invoiced in a separate step, when someone remembers. The companies that sell rental add-ons for Odoo say it on their own product pages: “we forgot to invoice the damage” is the most common leak. If the item never comes back there is no cover at all. The loss is yours, minus whatever deposit you are holding.
The walk-in customer
Odoo’s flow was built for renting to businesses: quotation, confirmation, invoice. At the counter, with someone who wants a paddleboard for the afternoon and already has their card out, those steps are slow. Odoo’s point of sale is a separate app, made for selling, not for renting.
What Odoo costs a rental shop
The figures below are Odoo’s list prices for Italy and France in October 2026, excluding VAT. The first-year price is promotional and goes up at renewal, which is worth budgeting from day one.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Standard plan, 1 user | €19.90/month in year one, then €24.90 |
| Standard plan, 2 users (owner + assistant) | about €480 in year one, about €600 a year after |
| Custom plan (Studio, API, multi-company) | €29.90/month per user, then €37.40 |
| Odoo Success Pack, 25 hours | €2,635 |
| Odoo Success Pack, 50 hours | €4,675 |
| Partner or freelancer | €100 to €250 an hour in Italy and France |
The free “One App Free” plan gives you a single app with unlimited users. Rental pulls in Sales and Inventory as dependencies, but the moment you add Sign for contracts or eCommerce for online bookings you are on the Standard plan. Almost everyone gets there.
Then there is setup. Odoo does not open and work. Products need loading with their prices, contract templates need writing, electronic invoicing needs connecting, staff need training. A two-person shop that gets help from a partner usually spends between €1,500 and €5,000 once, over two to eight weeks. Doing it yourself costs evenings instead. For a twenty-person company with a warehouse and purchasing, Italian consultants quote €15,000 to €35,000 for the first year, but that is not a ski shop.
The sum for a two-person shop, year one: €480 of licences plus a €2,635 Success Pack, about €3,100. From year two, €600 a year, plus hours whenever something changes. Without a card deposit, without ID checks, without cover.
When Odoo is the right choice
If you already invoice with Odoo, if you have a warehouse with purchasing and suppliers, if you rent to companies on monthly contracts and 30-day invoices, the Rental app is a small add-on to what you have. A firm that hires scaffolding or generators to building sites, with an admin person in the ERP all day, is well served by Odoo.
A bike shop, a ski room, a camera shop, a hardware store that rents out a pressure washer on Saturdays: no. For these shops the invoice is the least of it. The problem is the quarter of an hour at the counter, the deposit, the ID, the €2,000 item walking out with a stranger. Odoo organises the back office. These shops do not have one.
What changes with Sharepact
Sharepact is a rental platform with an app for customers and a business space for the shop, on the phone or the computer. The business account costs €90 a year, plus a service commission on each completed rental, shown line by line in the payout summary. Nothing to install, no partner to pay, no card terminal to rent.
A counter rental takes about two minutes. You create the order: item, days, price, deposit. The customer scans a code, enters an email and a phone number, scans their ID and takes a selfie, pays with Apple Pay, Google Pay or a card. They download nothing. The deposit stays held on their card and releases itself when you tap “Return”. The platform verifies the ID; no photocopy stays in the shop.
Every rental completed on the platform goes out with Sharepact Protection: damage and theft up to the value you declared, from pickup to return. If the e-bike comes back with a bent fork, you flag it on the rental itself, Sharepact handles the claim with the customer and the deposit, and you are reimbursed.
And there is one thing no management software can do: bring you customers. What you list for rent appears in the Sharepact app, where people search by item and by area. Someone searching “e-bike near me” sees your shop, the distance and what you have free, books, and comes to you to pick it up. The walk-in customer, after the first rental, already has an account. Next time they book from home.
What Sharepact does not do: accounting, purchasing, payroll. If you need software for that, keep it. Sharepact replaces the rental side, and the payout summary with every line is what your accountant needs.
| Odoo Rental | Sharepact business | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | from €19.90 per user a month + setup | €90 a year + commission per rental |
| Time to start | 2 to 8 weeks | one afternoon |
| Deposit | product line, manual refund | held on the card, released at return |
| Customer identity | not verified | ID and selfie verified by the platform |
| Damage and theft | the shop’s loss | Sharepact Protection up to the declared value |
| Payment at the counter | invoice, separate terminal | Tap to Pay on the iPhone, QR or link |
| New customers | no | the shop appears in the app |
| Accounting and purchasing | yes | no |
How to move from Odoo (or the notebook) to Sharepact
The business account opens from the Sharepact app. You list what is already on the shelf with a daily price and a deposit, and the first rental can go out the same afternoon. If you run hundreds of bikes or more than one shop, we import the inventory and train your staff: write to support@sharepact.com and it is usually settled in one phone call. Details and prices are on the business account page.
If you are also weighing other systems, we compared Dolibarr, ERPNext, Zoho and Business Central in our guide to rental shop software.
FAQ
Does Odoo have a free rental module?
No. The Rental app is only in the Enterprise edition. On the One App Free plan you can run it as your single app, with its dependencies, but without Sign, eCommerce and the other apps you end up needing.
How much does Odoo cost for a small rental shop?
For two users, about €480 of licences in year one and €600 from year two, plus €1,500 to €5,000 of setup with a partner. List prices for Italy and France, October 2026, excluding VAT.
Does Odoo hold the deposit on the customer’s card?
No. The deposit is a product line to invoice and refund by hand. A hold on the card needs a custom module.
Does Odoo include insurance on rented items?
No. If an item comes back damaged or does not come back, the loss is the shop’s, minus the deposit collected.
Can I use Sharepact alongside Odoo?
Yes. Many shops keep their ERP for accounting and purchasing and use Sharepact for rentals: till, deposits, ID checks, cover and customers. The payout summary lists every rental line by line.
