Migrate from Vinsolutions to Odoo CRM

VinSolutions separates Contacts, Prospects, and Deals; Odoo uses a single crm.lead model

VinSolutions Connect CRM maintains three distinct record types — Contact (customer), Prospect (unconverted lead), and Deal (vehicle opportunity with GP tracking) — each with its own lifecycle, fields, and workflow triggers. Odoo CRM collapses all three into the crm.lead model where the 'type' field (lead vs opportunity) determines behavior. The mapping routes Prospects with no vehicle to type='lead' and Deals to type='opportunity'. However, VinSolutions Contact records with open deals require two records in Odoo: a res.partner for the contact AND a crm.lead opportunity linked to it. This duplication is intentional and preserves the full history. The 'Customer' lifecycle stage in VinSolutions maps to a res.partner with partner_user_id set; there is no separate 'Contact' object in Odoo CRM that persists alongside crm.lead.

VinSolutions automations and DMS integration logic have no Odoo equivalent and must be rebuilt

VinSolutions process automations run inside the Connect CRM platform and reference DMS events (deal matching in Dealertrack or CDK), Predictive Insights scoring triggers, and Performance Manager task assignments. These automations cannot be exported as transferable configuration. Odoo uses Action Rules and Odoo Studio for automation, which operate on crm.lead stage changes, field updates, and mail.thread events — fundamentally different triggers than VinSolutions' DMS-sync model. FlitStack extracts all VinSolutions automation definitions as a JSON specification document that maps each VinSolutions trigger/action pair to an equivalent Odoo Action Rule or Studio automation workflow. The JSON is delivered as a project brief for the dealership's Odoo administrator. This is explicitly a rebuild, not a migration, and requires Odoo Studio or a developer.

Odoo external API is read-only on Standard and Essential plans — bulk writes require Custom plan or self-hosted

Odoo Online (cloud) plans have API restrictions based on subscription tier. The Standard and Essential plans expose read-only access via XML-RPC/REST — you can query records but cannot create or update through the API on these tiers. Migration requires write access, which means the destination Odoo instance must be on the Custom plan (Odoo Online with API write access) or self-hosted (Odoo Community on your own PostgreSQL server). The Custom plan adds a significant cost on top of per-user fees. Self-hosted Odoo Community eliminates the API restriction entirely but requires the dealership to manage hosting, SSL, and backups. This must be resolved before migration planning begins.

Vehicle data, DMS links, and showroom activity require Odoo custom fields created before data lands

VinSolutions stores automotive-specific data — vehicle VIN, make/model/year, stock number, showroom visit timestamps, and DMS reference links — that Odoo CRM does not represent in its base schema. These fields do not have a native equivalent in the crm.lead or res.partner models. The migration cannot proceed until the dealership (or FlitStack, via Odoo Studio) creates the custom fields on the target objects: x_studio_vehicle_vin, x_studio_vehicle_make, x_studio_vehicle_model, x_studio_vehicle_year, x_studio_stock_number, x_studio_showroom_visit_date, and x_studio_dms_reference. Without these fields created in Odoo first, VinSolutions vehicle data cannot be mapped and will be dropped from the migration. The field creation step adds a planning milestone before the migration run.

VinSolutions DMS matching links break on migration and require manual reconnection

VinSolutions DMS matching links records in Connect CRM to the dealership's Dealer Management System (Dealertrack, CDK, Reynolds & Reynolds). These links are stored as reference strings or record IDs pointing to the DMS. When data moves to Odoo, those links become orphaned text — the Odoo CRM record contains the DMS ID but the DMS itself has no awareness of the new Odoo record. Reconnecting DMS sync to Odoo requires a custom Odoo-DMS integration module built to the DMS API specification. This module is outside the scope of the data migration. We preserve the DMS reference in a custom field (x_studio_dms_reference) for the integration developer to use post-migration, but the connection itself must be rebuilt from scratch.