A finance backbone for Hermosa Ventures — built right, then handed to your team.
A fixed-scope Odoo Enterprise implementation that captures cost per feddan, capitalises the crop under IAS 41, and gives every farm and greenhouse its own P&L — delivered as a defined project with a clear endpoint, not a hire.
THE ENGAGEMENT
A defined project — built, proven, handed over
You asked for the implementation on its own: the system designed and stood up by the person who designed it, then handed to your team to run. This quotation is exactly that — a fixed-scope engagement with a clear start and end, delivered independently by VERTEX.
The full finance backbone
Odoo Enterprise configured end to end — one shared chart of accounts, the two-plan analytic engine, IAS 41 biological assets, dual inventory with lot traceability, BoM batch costing, EUR/USD multi-currency, and the board dashboard pack.
Yours to run
A written configuration and process manual, role-based training for site and HQ staff, a reconciled go-live and a first clean month-end close — then the system is yours, running without me on the payroll.
What this is — and is not
This is a fixed-scope implementation project, delivered as an independent VERTEX engagement with a defined start, end and handover. It is not a full-time or fractional finance role — no standing salary, no seat on your payroll, no ongoing management of your finance function. Of the three ways we discussed working together, this is the implementation-project option: the hardest, most technical part — the cost architecture and the IAS 41 setup — built correctly once, then owned by you. An optional support retainer is available afterwards if you want a safety net (see the appendix), but the project stands complete on its own.
THE GROUND TRUTH
Two to three years of cost before the first kilo sells
Blueberries take roughly two to three years from planting to first commercial harvest. The early years are almost pure capex and biological-asset capitalisation — so the system's first job is not to invoice customers. It is to capture every pound of cost against the right farm and the right activity.
Establishment years
Capex & biological assets. Greenhouses, drip irrigation, climate control — and the bushes themselves — capitalised, not expensed. The number that matters is cost per feddan, undistorted by lumpy capex.
First harvest
Cost per kilo. Inputs, and where allocable labour and overhead, roll up into each harvested lot — so you know the true cost of a kilo per site, not a smeared average.
Export
EUR/USD & traceability. Multi-currency revenue and FX differences, plus a lot per harvest per season per site for EU importer and phytosanitary audits.
WHAT THE SYSTEM MUST ANSWER
Six questions the build is designed to answer
Every configuration choice in this quotation traces back to one of these.
THE TOOL — CHOSEN FOR FIT
Why Odoo Enterprise, specifically
Three hard requirements rule out Community. This is an honest recommendation, not an upsell — the licence is yours, sized to actual active users and billed by Odoo directly.
Two analytic plans at once
You need two independent analytic axes running together: Location (which farm/greenhouse) and Activity (planting, irrigation, fertilising, harvest). Community supports only one — which would force the two dimensions into one and destroy clean per-site, per-activity reporting.
Studio for board dashboards
Cost per feddan, wastage %, yield, greenhouse vs open field side by side — none ship out of the box. Studio builds them with no custom-code maintenance liability hanging over you afterwards.
Enterprise-grade modules
Full Accounting with asset management for IAS 41, Quality for pre-export QC, advanced inventory valuation. The Community workarounds cost more in maintenance and audit risk than the subscription — and a startup facing EU importer and statutory audits cannot run on a fragile custom stack.
The module map
Accounting / Invoicing · Inventory (Stock) · Manufacturing (MRP, used as a costing recipe, not for industrial manufacturing) · Purchase · Quality · Maintenance · Studio. Rolled out in the staged sequence below, sized lean in the establishment years and scaling at first harvest.
THE CORE OF THE DESIGN
One chart of accounts. Every pound tagged twice.
The analytic design is the whole system — everything else is plumbing around it. We run one shared chart of accounts for the legal entity, so consolidation is automatic, and get per-site profitability not by splitting accounts but by tagging every cost line with two analytic dimensions.
Plan 1 · Locations
One analytic account per farm and per greenhouse — e.g. Region A – Greenhouse 1, Region A – Open Field 2, Region B – Greenhouse 3. This is the axis that produces a P&L for each site.
Plan 2 · Activity type
Planting, irrigation, fertilising, crop protection, harvest, export/post-harvest. This is the axis that shows where the money actually goes within a site.
A full P&L per site
From a single chart of accounts — Accounting → Reporting → Analytic — no separate ledgers to reconcile.
Like-for-like comparison
Greenhouse vs open field, region vs region, on identical accounts — and cost sliced by activity within each.
Capex kept off the operating view
Greenhouse and bush capitalisation flow to asset accounts and depreciate onto the site analytic over time — so establishment-year cost per feddan is not distorted.
A finance team that stays lean
The site accountant just tags raw field spend correctly; HQ reads clean analytic reports without rekeying anything.
THE BUILD
Nine phases, twelve weeks, a milestone at every step
Fixed price, fixed path — EGP 225,000 covers all of it. Every phase ends in a milestone you can see and sign off, and the build closes with a dedicated two-week end-user training program before handover. It is a focused, realistic schedule led end to end by one senior implementer, with named client-side data owners supporting each phase.
Discovery & Kickoff
Kick off with the Chairman, CEO and CFO; map every site, region and planted feddan; document the cost flows and the export model; confirm the Odoo Enterprise edition, user count and module scope; agree the project plan and RACI.
Milestone: Kickoff complete; scope, RACI and project plan signed off.
Solution Design
The solution blueprint: the single chart of accounts, both analytic plans (Locations + Activity), the KPI / dashboard specification and the data-migration approach — with the IAS 41 policy agreed with the CFO and the external auditor.
Milestone: Blueprint signed off; auditor concurrence on the IAS 41 policy before configuration starts.
Finance & IAS 41 Configuration
The Egyptian-compliant single CoA and fiscal localisation; both analytic plans and all Location / Activity accounts; distribution models making tagging mandatory on the 5000-series; EUR/USD multi-currency and FX accounts; asset categories for capex and for biological assets (IAS 41).
Milestone: Costing backbone validated — a test cost line produces a correct per-site analytic entry; CFO signs off the analytic and IAS 41 model.
Cost Accounting & Manufacturing
Model the blueberry “production recipe” as BoMs that roll input — and where allocable, labour and overhead — cost into each harvest batch; link finished lots to finished-goods valuation; wire batch cost to the Activity analytic; configure Quality control points feeding wastage / reject data.
Milestone: A test harvest batch produces a defensible cost per kg per site; the Cost Accountant signs off the costing logic.
Inventory, Procurement, Sales & Traceability
On the foundation from Phases 3–4: dual inventory with separate valuation for inputs vs finished blueberries; lot / serial traceability (a lot per harvest per season per site) for EU importer audits; scrap / wastage flows; Purchase with three-way match and mandatory Location tagging; the sales / export flow with multi-currency receivables.
Milestone: End-to-end test — procure an input in EUR, receive to a site, scrap part, and ship a finished lot; valuation, FX, traceability and analytic entries all reconcile.
UAT & Parallel Run
Structured user-acceptance testing against Hermosa's real scenarios; migrate opening balances, the fixed / biological asset register, open POs, master data and input stock, reconciled to source; run a parallel period on real data.
Milestone · billing gate: UAT scripts passed; migrated balances reconcile to source within tolerance; go / no-go approved.
Go-Live
Final cut-over of balances and master data; live posting switches to Odoo and the legacy process freezes; first live transactions from each site confirmed to tag correctly; daily monitoring of tagging completeness stood up.
Milestone: Go-live sign-off — the first day-close completes cleanly in Odoo.
End-User Training
A dedicated two-week program across Finance, Procurement, Inventory, Sales, Warehouse, Cost Accounting and System Administration — classroom sessions, hands-on exercises on Hermosa's real business scenarios, user manuals, Q&A, and supervised operational support on the live system.
Milestone: All user groups trained and certified on their daily workflows; user manuals delivered.
Hypercare & Final Handover
Close support through the training tail; fix any mis-tagging, valuation or report issues in real use; tune dashboards against the first live data; complete the first month-end close in Odoo with me present; hand over the enhancement backlog and transition to steady state.
Milestone · final delivery: First month-end close signed off; project formally handed over and closed.
TRAINING & KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
Your team, ready before handover
A dedicated two-week program is built into the plan — not an afterthought bolted on at the end.
VERTEX will deliver a comprehensive two-week training program covering Finance, Procurement, Inventory, Sales, Warehouse, Cost Accounting, and System Administration. The program includes classroom sessions, hands-on exercises using Hermosa's actual business scenarios, user manuals, Q&A sessions, and supervised operational support to ensure complete user readiness before project handover.
Seven functional tracks
Finance, Procurement, Inventory, Sales, Warehouse, Cost Accounting and System Administration — each group trained on the screens it actually uses.
Hands-on, on real data
Classroom sessions plus exercises built on Hermosa's own business scenarios — not generic demos — backed by written user manuals.
Supervised until ready
Q&A sessions and supervised operational support on the live system, so users are confirmed ready before the project is handed over.
INVESTMENT
One fixed fee, billed against milestones
No hourly meter and no standing salary — you pay for a defined deliverable and own it at the end.
AT HANDOVER
What you own when the project closes
A live Odoo Enterprise backbone
Configured, migrated and reconciled — running in production.
Per-site P&L, automatic
Two analytic plans wired to one chart of accounts, so each farm and greenhouse reports itself.
The board dashboard pack
Cost/feddan, cost/kg, wastage %, yield, greenhouse vs open field — decision-grade.
IAS 41, built in
Biological-asset treatment agreed with your auditor and configured to match — not reverse-engineered later.
A written manual
Configuration and process documentation, plus role-based cheat-sheets for site and HQ staff.
A trained, independent team
Your people certified on their daily screens and a signed-off handover — the system runs without me.
Ready when you are.
One message — and we can kick off within two to three weeks.
Appendix — the detail behind the quotation
Scope boundaries, the risk register, the optional support offer, assumptions, commercial terms — open when you want it.
APPENDIX · SCOPE
What the fixed fee includes
Included
- The full nine-phase build: discovery & kickoff, solution design, Finance & IAS 41 configuration, cost accounting & manufacturing, inventory / procurement / sales & traceability, UAT & parallel run, go-live, end-user training and hypercare
- The single chart of accounts, both analytic plans, EUR/USD multi-currency, MRP/BoM batch costing, Quality checkpoints, Maintenance and the Studio dashboard pack
- IAS 41 biological-asset design and asset categories, agreed with your auditor
- Data migration: opening balances, fixed/biological asset register, open POs, vendor/customer master and input stock — reconciled to source
- A dedicated two-week end-user training & knowledge-transfer program, plus go-live and hypercare including the first month-end close
- Documentation: solution blueprint, configuration document, user manuals & quick-guides
- Project management of the implementation itself, with a weekly checkpoint
Not included
- Odoo Enterprise licence & hosting fees — billed by Odoo directly; edition and user count decided together at discovery
- Historic transaction re-entry — we open from an agreed trial balance; history stays in the legacy records
- Third-party / hardware integrations (e.g. scales, label printers, external portals) — scoped separately if needed
- Statutory audit, tax filings and legal services — the system is built audit-ready; filings remain with your advisors
- Ongoing operation of your finance function — this is an implementation, not a finance-management role (see optional support)
APPENDIX · RISK REGISTER
The real risks — and how the build manages them
Named honestly, because a quotation that pretends there are no risks is not one you can trust.
APPENDIX · OPTIONAL, AFTER GO-LIVE
Optional continuing support — only if you want it
The project is complete on its own. If you would like a safety net once the team is running the system, an optional support retainer is available — deliberately kept as system support, distinct from running your finance function.
System Care retainer
Odoo support and issue fixes, report and dashboard tweaks, new analytic accounts as sites are added, user questions and refresher training, and version-upgrade upkeep — a monthly retainer, cancellable with 30 days' notice.
What it is not
It is not the fractional or full-time finance role we discussed as separate options. It does not run your close, own your numbers or sit on your payroll. It keeps the software healthy while your team owns the finance. If you later decide you want senior finance oversight too, that is a separate conversation.
APPENDIX · HOW WE WORK
Assumptions & your side of the table
- Hermosa assigns named data owners — at least one HQ owner and one per active site — who own daily entry. I build the system and the discipline; day-to-day entry stays in-house.
- The Chairman, CEO and CFO are available for the phase sign-offs, and the external auditor is available during Discovery to concur on the IAS 41 policy.
- Migration data (opening balances, asset register, open POs, master data, input stock counts) is provided during Discovery and Migration.
- Odoo Enterprise edition, user count and hosting are chosen together at discovery; licence and hosting costs are Hermosa's, billed by Odoo directly.
- Delivery assumes one external implementer (VERTEX) plus named part-time client-side owners — the 12-week timeline is built on this, not on a full project team.
- Fees exclude any applicable taxes; official invoices are provided against each milestone.
APPENDIX · TERMS
Commercial terms
APPENDIX · WHO YOU'RE ENGAGING
Why VERTEX for this build
- Head of Finance at an Egyptian agri group — living daily in exactly this mix: multi-site agriculture, inventory, export, FX and investor reporting.
- Led a complete Odoo implementation end to end — chart of accounts to e-invoicing to payroll — and runs the monthly close on it now.
- Agri-specific finance: crop-cycle costing, biological assets, seasonal labour, farm-level analytics — not generic bookkeeping.
- Delivered personally: the person who designs the architecture is the person who builds it and hands it over. No agency layer, no hand-off to a junior.