User guide
How to use Employee Document Expiry, screen by screen.
Where everything lives
Employees → Documents
| Menu | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Expiring & Expired | Only what needs action, grouped by status. This is the one to open every Monday. |
| All Documents | Everything, with filters and grouping. |
| Document Types | The catalogue (managers only). |
There is also a Documents button on every employee form.
Recording a document
Employees → Documents → All Documents → New
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Employee | Who holds it. |
| Document Type | Determines whether it expires and how much notice you get. |
| Document Number | Optional, but it is what people actually search for. |
| Issued / Expires | The expiry date is required for types that expire. |
| Responsible | Who chases the renewal. Defaults to the employee's manager. |
| Issuing Country / Place of Issue | Useful for passports and visas. |
| Scans | Attach a photo or PDF so the original is not the only copy. |
Save. The status is computed immediately.
Reading the status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Valid | Expiry is further away than the type's first reminder threshold. |
| Expiring Soon | Inside the reminder window. Someone should be acting. |
| Expired | The date has passed. |
| No Expiry | The type is marked as never expiring. Recorded, never chased. |
The list colours these: red for expired, amber for expiring, grey for never-expires.
Days Left is negative for expired documents — -12 means it lapsed twelve days ago.
What happens automatically
Once a day, the module:
- Recomputes every document's status.
- For each document that has just crossed a reminder threshold, schedules an activity for the Responsible user with the expiry date as its deadline, and (unless disabled) sends the reminder email.
- Records that it has done so, so the same reminder is not sent again tomorrow.
You will see the activity in your Odoo activity menu — the clock icon in the top bar — and on the document's chatter.
Renewing a document
Open the expired or expiring document and press Record Renewal. A new document opens, prefilled with the employee, type, responsible person and issuing country. Enter the new number and expiry date and save.
Keep the old record or delete it, as you prefer. Keeping it gives you a history of the document; deleting it keeps the list short. Archiving (the Active field) is the middle option — the record stays but drops out of the default list and is never chased again.
If you renew in place
Editing the expiry date on the existing record works too, and it is safe: the reminder flags reset automatically, so the new expiry is chased properly when its time comes. Nothing is lost except the record of the old document number.
Finding things
The search panel offers:
- Expired, Expiring Soon, Needs Attention, Valid
- Expiring in 30 Days / in 90 Days
- I Am Responsible — your own workload
- Grouping by status, type, employee, department, responsible person, or expiry month
The pivot view (department against status) is the one to use for a board report: it answers "which department has a problem" in a single screen.
On the employee form
Employees with a lapsed or lapsing document show an amber banner at the top of their form, and the Documents button carries the count. Nobody has to go looking, which is the point.
Missing documents
If a document type is marked Mandatory, its form gains a Missing button showing how many employees hold no such document at all — press it for the list of names. The count also appears in the Document Types list.
This is deliberately separate from expiry: a missing right-to-work check is as much of a problem as an expired one, and nothing else in Odoo reports it.