There are three main entities in the IAP process: the customer, the service provider, and Odoo itself. These are described as follows:

• The customer is the end user that wants to use the service. In order to use the service, the customer needs to install the application provided by the service provider. The client then needs to purchase a service plan according to their usage requirements. With that, the client can start to use the service straight away. This prevents difficulties for the customer, as it is not necessary to carry out complex configurations. Instead, they just pay for the service and start to use it.
• The service provider is the developer that wants to sell the service (probably you). The client will ask the provider for the service, at which point the service provider will check whether there is enough credit in the client account. If the client has enough credit, the service provider will deduct the credit and serve the service to the customer.
• Odoo is a kind of broker in this. It provides the medium for handling payments, credits, plans, and so on. Customers purchase the service credit from Odoo, and the service provider draws this credit when serving the service. Odoo then fills the gap between the customer and the service provider, so the customer has no need to do complex configurations and the service provider has no need to set up a payment gateway, customer account management, and so on. In return, Odoo takes commission from the sale. At the time of writing this book, Odoo takes 25% commission from the packs.

There is also an optional entity in the process, which is the external service. In some cases, service providers use some external services. However, we will ignore external services here, as they are the secondary service provider. An example of this could be an SMS service. If you are providing an SMS IAP service to Odoo users, then you (the service provider) will use an SMS service internally.