Documents, Sign and Knowledge in Odoo 19: files, e-signatures and internal wikis

Documents, Sign and Knowledge are three Enterprise apps in Odoo 19 that cover the paperwork around your transactions. Documents stores and routes files, including turning a scanned bill into a draft vendor bill; Sign sends PDFs for electronic signature; Knowledge is an internal wiki of written articles. Set up Documents folders and accounting routing first, because that is where the time saving is; Sign and Knowledge can follow in any order.

What each app does and where they overlap

All three are licensed OEEL-1, so none is available in Community. Bridge modules connect them to the rest of Odoo: Documents - Accounting, Documents - HR, Documents - Payroll, Documents - Expense, Documents - Projects and Documents - Signatures, among others.

Organising Documents: folders, access and requests

In Odoo 19, Documents is organised in folders; the separate "workspace" concept of older versions is gone, and a folder is simply a document of type Folder. A fresh install creates starter folders such as Inbox, Finance, Taxes, Annual Closing, Marketing, Legal and Insurances. Rename or remove them before users start uploading.

Access is set per folder and per document with three controls:

• Internal Users Rights: Viewer, Editor or None for all employees.
• Link Access Rights: Viewer, Editor or None for anyone with the link.
• Specific people added with their own access.

New documents inherit these rights from the folder they are created in, and a document outside any shared folder defaults to None on both, so it stays private until you share it. For most businesses, a sensible pattern is one folder per department with internal rights on the folder, and link sharing only for individual files sent outside.

Request creates a placeholder for a document you are waiting for, such as a signed offer letter or a supplier's GST certificate, with an owner, a contact, a due date and an activity. When the file arrives, it fills the placeholder. Folders can also have an email alias, so suppliers can mail invoices straight into Finance.

Routing documents to accounting with OCR

With Documents - Accounting installed, the Accounting setting in Documents centralises accounting files: you choose a Folder and map Journals to folders and tags, so bills and invoices created in Accounting also appear in Documents.

The other direction is the useful one. On a file in the Finance area you can run actions such as:

Create Vendor Bill
Create Vendor Credit Note
Create Customer Invoice
Create Customer Credit Note
Create Vendor Receipt
Create Misc Entry
Import Bank Statement

The action creates a draft entry with the file attached. If Document Digitization is enabled in Accounting > Configuration > Settings, OCR reads the vendor, dates, amounts and tax lines. The defaults are Digitize automatically for vendor bills and Digitize on demand only for customer invoices. Digitisation uses paid IAP credits.

For Indian vendor bills, check GSTIN, place of supply and the tax split between CGST/SGST and IGST on every digitised bill until you trust the results for each supplier. OCR saves typing; it does not replace review. The payables flow is covered in part 20.

Sending documents for e-signature with Sign

Sign works from templates. Upload a PDF, place fields on it, assign each field to a role (Customer, Employee and so on), and save. The standard field types are Signature, Initials, Name, Email, Phone, Company, Text, Multiline, Checkbox, Radio, Selection, Date, Strikethrough and Stamp.

When sending, you can set a Signing Order, a Valid Until date and reminders (every seven days by default once enabled). Requests move through To Sign, Signed, Cancelled and Expired. The finished PDF carries a certificate of completion, and settings let you configure a signing certificate for the company.

Each role can require an Extra Authentication Step:

• Unique Code via SMS, with the Authenticate by SMS setting (SMS credits apply);
• Via Aadhar eSign, from the Sign with Aadhaar eSign setting, which installs the emSigner integration for Indian signatories;
• itsme, for Belgium and the Netherlands.

Which signature type a given Indian document needs is a legal question, not a software one; ask your adviser before you replace wet signatures on, say, property or loan documents. For offer letters, NDAs and sales agreements, a standard Sign template is usually enough.

Writing internal documentation in Knowledge

Knowledge articles sit in three sections: Workspace for articles visible to employees, Private for your own drafts, and Shared for articles shared with specific members. Internal permission on an article is Can edit, Can read or Members only, and external users, including portal users, can be added as members.

Articles can contain items, child records shown as a list or kanban inside the article, which makes simple trackers possible without a custom app. Knowledge also supports article templates, and stages for items are managed under Knowledge > Configuration. With the Knowledge Website module (Enterprise), individual articles can be published on your website.

A practical rollout order

1. Clean up the default Documents folders and set internal access per department.
2. Turn on Document Digitization and route the vendor-bill inbox into Finance.
3. Build two or three Sign templates for the documents you send most.
4. Move your SOPs into Knowledge, one workspace section per department.

If you are unsure whether you need a custom field or a small app on top of all this, the next part covers exactly that line: Odoo 19 Studio and when to write a module instead. For a paperless-finance set-up, talk to us.