Hide Product Cost & Margins from Salespersons for Odoo 19 documentation

A guide to hiding product cost and margins from salespersons: what disappears, who still sees it, how the API is protected, and what the module does not cover.

Documents version 1.0.1Updated Oct 23, 2026

About Hide Product Cost & Margins from Salespersons for Odoo 19 Download the PDF(PDF, 1.9 MB)

Start here

In plain words: Odoo shows the product Cost and the order Margin to every internal user. That is fine for a manager, but a salesperson who sees that you buy a chair for 55 and sell it for 70 negotiates differently, and may tell a customer. This module takes cost and margin away from the people you choose, everywhere: in the screens, in the reports, and in the API.

A salesperson's order: prices, quantities and totals. No cost, no margin.

	Salesperson	Sales manager, accountant, administrator
Product form and lists	No Cost	Cost shown
Order lines	No Cost, Margin, Margin % columns	Optional columns available
Order totals	No margin line	Margin and percentage
Sales and invoice analysis	No Margin measure	Margin available
JSON-RPC / XML-RPC / exports	Access denied	Allowed

Tip: Salespersons keep working exactly as before: they quote, confirm, deliver and invoice. Odoo still computes the margin in the background for the people who may see it.

What is hidden

Model	Field	Where you see it normally
Product / Product template	Cost (`standard_price`)	Product form, product list, variants list
Sales order line	Cost (`purchase_price`), Margin, Margin %	Order lines (form and list), pivot and graph
Sales order	Margin, Margin %	Totals of the order, orders list, pivot and graph
Sales analysis report	Margin	Sales → Reporting → Sales
Invoice analysis report	Margin, Inventory value	Invoicing → Reporting → Invoices

In plain words: These are the fields Odoo itself uses to show or compute cost and margin. The module does not hide anything else: prices, discounts, taxes and totals stay visible.

Requirements

Item	Details
Odoo	19.0 (Community or Enterprise)
Apps needed	Sales with the Margins in Sales Orders module (`sale_margin`), Invoicing and Inventory. They are installed for you.
License	OPL-1 (Odoo Proprietary License v1.0)

Install

Unzip the package. Inside is taqnix_hide_cost_margin.zip; unzip it to get the folder taqnix_hide_cost_margin.
Copy the folder into one of the addons_path folders of your Odoo server and restart Odoo.
Log in as an administrator, activate Developer mode, open Apps and press Update Apps List.
Remove the “Apps” filter, search Hide Product Cost and press Install.

# or from the command line
./odoo-bin -c odoo.conf -d YOUR_DATABASE -i taqnix_hide_cost_margin --stop-after-init

Important: Installing the module hides cost and margin from everybody who is not in the group below. Check chapter 5 before you install on a live system, so nobody who needs cost loses it.

Who still sees cost and margin

In plain words: One group decides: See Product Cost & Margins. It is given automatically, through the roles Odoo already has, to the people who normally work with costs.

Role in Odoo	Sees cost and margin?
Sales → Administrator (sales manager)	Yes
Accounting → Accountant and Adviser	Yes
Inventory → Administrator	Yes
Purchase → User and Administrator	Yes
Settings → Administrator	Yes
Sales → User: Own Documents Only	No
Sales → User: All Documents	No
Accounting → Billing only	No

Settings → Users & Companies → Groups (Developer mode): the group and everyone who has it.

Open Settings → Users & Companies → Users and open the user.
To give cost visibility, add the group See Product Cost & Margins in the user's access rights, or give the user one of the roles above.
To take it away, remove the role that grants it. Whoever has no such role simply stops seeing the figures.

Tip: Because the group comes from roles, nobody has to be edited one by one: existing managers and accountants keep seeing everything the moment you install, salespersons lose it.

On the product

In plain words: The product form is the first place people look. The same product, seen by a salesperson and by a manager:

A salesperson: the Cost field is simply not there.

In plain words: The product list and the variants list lose their Cost column too.

On sales orders

In plain words: On an order the module removes the Cost, Margin and Margin % columns, the margin line under the totals and the optional-column choices.

A manager can switch the Cost and Margin columns on from the column menu.

For a salesperson the same menu has no Cost and no Margin.

The manager's order with Cost, Margin and the margin line under the totals.

In plain words: Salespersons can still change quantities, prices and discounts. If a price is changed, the margin is updated in the background; only people in the group can see it.

In the reports

In plain words: Reports are where margin usually leaks. The module removes the Margin measure from the sales analysis, and the Margin and Inventory value measures from the invoice analysis, for people outside the group.

A manager can choose Margin as a measure.

For a salesperson the list of measures has no Margin.

In plain words: The same applies to filters, grouping and exports: a field that cannot be read cannot be put in a filter, a group-by or an Excel export either.

Not only the screen: the API

In plain words: Hiding a field in a view is not enough. Odoo has an open API, and a curious employee with a few lines of Python can ask the server directly for the cost of every product. This module works on the model itself, so the server refuses.

The same JSON-RPC calls, one by a salesperson (refused) and one by a manager (answered).

import xmlrpc.client
common = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy('https://erp.example.com/xmlrpc/2/common')
uid = common.authenticate('db', 'sally', 'her-password', {})
m = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy('https://erp.example.com/xmlrpc/2/object')

m.execute_kw('db', uid, 'her-password', 'product.template', 'read', [[3], ['name']])
# [{'id': 3, 'name': 'Virtual Interior Design'}]

m.execute_kw('db', uid, 'her-password', 'product.template', 'read', [[3], ['standard_price']])
# xmlrpc.client.Fault: AccessError: You do not have enough rights to access the field "standard_price"

Call by a salesperson	Result
`read` with the hidden field	Access error
`read` without a field list	Works, but the hidden fields are not in the answer
`search` / `search_read` with a domain on a hidden field	Access error (no guessing the cost by filtering)
`read_group` on a hidden field	Access error
`write` of the cost	Access error
`fields_get`	Hidden fields are not announced

What it does not hide

In plain words: Be clear about the limits so there are no surprises.

Not covered	What to do
Vendor prices on the product's Purchase tab, purchase orders	These need the Purchase app. Do not give it to salespersons.
Stock valuation, inventory value reports	These need Inventory rights. Do not give them to salespersons.
Manufacturing cost (bills of materials, work centres)	Needs Manufacturing rights.
Point of Sale margin reports	Point of Sale has its own reports. Keep them to managers.
Custom modules that read the cost for a salesperson	They will get an access error. See chapter 12 for the fix.
The selling price and the discounts	These are not secrets: salespersons need them to sell.

Important: If a salesperson also has Purchase, Inventory or Point of Sale manager rights, those apps show costs through their own screens. Review the roles of your sales team.

Try it yourself

Create a test user with only Sales → User: All Documents (plus Invoicing if they should invoice).
Open a private browser window and log in as that user.
Open a product, an order and Sales → Reporting. There should be no Cost, no Margin.
Create a quotation, confirm it and create an invoice. Everything works as before.
Log in as a manager and check the margin of that order: it is there and correct.

In plain words: The module comes with automated tests that do exactly this, including the API calls shown in chapter 9.

For developers

In plain words: Skip this chapter if you only use the module.

Item	Details
Group	`taqnix_hide_cost_margin.group_see_cost`
How fields are protected	The fields are re-declared with `groups`. Odoo then refuses to read, search, group, write and export them for others, and removes them from every view.
Your own code	Read protected fields with `.sudo()` when your code must use them for any user.
Order lines	`_add_precomputed_values` runs as superuser so the cost can be precomputed when a salesperson creates a line.

# protect another field the same way
from odoo import fields, models

class ProductTemplate(models.Model):
    _inherit = 'product.template'

    my_secret_price = fields.Float(groups='taqnix_hide_cost_margin.group_see_cost')

# your own code that needs the cost for any user
cost = line.product_id.sudo().standard_price

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to do
A salesperson still sees the cost	They have a role that grants the group (for example Sales Administrator or Purchase User). Check the user's roles and remove the one that is too much.
A manager no longer sees the margin	The manager is missing the group. Give the user the Sales Administrator role or add the group directly.
A custom report or module fails with an access error for salespersons	It reads the cost as that user. Make it use `.sudo()` for the cost, or give the user the group.
The Cost column is still in my list after installing	Reload the page with `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`R`.
Margins are missing on old orders	Nothing was lost: they are stored. Only users in the group can read them.

Updating and removing

Replace the folder with the new version, restart Odoo and run -u taqnix_hide_cost_margin. To remove it, uninstall it from Apps: cost and margin become visible to all internal users again, as in standard Odoo. No data is changed or lost.

Support

Installation help and bug fixes are included for 6 months, with lifetime updates. Contact us through the marketplace page where you bought the module or write to support@taqnix.com with your Odoo version and a screenshot.