Build a roadmap

Fernhill H1 Roadmap: Receiving and Invoicing First

The call

Both squads spend most of the half on the two jobs independent restaurants say we don't save them time on: checking deliveries and reconciling invoices. That accounts for 30 of our 40 squad-weeks. Of the remaining 10, 8 go to Calder Group's two most concrete asks (ERP export and site-level permissions) and 2 stay in reserve. We are not building the custom report builder this half.

Why

• The goal is independent-restaurant churn, and the exit reason is admin on deliveries and invoices. Those two themes make up 33 of the 53 requests in the log, from about 30 accounts across support, sales and in-app feedback:
• Mobile receiving: 9 requests
• Flag short deliveries: 7
• Invoice matching: 8
• Credit notes: 5
• Accounting export with credits: 4
• Usage shows where the admin sits.
• 56% of accounts use the receiving checklist, but 71% of those checks are re-typed from paper.
• 76% upload invoices, and every one is matched by hand.
• Standard reports, the nearest thing to a report builder, are used by 19%.
• Calder's 14 requests come from one person: their account manager. Calder hasn't raised the report builder with Customer Success. Their usage is up 20% and they use standard reports daily. "Might leave" is a signal worth acting on, but it doesn't justify 12 squad-weeks (30% of the half) and pushing back a churn lever. ERP export is the one Calder ask that appears twice in the log (FR-303, FR-339), and it costs 4 weeks.

Order of work

I'm assuming calendar quarters (Q1 Jan–Mar, Q2 Apr–Jun) and May as the renewal month.

Squad A (Receiving) 1. Mobile receiving (weeks 1–8). This is the biggest single fix for paper re-typing, and flag short deliveries depends on it. 2. ERP export for Calder (weeks 9–12, finishing about mid-April). It goes before short-delivery flags so it lands before Calder's May renewal rather than during it. 3. Flag short deliveries (weeks 13–15). 4. Site-level permissions (weeks 16–19). This is the default. If the Calder working session (below) surfaces something cheaper that matters more to them, such as scheduled report emails, we swap it in. Report scheduling was asked for twice but hasn't been sized yet. 5. 1 week buffer.

Squad B (Invoicing) 1. New invoice parser (weeks 1–5). 2. Invoice matching (weeks 6–14). 3. Credit note tracking (weeks 15–17). 4. Accounting export with credits (weeks 18–19). 5. 1 week buffer.

Squad B's chain is strictly sequential, so any slip pushes everything after it. The 1-week buffer is thin. If the parser runs long, we drop the accounting export to H2 rather than squeeze matching.

How we'll know it's working

Churn moves slowly, and the big items ship mid-half, so we won't get all the way from 2.4% to 1.6% from features alone by June. We'll track leading indicators monthly:

• Receiving: share of checks started on a phone, and share re-typed from paper. Target: re-typing down from 71% to under 30% by June.
• Invoicing: share of uploaded invoices auto-matched, and time from invoice upload to approval.
• Churn: monthly churn among accounts using mobile receiving or matching, compared with those that don't.

What we're not doing, and why

• Custom report builder, custom dashboards per site (Calder). 12+ weeks for one account. It would push invoice matching into H2. The low usage of standard reports doesn't suggest wider demand. We'll first find out what Calder actually needs.
• Approval chains with 5 levels (6), SSO (3), custom fields on orders, custom PDF invoices (Calder). Single-account asks with no link to the churn goal. We'll revisit in H2 with Calder's input.
• Bulk SKU import v2 and bulk edit for SKUs (Calder). Not sized and single-account. We'll size them in H2 if Calder confirms they matter.
• More suppliers (3 requests). Not sized, and not tied to the churn reason.
• Dark mode (2) and multi-currency (1). Low demand and off-goal.

A data note: Customers 553 and 294 each appear with two different ARR figures. It doesn't change any decision here, but RevOps should fix it.

What we tell Calder Group

The account manager and Customer Success should go together, in the first two weeks of Q1, well ahead of May. Customer Success needs to be in the room because Calder hasn't raised any of this with them. The message:

> "You've asked for a lot through your account manager, and we want to get the important things right before your renewal. Two commitments this half: ERP export in your format by mid-April, and site-level permissions by end of June. We're not building a full custom report builder in this period, and we'd rather tell you that now than slip it later. You use our standard reports every day, so we'd like a working session with your team to see the reports you run and the questions you can't answer yet. Scheduled report emails or saved views may get you most of the way sooner, and what we learn shapes our H2 reporting plans."

We don't promise a report builder date. If Calder makes it a hard condition of renewal after that session, it comes back to me and leadership as an explicit trade: the 12 weeks would come out of credit notes, the accounting export and short-delivery flags, which would weaken the churn goal.

Roadmap table

Fernhill roadmap, Q1 and Q2

The call: Both squads go to the company goal: deliveries and invoices, the top reasons independents give for leaving. Calder gets a bounded share of capacity, not the roadmap. Calder's report builder can't ship before May, so we tell them that directly and commit to a scoped plan.

Why this split: - The receiving and invoice chains (30 of 40 squad-weeks) serve 32 different non-Calder accounts. Mobile receiving and flagging short deliveries touch 16 accounts. Invoice matching, credit notes and the accounting export touch 16. - Calder has 14 of the 53 requests, but they come from one account. Every Calder-only item totals 29 squad-weeks (report builder, ERP export, site permissions, SSO, approval chains). Taking all of it would consume 73% of the half. - Usage backs the sequence. 56% of accounts use the receiving checklist, but 71% of uses start on a desktop and get re-typed from paper, so mobile receiving removes that step. Invoice matching is manual for the 76% of accounts that upload invoices.

Capacity: 2 squads × 10 squad-weeks per quarter. The plan uses 40 of 40, with a 1-week spike per squad left at the end of Q2 for report builder scoping.

Dependencies are the risk. Item 2 gates the invoice chain. If the parser slips, items 3, 6 and 7 slip with it, and the invoice outcome misses the half. I'd rather flag that now than hide it inside the plan. If the parser runs over, the first move is to pull the Calder-only site permissions work (item 8) back into the buffer.

Measures: Time per delivery receipt and percentage of invoices auto-matched, tracked per cohort. Independent-restaurant churn (2.4% → 1.6% a month) is the outcome. We won't claim the roadmap alone moves it.

What we're not doing, and why

• Full custom report builder (12 weeks). It's 60% of one squad's half, for one account, and the earliest it ships is around the May renewal with no slack. We do a scoping spike and commit to a decision date, not a build date.
• SSO (3) and approval chains with 5 levels (6). Calder only, and the 5-level approvals request is a niche configuration. H2 candidates, to be revisited with Calder.
• Custom PDF invoices, custom order fields, per-site dashboards, bulk SKU import v2 and bulk SKU edit. All Calder-only, none estimated. Not in H1.
• Dark mode (2 accounts), multi-currency (1 account), more suppliers (3 accounts). Low demand, no estimates. Parked, not rejected.
• Scheduled reports by email (Calder, 2 requests). Not estimated. It goes into the spike as a candidate for a smaller Calder deliverable.

What we tell Calder Group

1. Customer Success calls them this week, not the account manager alone. They haven't raised the report builder with CS, and "might leave" is the kind of risk that surfaces too late.
2. Be direct about the report builder: it's a substantial build, it won't land before May, and we won't promise a date we can't keep.
3. What they get in H1: the ERP export in the format they asked for, shipping around early May, and site-level permissions by the end of June.
4. The report builder: we scope it with them in June, and we commit to an H2 decision date by the end of June. We don't commit to a build date until the spike returns.
5. Ask them two things: which reports they run daily (we know they use standard reports), and what minimum output would cover them until the full builder ships. Their answer decides whether scheduled email reports move up.

Asks for leadership: confirm Calder's renewal status and ARR before the CS call, and approve the spike's two squad-weeks. If Calder won't engage on the scoped plan, we should know before the roadmap is shared externally.

H1 decision: remove delivery-to-invoice admin

Prioritise the independent-restaurant workflow: receive once, capture shortages, match invoices, track credits, export without rework. The company outcome is monthly churn falling from 2.4% to 1.6% in the segment representing 82% of accounts and 61% of revenue.

The evidence supports this over enterprise reporting: - Receiving has 640 active accounts; 71% of uses involve desktop entry followed by retyping from paper. - Invoice upload reaches 870 accounts, but matching remains manual. - These workflow requests account for 33 log entries from 32 distinct non-Calder customers. That shows breadth, although we must verify which are independent restaurants. - Calder’s 14 entries represent one $186k account, not 14 independent demand signals. Duplicate requests and inconsistent ARR entries must not inflate priority.

Roadmap and capacity

Assign stable ownership: Squad A—Receiving & Integrations; Squad B—Invoice Automation. Dates are planning targets, subject to initial technical validation.

Capacity: each squad uses 10 weeks per quarter; total 40. This comprises 30 weeks of core feature work, four conditionally held for ERP export, and six for instrumentation, adoption and contingency. No hidden third squad or assumed spare engineering capacity.

Matching should start with high-confidence suggestions and explicit review of exceptions—not unattended financial decisions. Credit tracking follows completed matching; accounting export follows credits. Mobile receiving precedes shortage capture. The squads should agree shared delivery/invoice identifiers early, without inventing an additional prerequisite for matching.

Outcomes and decision gates

In January, baseline independent-restaurant admin time, receiving completion, matching effort and cohort churn. Recruit restaurants doing significant delivery/invoice work, including recently disengaged accounts—not just enthusiastic requesters.

Proposed release-success thresholds, to validate against those baselines: - Receiving: at least 30% less median time per delivery, including subsequent re-entry. - Invoices: at least 30% less manual reconciliation time, with no increase in material errors. - Adoption: at least half of pilot accounts repeatedly use the relevant workflow within four weeks.

Use a staggered rollout with comparable restaurant cohorts to assess improvement, rather than attributing every churn change to launches. Review workflow outcomes monthly and segment churn throughout H1; June churn alone may not capture the full effect of later releases.

If matching or mobile receiving slips, protect the core sequence: release the conditional ERP allocation first, then move later scope rather than bypassing quality checks.

ERP gate: by end-January, PM, CS and the account manager meet Calder’s actual users and renewal decision-maker. Confirm the job, current workaround, required fields, renewal significance and whether the four-week estimate covers acceptance criteria. Commit only if this is a valuable, bounded export—not a disguised report builder. Otherwise redirect those four weeks to core-workflow quality and adoption.

What we are not doing

• Custom report builder, pivots, site dashboards, scheduling and custom PDFs: insufficient breadth and weaker connection to the churn goal. The builder alone costs 12 weeks; it cannot fit alongside the core programme even if all ten non-core weeks were reclaimed.
• Approval chains, permissions, SSO and custom order fields: defer pending demonstrated retention, security or contractual necessity; none is established here.
• Catalogue expansion, bulk SKU tools, dark mode and multi-currency: defer. Catalogue’s universal usage does not establish that these additions reduce admin-related churn. Unestimated requests are not free extras.

What we tell Calder Group

“You’re important to Fernhill, and we want to understand what reporting prevents you from doing today. We are not committing to a custom report builder before your May renewal. Our H1 investment is delivery and invoice automation. We will assess whether a bounded ERP export or existing standard reports can meet your immediate need, and return with a written scope and credible timing.”

CS owns the renewal plan, with a January discovery meeting and an April executive checkpoint. Daily report usage and 20% overall usage growth do not prove safety—but an unverified “might leave” does not justify displacing the company’s retention strategy.