TemplateTo Now Integrates Directly with Odoo 18
If you’ve used Odoo for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly hit the wkhtmltopdf wall. Broken layouts. Missing headers and footers. Blank PDFs. CSS that works in your browser but falls apart in the generated document. The underlying engine is based on an archived, decade-old Qt WebKit fork that hasn’t seen meaningful updates in years.
We’ve built an Odoo 18 module that fixes this by routing all PDF generation through TemplateTo’s Chromium-based rendering API. It’s a drop-in replacement — your existing QWeb templates work without any changes.
What the Module Does
When you install TemplateTo Reports and enable it in Settings, the module overrides Odoo’s _render_qweb_pdf() method. Every time a user clicks Print or a scheduled action generates a report:
- Odoo renders the QWeb template to HTML (exactly as it does today)
- The HTML is sent to the TemplateTo API
- TemplateTo renders it using headless Chromium — the same engine powering Google Chrome
- The PDF is returned to Odoo as if wkhtmltopdf had generated it
The user experience doesn’t change. The output quality does.
Key Features
Modern CSS, Finally
Flexbox, CSS grid, media queries, custom web fonts, gradients, calc(), CSS variables — everything that works in a modern browser now works in your Odoo reports. No more workaround hacks to get a two-column layout or a properly positioned footer.
Sync and Batch Generation
For interactive use (clicking Print on an invoice), the module sends parallel API requests and returns the PDF in seconds. For bulk operations — generating hundreds of month-end invoices, for example — it automatically switches to background batch processing with progress tracking so your browser doesn’t time out.
Automatic Fallback
If the TemplateTo API is unreachable for any reason, the module silently falls back to wkhtmltopdf. Your users never see an error. You can disable this if you’d prefer to be alerted to API issues.
Zero Template Changes
This isn’t a new templating system. It uses the same QWeb templates you already have. The only thing that changes is the rendering engine turning that HTML into a PDF.
Getting Started
- Install TemplateTo Reports from the Odoo Apps Store
- Go to Settings and find the TemplateTo section
- Enable the toggle and enter your API key
- Click Test Connection to verify everything works
- Save — you’re done
Every report in your Odoo instance now uses Chrome headless rendering.
Privacy and Data
The module sends only the rendered report HTML to the TemplateTo API — the same HTML that wkhtmltopdf would receive. No Odoo credentials, database names, user data, or metadata are transmitted. The module is disabled by default and requires explicit opt-in.
What’s Next
Head over to our Odoo integration guide for the full setup walkthrough, including batch generation, fallback configuration, and troubleshooting tips.
If you’re currently wrestling with wkhtmltopdf in Odoo and want to try a different approach, sign up for a free account and give it a spin. We’d love to hear how it works for your reports.
