Odoo's fixed asset module is correct. It computes depreciation, posts it, keeps the register. It is just that Romanian depreciation has its own rules, and the difference shows from the first month — and, if it is not caught then, it shows at year end, in the report you cannot produce.
Below, what the localization adds and what to check before relying on the figures.
1. The inventory number
Every asset gets an inventory number from its own sequence.
It is not a form whim: it is the number the asset is looked up by in the inventory register and the number on the label stuck to it. Without a sequence in the system, numbers are given by hand, end up duplicated and, in the third year, no longer match the labels.
2. Monthly depreciation and the first depreciation date
Depreciation is computed as (acquisition value − residual value) / number of months.
The first depreciation date follows the local rule:
- for assets without pro-rata: the first day of the month following the acquisition;
- for assets with pro-rata: the acquisition date itself.
It looks like a detail, but it is the difference between one month of depreciation more or less on every asset — which, on a fleet of thirty cars, shows up in the result.
3. The journal and the accounts
The localization brings its own depreciation journal and reconfigures the accounts of the Romanian chart with the right types: asset accounts, accumulated depreciation accounts and the prepaid expenses of class 471.
The behaviour on receipt is set there too: documents that lead to assets create the asset in draft, so somebody checks it before it starts depreciating.
4. The standard asset models
Instead of building the categories from scratch at every implementation, a button loads the standard Romanian models — the usual categories with their statutory useful lives.
What is left is only the adjustment for the company's specifics: unusual assets, lives chosen differently, analytic accounts.
5. The report, which is actually the point
This is where it shows most clearly why the standard module is not enough.
The asset report in the localization has the required columns: the inventory number, the category, then the opening values, additions, disposals and closing values — for both the gross value and the accumulated depreciation.
That is exactly the table an accountant otherwise builds in a spreadsheet, every year, out of two different reports and with one column computed by hand. For a company with a hundred small assets — tools, IT equipment, furniture — that is an evening lost annually, at best.
What to check in the first month
- One asset, end to end. Take a recent acquisition: check the inventory number, the category, the useful life, the first depreciation date and the first posted depreciation entry. If that matches, the rest matches.
- An asset with pro-rata, separately. Its rule is different and deserves an explicit check.
- The accounts. Depreciation has to hit the correct expense and accumulated depreciation accounts — not the defaults of a generic localization.
- The report, on a closed month. Check whether the closing values in the report match the balances in the trial balance. If they do not, the cause is almost always an asset created directly, without going through the flow.
- Migrated legacy assets. If you bring assets from an old system, the remaining value to depreciate and the remaining number of months are the two figures that have to be right. The rest is recomputed.
Who it matters to most
To companies with many low-value assets: fleets, workshops, service companies with IT equipment. Not because the rules are different, but because volume turns a small difference into a problem to be checked a hundred times.
A company with three buildings also keeps its assets in a spreadsheet. One with three hundred assets cannot.
The module is on Odoo Apps, for Odoo 19 and 20: Romania - Account Asset.
If you have assets to migrate from an old system and want to see what the first month looks like: nexterp.ro/contactus.