Integration Architecture and Data Flow

Core Integration Patterns

Amazon Seller Central integration with Odoo 18 follows two primary data exchange patterns: real-time API calls for critical operations and scheduled batch processing for bulk data synchronization. The architecture centers on Odoo as the system of record, with Amazon serving as a sales channel that feeds data into your core business operations. You must design this integration to handle Amazon’s API rate limits while maintaining data consistency across both systems.

The integration uses Odoo’s built-in Amazon Connector module as its foundation, extending it with custom development for specific business requirements. This module provides the basic framework for connecting to Amazon’s Selling Partner API (SP-API), which replaced the older MWS API. Your implementation will build upon this foundation, adding custom synchronization logic and error handling tailored to your specific Amazon marketplace and product catalog.

Data Flow Directionality

Orders flow from Amazon to Odoo as sales orders, triggering your standard order processing workflow. Inventory updates move from Odoo to Amazon, ensuring your stock levels remain synchronized across all sales channels. Product information typically originates in Odoo and publishes to Amazon, though some businesses maintain product data in Amazon and sync to Odoo. You must establish clear master data ownership for each data type to prevent synchronization conflicts.

The integration handles multiple data types with different synchronization priorities. Order data requires near-real-time processing to ensure prompt fulfillment, while inventory updates can operate on a scheduled basis. Product information changes less frequently but demands careful validation to maintain Amazon’s catalog requirements. Financial data, including settlements and fees, follows a daily synchronization pattern for accounting reconciliation.

Authentication and Security Framework

Amazon’s SP-API uses OAuth 2.0 authentication with a Login with Amazon (LWA) token exchange. You configure this through Amazon’s Seller Central developer permissions, granting your Odoo instance specific API roles. The system exchanges these tokens automatically, maintaining secure access without manual intervention. Odoo stores these credentials encrypted within its database, protecting your Amazon account access.

The data flow incorporates multiple security layers, including HTTPS encryption for all API communications and credential rotation according to Amazon’s security policies. Your implementation must handle token refresh operations transparently, ensuring continuous synchronization without manual reauthentication. Amazon enforces strict rate limits that your integration must respect through intelligent request throttling and queue management.

Error Handling Architecture

The integration architecture incorporates a multi-layered error handling approach. Network timeouts and temporary Amazon API issues trigger automatic retries with exponential backoff. Data validation errors require human intervention, logging detailed context for troubleshooting. The system maintains synchronization queues with dead letter handling for persistent failures, ensuring one problematic record never blocks the entire integration.

You design the data flow to maintain transactional integrity where possible, though Amazon’s API limitations sometimes require compensating transactions. For example, if an inventory update fails after order import, the system must track this discrepancy for manual resolution. The architecture includes comprehensive logging and monitoring to provide visibility into synchronization health and data consistency across systems.

Step-by-Step Configuration

Prerequisites and Environment Setup

Begin by verifying your Odoo 18 instance meets the technical requirements for Amazon integration. Ensure you run Odoo 16.0 or later with the Amazon Connector module version 16.0.2 or higher. Install necessary Python dependencies including boto3 for AWS signature generation and cryptography for token management. Configure your Odoo instance with proper SSL certificates, as Amazon’s SP-API requires secure HTTPS connections.

Register your integration in Amazon Seller Central through the Developer Central portal. Create a new application, selecting the SP-API option and specifying the appropriate roles for your integration scope. Amazon requires detailed business information and use case descriptions for approval. Download your LWA credentials (Client ID and Client Secret) and note your Seller ID, as you will need these for Odoo configuration.

Prepare your AWS account for the integration by creating an IAM user with programmatic access. Configure this user with an IAM policy that grants permission to execute the Selling Partner API actions your integration requires. Generate AWS access keys for this IAM user, as Amazon’s SP-API requires AWS Signature Version 4 for request authentication. Store these credentials securely for the Odoo configuration phase.

Odoo Amazon Connector Installation

Install the Odoo Amazon Connector module through your Odoo application interface or deploy it manually to your custom addons directory. Enable the module in Odoo’s Apps menu, which adds Amazon-specific configuration options to your Sales and Inventory modules. The module creates new menu items for Amazon operations and extends existing Odoo models with Amazon-specific fields and behaviors.

Navigate to the Amazon configuration section under Sales > Configuration > Amazon Accounts. Create a new Amazon account record, providing a descriptive name for your marketplace connection. Select your Amazon marketplace from the predefined list, as this determines the API endpoint and regional settings. Odoo supports all major Amazon marketplaces including North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia through separate endpoint configurations.

Configure the authentication parameters using the credentials from your Amazon Developer Central registration. Enter your LWA Client ID and Client Secret in the respective fields. Provide your Amazon Seller ID and the AWS access keys from your IAM user configuration. Test the connection using the verification function, which attempts to authenticate with Amazon’s API and returns success or detailed error information.

API Scope and Permission Configuration

Define the specific API operations your integration requires based on your business processes. For basic order synchronization, enable orders and order items permissions. For inventory management, add listings and inventory permissions. Product synchronization requires catalog items permissions, while financial data needs finances permissions. Request only the permissions your business requires, as broader scopes increase security exposure.

Configure these permissions in Amazon Seller Central under Apps and Services > Develop Apps. Edit your application to select the appropriate roles, which correspond to API permission groups. Amazon may require additional verification for certain roles, particularly those accessing financial or customer data. Once configured, these permissions determine which API operations your Odoo integration can perform.

Implement permission validation in your Odoo configuration by testing each enabled scope with a corresponding API call. For example, test order permissions by attempting to retrieve recent orders, or inventory permissions by trying to update a listing quantity. Log permission errors for troubleshooting and ensure your Odoo users understand which operations require specific Amazon permissions.

Synchronization Policy Configuration

Define your synchronization policies for each data type based on business requirements and Amazon API limitations. Configure order import to run every 15-30 minutes during business hours, balancing responsiveness with API rate limit conservation. Set inventory export to batch updates every 2-4 hours, or implement real-time updates for critical products with low stock levels.

Configure the order import filters to match your business rules. Set conditions based on order status, fulfillment channel, and marketplace. Exclude certain order types like pending orders or test orders based on your operational preferences. Define how Odoo handles various Amazon order attributes like shipping service levels, gift messages, and special delivery instructions.

Set up product synchronization according to your catalog management approach. Configure whether Odoo creates new products for unrecognized Amazon SKUs or flags them for review. Define price synchronization rules, including whether Odoo overwrites Amazon prices or respects manual overrides. Establish category mapping between Amazon product categories and Odoo’s product categories for accurate reporting.

Advanced Configuration and Customization

Extend the base Amazon Connector with custom fields mapping for your specific business needs. Use Odoo’s studio module or custom Python code to map additional Amazon order attributes to Odoo sales order fields. For example, map Amazon’s buyer-tax-location attribute to Odoo’s fiscal position fields for accurate tax calculation in multi-state sales scenarios.

Implement custom synchronization filters using Odoo’s domain filter syntax. Create rules that exclude certain products from inventory synchronization or prioritize order processing for specific marketplaces. These filters help manage API rate limits by reducing unnecessary synchronization operations while focusing on business-critical data flows.

Configure logging and monitoring appropriate for your operational scale. Enable detailed synchronization logs for troubleshooting while setting up log rotation to prevent database bloat. Configure Odoo’s scheduled actions with proper error notifications and performance monitoring. Implement dashboard alerts for synchronization failures or performance degradation.

Data Mapping and Transformation

Order Data Structure Mapping

Amazon orders arrive with a complex nested JSON structure that Odoo must flatten into its sales order model. The integration maps Amazon’s order ID to Odoo’s origin field, preserving the reference for future synchronization. Amazon order items transform into Odoo sale order lines, with careful handling of product matching through SKU or ASIN identifiers.

The mapping process handles Amazon-specific order attributes that lack direct Odoo equivalents. Gift messages map to Odoo’s sale order notes, while shipping service level selections translate to Odoo’s shipping policy fields. Amazon’s order total breakdown separates into Odoo’s tax, shipping, and subtotal fields based on Amazon’s item promotion and tax calculations.

Address mapping presents particular challenges due to format differences between Amazon and Odoo. Amazon’s single-line address fields require parsing into Odoo’s structured address format. The integration handles international address variations, extracting relevant components like street names, building numbers, and apartment identifiers for proper shipping label generation.

Product and Inventory Mapping

Product synchronization between Odoo and Amazon requires careful identifier management. Odoo products match Amazon listings through SKU mapping, with fallback to ASIN matching for certain scenarios. The integration maintains a cross-reference table that tracks these relationships, enabling bidirectional updates while preserving data integrity.

Inventory quantity mapping must account for different reservation models between the systems. Odoo’s available quantity concept differs from Amazon’s fulfillable quantity, requiring calculation adjustments. The integration computes available quantities by considering Odoo’s stock reservations and Amazon’s pending orders to prevent overselling across channels.

Product attribute mapping handles the translation between Odoo’s product variants and Amazon’s variation relationships. Odoo product templates map to Amazon parent listings, while Odoo product variants map to Amazon child listings. The integration maintains these relationships during synchronization, ensuring price and inventory updates apply to the correct listing variations.

Financial Data Transformation

Amazon settlement reports arrive as structured CSV files that the integration parses into Odoo accounting entries. Each settlement line item maps to appropriate Odoo account moves, with transaction types determining the account mapping. The system creates separate journal items for product sales, Amazon fees, shipping charges, and tax collections.

The financial transformation handles currency conversion for international marketplaces, using exchange rates from the settlement period. Amazon’s tax calculation complexity requires careful mapping to Odoo’s tax structure, particularly for marketplace facilitator tax scenarios where Amazon calculates and remits sales tax automatically.

Fee mapping identifies each Amazon charge type and allocates it to the appropriate expense account. Subscription fees, referral fees, FBA fees, and advertising charges all map to separate accounts for accurate cost tracking. The integration matches these fees to the relevant sales transactions, enabling proper gross margin calculation per order.

Custom Field Mapping Scenarios

Business-specific data requirements often demand custom field mapping beyond the standard integration. Amazon’s business order attributes like PO numbers or buyer company names may map to custom Odoo fields for B2B sales tracking. The integration supports these extensions through Odoo’s custom field mechanism and mapping configuration.

Complex product data scenarios require specialized transformation logic. Amazon’s variation themes like size-color combinations need mapping to Odoo’s attribute value combinations. Bundle products on Amazon may map to Odoo’s kit products or bill of materials, depending on the fulfillment model. These mappings preserve the product structure across both systems.

Error Handling and Resilience

Common API Integration Errors

Amazon’s SP-API returns specific error codes that your integration must handle gracefully. Quota exceeded errors (429 HTTP status) trigger automatic retry with exponential backoff, respecting Amazon’s rate limits. Invalid input errors (400 status) require data validation and administrator notification, as they indicate fundamental data issues.

Authentication errors (401/403 status) often stem from expired LWA tokens or revoked IAM permissions. The integration detects these errors and initiates token refresh procedures automatically. Persistent authentication failures escalate to administrator alerts, as they may indicate credential configuration problems or Amazon policy changes.

Temporary service errors (500/503 status) from Amazon’s API endpoints trigger retry logic with increasing delays. The integration differentiates between transient errors that resolve with retries and persistent errors that require investigation. Circuit breaker patterns prevent continuous retries for consistently failing operations.

Data Validation and Conflict Resolution

Data validation errors occur when Amazon data violates Odoo’s business rules. Orders with invalid product references create synchronization failures that require manual resolution. The integration logs these errors with complete context and moves problematic records to a quarantine area for investigation without blocking subsequent orders.

Inventory synchronization conflicts arise when parallel updates create race conditions between Odoo and Amazon. The integration uses optimistic locking with version stamps to detect these conflicts, applying last-write-wins semantics or escalating to manual resolution based on business rules. This prevents inventory drift while maintaining synchronization performance.

Product data conflicts present when the same product receives updates from both systems simultaneously. The integration employs master data ownership rules to determine which system prevails in conflict scenarios. Configuration determines whether Odoo or Amazon serves as the master for product attributes like title, description, and imagery.

Synchronization Failure Recovery

The integration maintains detailed synchronization logs that track each data exchange attempt. These logs capture request payloads, response data, and error details for troubleshooting. When failures occur, administrators can replay specific synchronization operations from the logs after addressing the root cause.

For catastrophic failures like database corruption or extended Amazon API outages, the integration supports bulk resynchronization procedures. These processes rebuild the synchronization state from a specific timestamp, reprocessing all data exchanges since the failure point. The system handles duplicate detection to prevent creating redundant records during recovery.

Partial synchronization failures require compensating transactions to maintain data consistency. If order import succeeds but inventory update fails, the system tracks this discrepancy for manual resolution. Recovery procedures identify these inconsistent states and provide tools for administrators to reconcile the systems.

Testing and Validation

Development Environment Testing

Establish a dedicated Amazon Seller Central sandbox account for integration testing. This sandbox environment provides realistic API behavior without affecting your live marketplace operations. Configure a separate Odoo instance that mirrors your production environment for end-to-end testing of the integration.

Create comprehensive test data that covers all your business scenarios. Generate test orders with various product types, shipping methods, and customer locations. Prepare inventory scenarios that test synchronization under low-stock conditions and backorder situations. Develop product catalog test cases that include simple products, variants, and kits.

Execute integration tests that validate each data flow in isolation before testing end-to-end scenarios. Test order import with different order statuses and fulfillment methods. Verify inventory export with quantity changes and stock reservations. Validate product synchronization with new creations, updates, and deletions.

Production Validation Procedures

Before going live, execute a phased validation approach that starts with read-only operations. Test API connectivity and data retrieval without making any changes to either system. Progress to one-way synchronization, typically from Amazon to Odoo, before enabling bidirectional data flow.

Implement a pilot program with limited data scope for initial production testing. Select a specific product category or marketplace for the initial rollout. Monitor synchronization accuracy and performance before expanding to your entire catalog. This contained approach limits potential business impact from integration issues.

Establish validation checkpoints that compare key metrics between systems. Verify order counts match between Amazon and Odoo for specific date ranges. Reconcile inventory levels for a sample of products to ensure quantity synchronization accuracy. Compare financial totals from Amazon settlements with Odoo accounting entries.

Performance and Load Testing

Measure synchronization performance under various load conditions to establish performance baselines. Test order import with different batch sizes to determine optimal synchronization frequency. Measure inventory export performance with large product catalogs to identify potential bottlenecks.

Validate the integration’s behavior under Amazon API rate limiting. Test how the system handles quota exceeded errors and whether retry logic functions correctly. Verify that synchronization queues properly handle backpressure without data loss when API limits constrain throughput.

Conduct endurance testing over extended periods to identify memory leaks or performance degradation. Run continuous synchronization for 48-72 hours while monitoring system resources and synchronization latency. This testing reveals issues that may not appear during shorter test cycles.

Security Considerations

Authentication and Credential Management

Amazon SP-API integration requires multiple credential sets that demand secure management. LWA credentials (Client ID and Client Secret) authenticate your application to Amazon’s identity services. AWS IAM credentials sign API requests to Amazon’s Selling Partner API. Odoo database credentials access your business data. Store all credentials encrypted using strong encryption algorithms, never in plain text configuration files.

Implement secure credential rotation procedures that refresh tokens before expiration. Amazon LWA refresh tokens have indefinite lifespan but require secure storage. AWS IAM keys should rotate quarterly according to security best practices. Automate these rotation processes where possible, with manual fallback procedures for failure scenarios.

Control access to integration configuration based on role-based access controls. Limit Amazon credential management to authorized administrators only. Audit configuration changes and access attempts to detect potential security incidents. Implement principle of least privilege, granting only necessary permissions for each user role.

Data Protection and Privacy

The integration handles sensitive business information including sales data, customer details, and financial records. Encrypt data in transit using TLS 1.2 or higher for all API communications. Encrypt sensitive data at rest within Odoo’s database, particularly customer personal information and financial records.

Comply with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA when handling European or California customer data. Implement data retention policies that automatically purge sensitive information after business needs expire. Anonymize personal data used for testing and development to prevent exposure of real customer information.

Secure API endpoints against common web vulnerabilities. Validate all input data from Amazon to prevent injection attacks. Implement proper error handling that avoids exposing sensitive system information in error messages. Regular security scanning identifies potential vulnerabilities in your integration code.

API Security and Access Controls

Configure Amazon SP-API with restrictive IAM policies that grant only necessary permissions. Regularly review and audit these permissions to ensure they align with current business requirements. Implement IP restriction where possible, limiting API access to known network ranges.

Monitor API usage for anomalous patterns that may indicate security breaches. Unexpected spikes in order downloads or inventory updates might signal unauthorized access. Implement alerting for suspicious activities like access from unusual locations or at unusual times.

Secure your Odoo instance against unauthorized access through strong authentication mechanisms. Implement two-factor authentication for administrative users. Regularly update Odoo and its dependencies to patch known security vulnerabilities. Conduct security audits to identify potential weaknesses in your deployment.

Performance Optimization

API Rate Limit Management

Amazon’s SP-API enforces strict rate limits that vary by endpoint and marketplace. The integration must track usage across all endpoints and implement intelligent throttling to avoid quota exceeded errors. Implement token bucket algorithms or similar rate limiting patterns that smooth request distribution throughout quota periods.

Prioritize API calls based on business criticality, ensuring order synchronization receives quota allocation before less time-sensitive operations like product updates. Implement queue prioritization that processes high-priority synchronization tasks first while deferring background operations during peak usage periods.

Batch operations reduce API call volume for certain operations. Inventory updates can combine multiple SKU changes into single batch requests where supported. Product information updates benefit from batch processing when making related changes across multiple listings. These batch operations conserve your API quota for critical real-time synchronization.

Database Optimization Techniques

Odoo database performance directly impacts integration throughput, particularly for large product catalogs or high-order volumes. Implement appropriate database indexing on Amazon synchronization tables, particularly on fields used for matching and lookup operations. Regular database maintenance including vacuum and analyze operations maintains query performance.

Optimize Odoo’s scheduled action configuration to prevent overlapping synchronization jobs. Stagger different synchronization processes to distribute database load throughout the synchronization cycle. Monitor database locks during synchronization to identify and resolve contention issues that slow integration performance.

Implement query optimization for custom synchronization logic, avoiding N+1 query patterns that create excessive database load. Use Odoo’s read_group operations for aggregation instead of processing large record sets in Python. These optimizations become critical as your data volume grows with business expansion.

Caching Strategies

Implement strategic caching for reference data that changes infrequently. Amazon marketplace definitions, product categories, and fee descriptions represent good caching candidates. These caches reduce API calls for static reference data while ensuring synchronization performance for dynamic operational data.

Use Odoo’s in-memory caching for frequently accessed Amazon-related data like product cross-references and marketplace settings. Configure appropriate cache expiration policies that balance performance with data freshness requirements. Monitor cache hit ratios to validate caching effectiveness and adjust strategies as needed.

Implement request-level caching for Amazon API responses where appropriate, particularly for product information lookups during order processing. These caches reduce redundant API calls for the same data within short timeframes while maintaining overall data consistency across the integration.