NGO Management System

1.What this module does & who does what

The NGO Management System adds a new NGO app to Odoo that runs the day-to-day operations of a non-profit: money coming in (donations and grant funds), money going out (budgets, purchases, expenses), the people you serve (beneficiaries), the work you do (projects with logframes and indicators), and the aid you hand out (distributions). Everything is connected, so managers see live figures instead of spreadsheets.

The four roles

Every user is given one of four roles. What you can see and do in this manual depends on your role — each chapter states who it is for.

The big picture — a fund's life

1. Finance creates a fund with its budget lines and clicks Submit.
2. A manager approves it. The fund becomes active and ready to spend.
3. Everyone works: projects are linked to the fund, purchases and expenses are charged to its budget lines, officers enroll beneficiaries and distribute aid.
4. The system keeps score: spent and committed amounts update themselves from real accounting entries.
5. A manager closes the fund at the end with a closing note. Done.

2.First-time setup: assigning user roles

Audience: administrator. Done once per user.

1. Open the Settings app and go to Users & Companies ▸ Users.
2. Click the person's name to open their user form.
3. Scroll to the NGO Management section 1 under Access Rights.
4. Pick the role in the dropdown 2 — choosing Manager automatically includes all lower roles.
5. Click Save. Ask the person to log out and back in.

3.Finding your way around

Audience: everyone.

After installation you'll find a new NGO icon on the Odoo home screen. Opening it shows the dashboard and a menu bar with six sections.

• 1Dashboard — live totals for the whole organisation (chapter 14).
• 2Funds — funds, transfers and the approval queue (chapters 4, 5, 12, 13).
• 3Beneficiaries — the registry, enrollments and distributions (chapters 7–9).

The remaining sections: Donors (donors and donations, ch. 6), Projects (NGO projects, logframe, indicators, measurements, ch. 10), Reporting (pivot analyses, ch. 14) and Configuration (sectors and beneficiary categories — managers only).

4.Funds: create, budget, submit

Audience: NGO Finance. A fund is a pot of money — a donor grant, a restricted fund, or your unrestricted reserve — with a period, a total amount and a budget split into lines.

4.1 Create the fund

1. Go to NGO ▸ Funds ▸ Funds and click New.
2. Type the fund name 1. The reference (e.g. FUND/2026/0003) is assigned automatically when you save.
3. Fill in the left column 2: Fund Type (Grant, Restricted, Unrestricted, Emergency), the Donor, and the Sector.
4. Fill in the right column 3: Start / End dates and the Total Amount of the fund. The Responsible defaults to you.

4.2 Add budget lines

1. On the Budget Lines tab 4, click Add a line for each budget item.
2. Give each line a name, a Category (Program Activities, Staff & Salaries, Administration, Procurement & Logistics, Monitoring & Evaluation, Other) and its Planned amount.
3. Watch the money boxes 5: Allocated is the sum of your lines; Spent, Committed and Available will fill themselves later from real accounting entries — you never type them.
4. Click Save.

4.3 Submit for approval

1. Click Submit 6 in the header. The status bar 7 moves from Draft to Submitted and an approval request is sent to all NGO Managers automatically (next chapter).

5.Approving a fund (managers)

Audience: NGO Manager. When a fund is submitted, every manager receives an activity (the clock icon in the top bar) and a request appears in the approval queue.

1. Go to NGO ▸ Funds ▸ Approvals. The list opens filtered on To Approve 1.
2. Click the request to open it. Use Open Related Record 2 to inspect the fund and its budget lines.
3. Optionally write a Decision Note 3 — it is logged on the fund if you refuse.
4. Click Approve 4 — the fund moves to Approved and its analytic account is created — or Refuse, which sends the fund back to Draft with your note in its chatter.
5. Back on the fund, Finance (or you) clicks Activate to open it for spending.

6.Donors and donations

Audience: NGO Finance.

6.1 Mark a contact as a donor

1. Go to NGO ▸ Donors ▸ Donors (or the Contacts app) and open/create the contact.
2. Tick Is a Donor 1 and choose the Donor Type (Individual, Corporate, Foundation, Institutional, Government).
3. The contact form gains two smart buttons 2: total donations and sponsored funds.

6.2 Record a donation

1. Go to NGO ▸ Donors ▸ Donations and click New.
2. Choose the Donor 3, optionally the Fund it feeds, the Amount and the Payment Method (cash, bank, cheque, mobile money, online, other). Tick In-Kind for goods instead of money and describe them.
3. If the money is promised but not yet received, click Mark as Pledged. When it arrives, click Mark as Received 4.
4. Click Send Receipt 5 to email a thank-you receipt to the donor. The button confirms with a "receipt sent" flag.

7.Registering beneficiaries

Audience: NGO Project Officer. The beneficiary registry is the list of people (or heads of household) your NGO serves. Each person goes through a short quality gate: Draft → Verified → Active.

1. Go to NGO ▸ Beneficiaries ▸ Beneficiaries and click New.
2. Enter the Full Name 1; the Beneficiary ID (e.g. BEN/00042) is assigned on save. Add a photo by clicking the camera frame 2.
3. Fill the Profile column 3: gender, date of birth (age is computed), National ID (visible to officers and above only, must be unique), Vulnerability level and Categories tags.
4. Fill Contact & Household 4: phone, address, household size, head-of-household flag.
5. Save, then click Verify 5 once documents are checked, and Activate when the person should start receiving services. Use Deactivate when they exit your programmes.

8.Enrolling beneficiaries in projects

Audience: NGO Project Officer. An enrollment links a beneficiary to an NGO project (a project that has a fund — see chapter 10). A person can be enrolled in each project only once.

8.1 Enroll one person

1. Go to NGO ▸ Beneficiaries ▸ Enrollments and click New (or add a line on the Enrollments tab of a beneficiary).
2. Pick the beneficiary and the project; the enrollment date defaults to today.
3. Later, use Mark Completed or Drop Out on the enrollment; the exit date fills automatically.

8.2 Enroll many at once (Bulk Enrollment)

1. Go to NGO ▸ Beneficiaries ▸ Bulk Enrollment. A dialog opens.
2. Choose the Project 1 and the Enrollment Date 2.
3. Add all the Beneficiaries 3 — only Verified or Active people can be selected.
4. Click Enroll 4. People already enrolled in that project are simply skipped, so it is safe to select generously. The new enrollments open in a list.

9.Aid distributions

Audience: NGO Project Officer. A distribution is one aid delivery event — food kits, cash assistance, school supplies — with a line per beneficiary. Its lifecycle: Draft → Confirmed → Done (with Cancel available before Done).

9.1 Prepare the distribution

1. Go to NGO ▸ Beneficiaries ▸ Aid Distributions, click New.
2. Give it a title 1 (e.g. "October food kits — North district") and set Project, Fund, Date and Location 2.
3. On Beneficiary Lines 3, add one line per person: a stock Product or a free-text Item, quantity and Unit Value (the estimated monetary value — feeds reporting). Totals appear at the bottom 4.
4. Click Confirm 5. At least one line is required.

9.2 On distribution day

1. Print the signature sheet: Print ▸ Distribution Sheet (the cog/print menu). It lists every beneficiary with a signature column.
2. As people collect their aid, tick Received / Signed 6 on their line.
3. When finished, click Mark Done. The event is locked and counted on the dashboard.

10.Projects, logframe & indicators (M&E)

Audience: NGO Project Officer.

10.1 Turn a project into an NGO project

1. Open any project (from NGO ▸ Projects ▸ NGO Projects or the Project app) and go to its NGO tab 1.
2. Set the NGO Fund 2 — this is what makes it an NGO project — plus the Sector and Target Beneficiaries.
3. Three smart buttons appear 3: Beneficiaries, Distributions, Indicators.

10.2 Build the logframe

A logframe is the project's results ladder: one Goal, with Outcomes under it, Outputs under those, and Activities at the bottom.

1. On the NGO tab (or NGO ▸ Projects ▸ Logframe), add elements top-down: create the Goal first, then each Outcome with the Goal as its Parent Element, and so on 4.
2. Open an element and add Indicators on its tab: a name, a unit, the Baseline (where you start) and the Target (where you want to end) 5.

10.3 Record progress

1. After each monitoring visit, open the indicator and add a Measurement line: date and the cumulative value reached, with your evidence source in the notes.
2. The Progress % bar updates itself: (achieved − baseline) ÷ (target − baseline). The average across indicators shows on the project and on the dashboard.

11.Charging bills, purchases & expenses to funds

Audience: NGO Finance (bills), any purchaser/employee (POs, expenses). This is how the fund's Spent and Committed figures fill themselves.

11.1 Purchase orders → Committed

1. In the Purchase app, create the purchase order as usual.
2. Next to the vendor reference, set the NGO Fund 1 and the Fund Budget Line 2 it draws from.
3. Confirm the order. Its untaxed amount now shows as Committed on the fund until the vendor bill is posted.
4. When you create the bill from the PO, the fund and budget line carry over automatically — nothing to re-enter.

11.2 Vendor bills & journal entries → Spent

1. On a vendor bill / invoice / journal entry, Finance users see an NGO Fund field near the reference. Set it and the fund flows to every line.
2. For precise budgeting, open the line columns (the ⚙ column picker) and set the Fund Budget Line per line.
3. Post the bill. The amounts move from Committed to Spent on the fund and its budget line.

11.3 Employee expenses

1. In the Expenses app, create the expense as usual.
2. Set NGO Fund and Fund Budget Line — the fund's analytic account is placed in the Analytic Distribution for you.
3. Submit and approve as usual; once the expense entries are posted, they count as Spent.

12.Transferring money between funds

Audience: NGO Finance. When a reallocation is agreed with donors, move budget from one fund to another with a full audit trail.

1. Open the source fund and click Transfer in its header, or go to NGO ▸ Funds ▸ Transfer Between Funds.
2. Pick Source 1 and Destination 2 funds — they must share the same currency and company.
3. Enter the Amount 3 (it cannot exceed the source fund's Available balance) and a mandatory Justification 4.
4. Click Transfer 5. Both funds' totals adjust, a message is logged on each, and a numbered transfer record (e.g. TRF/2026/0004) is created in NGO ▸ Funds ▸ Fund Transfers. Transfer records can never be deleted.

13.Closing a fund

Audience: NGO Manager (or Finance with manager sign-off).

1. Open the fund and click Close Fund in the header. A dialog opens.
2. Write the mandatory Closing Note 1 — final report reference, treatment of unspent balance, donor sign-off.
3. If confirmed purchase orders are still unbilled, the system refuses to close and tells you the committed amount. Either bill/cancel those POs, or tick Close Despite Open Commitments 2 deliberately.
4. Click Close Fund 3. The status becomes Closed and the note is logged in the fund's chatter forever.

14.Dashboard & reports

Audience: everyone (some reports are role-restricted).

14.1 The dashboard

NGO ▸ Dashboard shows eight live cards. Every card is a button — click it to open the records behind the number.

14.2 Analyses (pivot & graph)

Under NGO ▸ Reporting:

In any pivot: click + on rows/columns to add a grouping (e.g. rows = Fund, columns = Category), click Measures to choose the figures, and use the download icon to export to Excel.

14.3 PDF documents

15.Troubleshooting & FAQ

NGO Management System for Odoo 18 Community · User Manual v1.0 · The screen images are illustrative recreations of the module's interface. For installation and technical documentation, see the module's README.md and docs/ folder.