/industries
Odoo for tea, plantation and export
Every export document is re-keyed from the last one, by hand, under time pressure.
- 14 Projects in this sector
- 6 Estates on the largest build
- 11 Export markets served
/where-it-breaks
Where it breaks, before anyone mentions software.
-
01
The export pack is typed from the last export pack
Invoice, packing list, certificate of origin and phytosanitary certificate all carry the same numbers, and all four are keyed separately. One transposed lot number and the container waits at the port while somebody finds the original.
-
02
Estate intake and factory output live in different books
Green leaf is weighed at the estate, processed at the factory and graded after. By the time anyone reconciles the three, the month is closed and the variance has become a rounding line nobody can explain.
-
03
Costing stops at the factory gate
Freight, insurance, inspection, demurrage and the bank charge all land weeks after the shipment. The margin you quoted and the margin you made are different numbers, and only one of them is in the system.
-
04
Traceability exists, on paper
A buyer asks which estate and which plucking round a lot came from. The answer takes two days, three phone calls and a file room — and by then the buyer has formed a view about your controls.
/configuration-choices
Five decisions we make early
- Lot tracking at estate-and-plucking-round level, not batch level — this is very hard to retrofit
- Landed costs configured before go-live, so the first shipment carries a real margin rather than an estimate
- Green leaf intake as a purchase receipt behind a quality gate, never as a stock adjustment
- Multi-currency at the invoice, with revaluation on a schedule your auditor has signed off
- Export documents generated from the delivery order — one source, four documents, no re-keying
/what-we-will-not-do
And five we argue against
- We will not build a custom traceability module. Odoo lot and serial tracking already answers the buyer’s question.
- We will not model each estate as a separate company unless it files separately. Analytic accounts cost nothing to maintain.
- We will not automate the phytosanitary submission. The regulator’s portal changes, and a broken robot is worse than a typist.
- We will not put grading logic in Python where a routing and a work centre will hold it.
- We will not migrate eleven years of closed shipments. Two years live, the rest archived read-only and cheaper to hold.
/next
Tell us what you are running today.
Thirty minutes, no slides. We will tell you straight if Odoo is not the answer.