Migrating to Odoo from Excel in Jordan: Go-Live Date, JoFotara and Dinars

A familiar picture in Jordan: invoices go out through the JoFotara portal or an older program, while customer balances, supplier debts and stock live in Excel. Moving to Odoo puts invoicing and the books in one system, and the first decision is the day that system takes over.

Most general sales tax registrants file a return for each two-month period. Go live on the first day of a period, so every return is built from one system. Confirm your own cycle with your accountant or the Income and Sales Tax Department (ISTD) before you fix the date.

A dated walk-through, assuming your periods run January to February, March to April and so on:

• Go live on 1 March 2027: the January to February return is prepared from your old records, and March to April is the first return built in Odoo.
• Go live on 15 March 2027: the March to April return has to combine figures from two systems. Odoo itself does not recommend switching in the middle of a tax period.
• Go live on 1 January 2027: the cleanest case for a company on a January to December fiscal year, because a new year and a new tax period start together.

Odoo calls the fiscal year end the easiest cut-off, since it minimises the data to transfer. Its default fiscal year ends on 31 December; if yours ends on another date, as at some NGOs, change it under Accounting settings, Fiscal Periods, before importing.

Start by separating two kinds of data. Invoices you already issued through JoFotara, on the portal or from a linked program, are on record with ISTD and are not issued again. Balances that exist only in your spreadsheets, such as what customers still owe, what you owe suppliers and the stock on your shelves, have to be rebuilt in Odoo.

Goes into Odoo:

• The chart of accounts, mapped onto the Jordanian chart in Odoo's Jordan localization, which already includes the 16% general sales tax, zero-rated exports and exempt sales.
• Customers with Country and Tax ID filled in, as Odoo's JoFotara integration requires, and products with their units, costs and the right tax.
• Opening entries: the trial balance, the amount still due on open invoices and bills, a stock count, and bank and cash balances.

Stays in the archive: settled invoices, years of posted entries and old receipts. Importing them adds risk, not insight.

What changes is who issues the invoice: from go-live, Odoo sends invoices to JoFotara itself. Before posting the first entry, check that:

• The database runs Jordan - Accounting and Jordan E-Invoicing. Odoo installs them from the company's country, and the package can only be changed before any entry is posted.
• The company record holds Country Jordan, Currency JOD, its Tax ID and a Company Name exactly matching the name registered with ISTD.
• Accounting settings, Electronic Invoicing (Jordan), hold your JoFotara Client ID, Secret Key and Activity Number, generated by following ISTD's guides, and the right taxpayer type.

Odoo warns that imports are permanent and cannot be undone, so clean your spreadsheets before the first import, not after. In Jordanian files, most problems come from the dinar's three decimals and from records that drifted apart over the years.

• Fils. Odoo keeps JOD amounts to three decimals, down to the fils. Remove JD or the dinar sign from amount cells and keep plain numbers.
• The two-decimal trap. When Excel saves a CSV file, it writes numbers as displayed, so in a column formatted to two decimals, 12.345 becomes 12.35 without warning. Re-format amount, price and cost columns to three decimals before exporting, then spot-check a few rows against the source.
• Duplicate customers. Match records on Tax ID or, for individuals, the national number, not on names spelled differently over the years. Keep one record per legal entity, with its name and Tax ID as registered with ISTD.
• Units. A garment plant in a Qualifying Industrial Zone in Irbid may buy fabric in yards and issue it in metres. Turn on Units of Measure & Packagings in the Inventory settings, then set the purchase unit in the Unit field of each vendor line on the product's Purchase tab, so Odoo converts it to the stock unit.

Carry the old system's IDs into an External ID column, so re-importing a corrected file updates records instead of duplicating them. On Enterprise, the Data Cleaning app can later merge duplicates into a master record, but it is no substitute for clean source files.

Say your spreadsheet shows customers owing JOD 48,215.375 across 63 open invoices. Here is how it enters Odoo once, not twice.

• Trial balance: one journal entry, imported with the Import Template for Misc. Operations under Journal Entries, with the 48,215.375 on an AR clearing account instead of receivables. Each line holds a debit or a credit, never both, and no zeros or negatives.
• Open invoices: the 63 invoices are imported for the amount still due on each, with the clearing account on their lines. They arrive as drafts and are posted with Confirm Entries. Receivables then show 48,215.375 and the clearing account nets to 0.000. A negative invoice is imported as a separate credit note with a positive amount.
• Supplier bills follow the same pattern through an AP clearing account.
• Stock: the Import Template for Inventory Adjustments under Physical Inventory, then Apply All with the reason Opening inventory and your counting date. With automated stock valuation, check with your accountant that this count and the trial balance do not book stock twice.

Before posting, prove the numbers: the 63 invoices less credit notes must equal 48,215.375 to the fils, open bills less refunds must equal payables, inventory accounts must equal cost times quantity, and the trial balance must balance.

We also suggest a separate sales journal for these imported invoices, using the Journal field in Odoo's template. Their numbers then stay apart from the sequence Odoo sends to JoFotara, and they are easy to leave out of a bulk send.

Measure the parallel run by your first sales tax return: keep your old sales tax workbook going until the first two-month return built from Odoo matches it. Odoo recommends a test-database rehearsal and a parallel run but sets no length, so that finish line is our suggestion.

For go-live week:

• From go-live day, Odoo is the only issuer: no invoices from the JoFotara portal or the old program.
• Send the first live invoices one by one through Send, then JoFotara (Jordan EDI), and check each is accepted, with a QR code on its PDF, before any bulk send.
• Once opening entries are validated, set the Lock Everything date to the last day of the old period. If your auditor later adjusts the old year, an Accounting administrator can grant a temporary lock date exception to post the adjustment, dated in that year. Leave the Hard Lock date until the audit closes: it is irreversible.
• Make the old program or workbook read-only and export final reports dated at cut-off. Ask your tax adviser how long Jordanian rules require records to be kept before you delete or destroy anything.

Avoid two pitfalls: bulk-sending imported pre-cut-over invoices to JoFotara before your accountant agrees how to treat them, and invoicing one sale on both the portal and Odoo.

METCH, an official Odoo partner serving Jordan, plans and carries out migrations from Excel, paper and older software. Book a free consultation for a go-live date matched to your sales tax period and a JoFotara connection test.