MCP, connectors and plugins: Odoo and Exact Online inside Claude and ChatGPT

Chat assistants became genuinely useful at writing and reasoning long before they could see your company. Ask one about your cash position or last quarter’s VAT and it either guesses or asks you to paste a spreadsheet. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) closes that gap: it lets an assistant call a defined set of tools on a server you have signed in to, and work from what those tools return.

Three words, one idea

• MCP is the protocol: an open standard that describes tools, their inputs and whether each one reads or changes something.
• A connector is what Claude calls an MCP server you add to your account.
• A plugin (or app) is what ChatGPT calls the same thing.

So a single MCP server can serve both assistants. The assistant does the language work; the server supplies the facts and carries out the actions you approve.

Counzel for Odoo and Counzel for Exact Online

Counzel runs two of these servers, one per accounting system. Each signs you in with your Counzel account and only opens the companies you have been given access to.

• Counzel for Odoo works with Odoo 19, whether Odoo Online, Odoo.sh or self-hosted. Besides the books, it searches a library of official Belgian and EU tax, accounting and legal sources, each passage with its official link.
• Counzel for Exact Online works with the Exact Online administration you connect, for companies and for the firms that keep their books.

What you can ask

• The profit and loss, balance sheet and key figures for a period beside the year before, broken down by account, partner or product.
• Cash today and the forecast, what customers owe you and what you owe suppliers.
• The quarterly Belgian VAT return checked against the posted ledger, and month-end close checks.
• Invoices, orders, projects, stock and the sales pipeline.
• The director’s pay against the statutory ceilings.

Figures come from the ledger and are computed by Counzel, not estimated by the language model. That distinction matters: a model is good at explaining a number, not at adding up a trial balance.

Why not a generic Odoo or Exact connector?

A generic connector exposes the raw database: every model, every field, and a language model left to work out which ones answer your question. That is powerful for a developer and risky for a finance team. Counzel’s tools are shaped around accounting questions, carry Belgian rules such as VAT grids and director’s pay, and state clearly which ones read and which ones write.

Getting started

1. Connect your Odoo or Exact Online company in Counzel.
2. In Claude, add a custom connector; in ChatGPT, turn on developer mode and add it as an app. Use the address for your books: https://odoo-mcp.counzel.ai/mcp for Odoo or https://exact-mcp.counzel.ai/mcp for Exact Online.
3. Sign in with your Counzel account and ask a question about your books.

The connector guide has the addresses and the step-by-step setup for both assistants.

Step by step for your books: connect Odoo to ChatGPT and Claude or connect Exact Online to ChatGPT and Claude.