The mandate
A build mandate — alongside your CFO, not in their chair
What this role builds
What stays with the CFO
Business — the hero
From leased land to first export — the finance challenge at each step
The business driver
The foundation has to be live before October
Minimum-viable spine — live before the first land-prep invoice
Finance — the brain
The finance model the business dictates
The judgement calls — the lease-capitalisation split, the maturity trigger, which pre-productive costs capitalise — are the CFO's, with the auditor. I bring a recommended position and implement what's signed.
Process — the how
From business need to system — never the other way round
ERP — the tool, chosen last
Why Odoo — on the merits, for a pre-revenue build
The platform earns its place only by closing a business gap. The reasons it fits Hermosa now:
The full Odoo vs SAP Business One vs Oracle NetSuite comparison, the module map and the analytic design are in the appendix.
Governance
Who decides, who builds, who owns
The plan
Execution — scheduled backward from October
The horizon
The road to a data-driven agricultural enterprise
Appendix · if you ask "why you"
The fit — built on evidence, not claims
Appendix · the first 90 days
"If you joined next week, what would you do first?"
Appendix · risk
What could go wrong — and how it's controlled
Appendix · engagement, conflict & hand-over
How I'd plug in — and how it ends
Stated up front, so there is nothing to wonder about later.
Appendix · expected outcomes
From baseline to target
Appendix · the hiring questions
The questions behind the decision
The hour
Today, in ~60 minutes
A short driven opening, then the floor is yours. The deep material is one tap away in the appendix — I pull it up as you probe.
The company
A 2025-vintage, export-first berry venture — in its capital-heavy planting years
Why a different finance function
This is not single-factory bookkeeping
A multi-site, seasonal, export crop whose core asset is alive needs a finance function designed for it — not a generic ledger.
The backbone insight
The bush dictates the plan
Spend leads revenue by years
Planting (2025) → first small commercial crop (~year 3) → full productivity (~year 6–7). Finance headcount tracks that curve, not the calendar.
The centerpiece
A finance org that lights up with the crop
Every seat is wired to a measurable milestone. Tap a stage: green = active, purple glow = added this stage, ghosted = needed later, for now, no. Through the pre-revenue years it is just two people; the full ~16 only arrives at sustained-export maturity.
Headcount shown is the function count; Site / Farm Accountant scales with the number of producing sites. The one line never blurred — even at two people — is the split between the Site Accountant (raw field data) and the HQ Cost Accountant (per-feddan / per-kg truth).
The system
Odoo, built once — correctly
The core: analytic accounting
Modules
Edition
Implementation timeline
Phased to mirror the agronomy: capture capex & capitalize the bushes first, prove per-site costing on real data, then layer inventory, batch costing, dashboards and finally export/revenue. Tap any bar for detail.
The ERP decision
Why Odoo — and not SAP or NetSuite
Why Odoo wins for Hermosa
Where SAP B1 / NetSuite genuinely win
Runway
The funding J-curve & peak cash
Spend leads revenue by years — the board's real question is how deep the trough goes and when it turns. Here is the framework and the levers; every figure is illustrative, built to be replaced with your actuals.
Chart of accounts
A chart of accounts tailored to Hermosa
Built on a proven Egyptian-compliant skeleton (VAT in/out, WHT, payroll tax, social insurance, stamp) and re-engineered for a multi-site export berry farm: bearer plants, cultivation COGS by site, export cold-chain, intercompany for the London↔Cairo group.
Ready-to-import format. Accounts tagged ANALYTIC are driven by the Locations dimension — they produce per-site cost without duplicating the ledger.
What the board will see
Ten decision-grade KPIs
Cost-per-feddan governs the establishment years; cost-per-kg switches on at first harvest — the two hand off at the harvest milestone with no gap.
Egypt, handled
The statutory ground truth
Local fluency the board can test — the 10-year cultivation tax holiday, ETA e-invoicing, export VAT zero-rating, EAS 35, and the new social-insurance reality for seasonal labor.
How Ahmed plugs in
Three ways to engage — you choose
The decision rule (not the answer)
Appendix
Anticipated questions
The hard questions this room will ask — and the answer ready for each. Tap to open.
Technical appendix
The accounting & tax deep-dive
Held in reserve for the detailed examination. Each answer is anchored to the standard it rests on — IAS 16 / 41 / 21 / 23 / 36 / 12, IFRS 10 / 15, COSO, and current Egyptian tax & transfer-pricing law. The strategy is to lead clean and open these only when a specific point is pressed.