Customer Onboarding Guide — For the Accountant

How to bring a new customer onto your Cloud Acropolis Accounting Bundle. Your bundle came with 10 ready slots. This guide walks you through activating one for a real customer, start to finish.

Before you start

You should have received, from Cloud Acropolis:

• 10 pairs of web addresses (URLs), one pair per slot — one for Odoo (your side), one for the Portal (your customer's side)
• Your accountant login for Odoo
• A list of which slot numbers (1–10) are already used and which are free

You will not receive the admin login — it is reserved for Cloud Acropolis for system troubleshooting and is never shared.

If you don't have this list, contact Cloud Acropolis before continuing.

Step 1 — Pick a free slot

Choose the next unused slot number. Write down its two URLs — you'll need both in the steps below.

Step 2 — Set up the company in Odoo

1. Open that slot's Odoo URL in your browser and log in with your accountant account.
2. Go to Settings → General Settings → Companies, or search "Company" in the top search bar.
3. Enter the customer's real information:
4. Legal company name
5. VAT number (Belgian format, e.g. BE0123456789)
6. Registered address
7. Save.

Then add the customer's bank account, so it can match with bank statements later (see Step 5):

1. Go to Invoicing → Configuration → Bank Accounts.
2. Add a new bank account with the IBAN they actually use.
3. Save.

This step is yours only. The customer cannot and should not change company information themselves — a wrong VAT number on an invoice is a legal problem, not just a typo.

Step 3 — Set the chart of accounts and taxes

Odoo comes with the Belgian chart of accounts and standard VAT rates already loaded — usually nothing to change here, but check all three:

• Chart of Accounts: Accounting → Configuration → Chart of Accounts. The Belgian PCMN accounts (e.g. 700000 Sales, 440000 Suppliers) are already there. Only add an account if this customer needs something non-standard — rare.
• Taxes: Accounting → Configuration → Taxes. Standard Belgian VAT rates (21%, 12%, 6%, 0%) are pre-loaded. Only add a tax if the customer needs one not already in this list (e.g. an intra-EU or export-specific code).
• Journals: Accounting → Configuration → Journals. If the customer has more than one bank account, add an extra bank journal for each additional account here.

For a typical customer, this step is just opening these three screens, confirming nothing extra is needed, and moving on.

Step 4 — Set the ONSS employer category (if they have staff)

If the customer has employees, this is the one step that everything about their payroll and social security filings depends on — get it right from a real source, never guess. This is your responsibility as the accountant, not the customer's — the customer's spreadsheet never asks for a joint committee at all (see the reference table below for why).

1. Ask the customer (or check their ONSS/RSZ registration documents) for their ONSS employer category — a 3-digit code the ONSS itself assigns based on the company's activity and joint committee(s). It's on their ONSS registration, or their previous social secretariat can confirm it.
2. If the customer is a brand-new employer with no ONSS registration yet, or you want to sanity-check what they've told you, use the reference table below to work out which joint committee(s) actually fit their activity, then confirm the matching employer category with Cloud Acropolis before entering it (new committee/category combinations that aren't already in the system need to be added first).
3. In Odoo, open Settings → General Settings → Companies, the customer's company record.
4. Fill in ONSS Number and add the correct ONSS Employer Categories (a company can have more than one — for example, one category for manual staff and a different one for office staff).
5. Save.

You do not need to know which joint committee number applies once this is set, and neither does the customer — the system reads it from the category you set here, automatically, for every employee, every payslip, and every filing (DmfA, Précompte, Belcotax). Getting the category right at this step is what makes that possible, which is why it's on you and why the reference table below matters.

Do this before the customer uploads any employees. If no employer category is set, or the category you've set doesn't cover the worker type someone selects (e.g. only a manual-worker category exists but a customer enters an office worker), the upload is rejected with a message telling them to check with you — nothing is guessed or silently left blank.

If you're not sure which category applies, or the company needs a category not yet in the system, contact Cloud Acropolis before the customer tries to upload staff.

Reference — which joint committee applies?

Belgian retail and related trades are split across several committees, each with its own minimum wage scales and premiums — the ONSS employer category you set follows from whichever of these actually covers the business's main activity. This list covers what a typical retail-bundle customer falls under; if a customer's activity doesn't clearly match any of these, confirm with Cloud Acropolis rather than guess.

A company's main activity decides its committee, even if it also does a bit of something else — a secondary activity follows the main one, it doesn't get its own committee. If a business genuinely straddles two activities in a way that isn't obvious from this table, that's a real judgement call the ONSS itself can rule on — don't guess, contact Cloud Acropolis or the FOD Werkgelegenheid.

Step 5 — Give the customer their Portal address and set their password

Send the customer their Portal URL (the second of the two you noted in Step 1) and their login (their email address).

Note: this slot ships with a placeholder password already set on the customer's account (Test@1234_CaBiz). Provisioning only sets up your own accountant login — it does not touch the customer's password. You must replace this placeholder before handing off to a real customer; never leave it in place.

Set their password yourself, in Odoo:

1. Go to Settings → Users, open the customer's user record.
2. Click the gear (⚙️) icon → Change Password.
3. Enter a password and confirm.
4. Tell the customer this password by phone or a separate message — not by email, and never together with their login in the same message.

Once logged in, the customer can change this password themselves at any time from the Portal's own Change Password page — the one you set is just their starting point, not something they're stuck with.

If the customer later loses their password, they must contact you — repeat this same step to reset it. There is no self-service "forgot password" flow in the Portal today.

Do not send them the Odoo URL. That's for you.

Step 6 — Point the customer to the End-Customer Guide

Give them (or link them to) the "Using Your Portal" guide — it covers uploading invoices, employees, bank statements, and downloading reports, all from their side.

Step 7 — First reconciliation cycle

Once the customer has: - uploaded a few invoices, and - uploaded their first bank statement (CODA or CAMT.053 file from their bank)

...check Invoicing → Accounting → Reconciliation in Odoo. Most lines match automatically. Anything left over is yours to match by hand — see the Accountant Operations Guide for exactly where.

Checklist summary

• [ ] Picked a free slot, noted both URLs
• [ ] Company info entered in Odoo (name, VAT, address)
• [ ] Bank account (IBAN) added via Invoicing → Configuration → Bank Accounts
• [ ] Chart of accounts / taxes checked
• [ ] ONSS employer category set, using the reference table if needed (if the customer has staff)
• [ ] Portal URL sent to the customer
• [ ] Customer's password set in Odoo and shared with them separately
• [ ] End-Customer Guide sent to the customer
• [ ] First reconciliation checked after their first bank upload

That's it — the slot is live and the customer can start working.