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Strategic Context & H1 Focus

Fernhill’s H1 north star is cutting independent restaurant monthly churn from 2.4% to 1.6%. Independent restaurants represent 82% of our accounts and 61% of revenue. Exit interviews clearly highlight the churn driver: administrative burden on deliveries and invoices.

Currently: * 56% of accounts use desktop receiving, but 71% write deliveries on paper at the door and re-type them later. * 76% of accounts upload invoices, but matching is entirely manual.

To reach our churn target, H1 execution is dedicated to eliminating manual reconciliation at the back door and in the back office. Calder Group ($186k ARR) is critical, but dedicating 12 squad-weeks to a custom report builder would derail the core churn goal and still risk missing their May renewal date. We address Calder with a targeted integration release and proactive commercial management.

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H1 Roadmap

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Squad Breakdown & Sequencing

#### Squad 1 (Receiving & Data) — 20 Squad-Weeks 1. Mobile Receiving (8 wks, Q1): Build a mobile-optimized receiving flow allowing kitchen staff to check off line items directly on their phone at the loading dock. Eliminates paper double-entry (71% of receiving workflows today). 2. Flag Short Deliveries at the Door (3 wks, Q1–Q2): Extends mobile receiving to instantly flag missing quantities, take a photo, and generate a shortage log directly linked to the order. 3. Automated ERP Export (4 wks, Q2): Scheduled and manual CSV/ERP data pipeline (FR-303, FR-339). Delivers automated raw financial/operational extracts before Calder’s May renewal. 4. Buffer & Mobile Rollout (5 wks, Q2): Ensures smooth adoption in noisy kitchen environments with flaky Wi-Fi.

#### Squad 2 (Invoicing & Finance) — 20 Squad-Weeks 1. New Invoice Parser (5 wks, Q1): Modernizes parsing infrastructure to extract line items, taxes, unit costs, and invoice numbers reliably. 2. Automated Invoice Matching (9 wks, Q1–Q2): Automatically matches invoice line items against purchase orders and received delivery logs. Discrepancies are flagged automatically. 3. Credit Note Tracking (3 wks, Q2): Pairs short-delivery logs generated in Squad 1 with incoming vendor credit notes, stopping suppliers from overcharging for missing goods. 4. Accounting Export with Credits (2 wks, Q2): Exports matched invoices and net credit adjustments directly into standard general ledgers. 5. Buffer & Edge Cases (1 wk, Q2): Absorbs parser edge cases and vendor invoice layout variations.

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What We Are NOT Doing (and Why)

1. Custom Report Builder with Pivots (12 weeks): * Why: At 12 weeks, this would consume 30% of total H1 capacity for a single account. It cannot ship and stabilize before Calder's May renewal, and standard report daily usage is already healthy (212 accounts, Calder included). 2. 5-Level Approval Chains & Site-Level Permissions (10 weeks combined): * Why: Pure enterprise overhead. Does not solve the operational time sink driving 82% of accounts to churn. 3. Dark Mode & Multi-Currency (Non-core): * Why: Zero correlation to churn reduction or operational savings. 4. Catalogue Bulk Tools & Expansion: * Why: Catalogue usage is 100% saturated. The friction point is not creating items; it is receiving and paying for them.

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What We Tell Calder Group

#### 1. Commercial Reality Check (Internal) Calder’s usage is up 20% year-over-year, and they use Standard Reports daily. Their threat to leave originated from an Account Manager conversation, not Customer Success or executive escalation. We will not over-index engineering capacity on an AM negotiation bluff.

#### 2. External Messaging (Fernhill VP of Product & Head of CS to Calder Exec Sponsor in March) * Lead with High-Value Clean Data: “A reporting tool is only as good as the input data. By shipping Mobile Receiving and Automated Matching in Q1, Fernhill ensures every invoice, delivery quantity, and supplier credit across all Calder sites is 100% accurate and audited in real time.” * Deliver the ERP Export (Ships April, ahead of May renewal): “Rather than forcing your finance team into a proprietary, rigid reporting UI inside Fernhill, we are releasing the Automated ERP/CSV Data Export in April. This allows Calder to stream clean, site-level operational and invoice data directly into your central ERP/BI stack (PowerBI/Tableau/Excel) with your custom formulas and pivot models.” * White-Glove Support: CS will construct scheduled, bespoke standard reporting extracts tailored to their multi-site leadership team during renewal discussions.

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

H1 roadmap

Priority: reduce admin that contributes to independent-restaurant churn. We’ll automate the invoice-to-credit workflow and make receiving work where deliveries happen. That addresses the stated churn reason and repeated requests across customers. Calder’s renewal matters, but the report-builder risk is unconfirmed, so we’ll validate it before committing 12 squad-weeks to a bespoke capability.

This uses the 40 available squad-weeks: 20 per quarter. The invoice sequence is parser → matching → credit tracking → accounting export; receiving is mobile receiving → short-delivery flags.

Not doing this half

• Custom report builder, dashboards and scheduled reports: 12 weeks, with the reported renewal risk coming from the account manager rather than Calder’s CS team; Calder’s usage is up 20% and it uses standard reports daily. We’ll validate the specific reporting job and whether it is truly a renewal blocker before reallocating capacity. A bespoke builder is not currently the best fit for the independent-restaurant churn goal.
• ERP export, SSO, site permissions, approval chains, custom fields, catalogue work and other Calder requests: several are substantial or bespoke, and none has stronger evidence against the stated churn driver than the selected workflow improvements. We won’t imply these are committed.
• More suppliers and dark mode: lower priority than reducing delivery and invoice admin.

What we tell Calder Group

“We’ve heard that reporting may affect your May renewal. We’re not committing to a custom report builder yet: your teams use standard reports daily, usage is growing, and we haven’t confirmed with you which reporting tasks are blocked. We’d like to meet with your reporting users and Customer Success early in Q1 to understand the must-have use cases and renewal criteria. We’ll come back with a clear proposal; meanwhile, we’ll be investing in reducing delivery and invoice admin across Fernhill.”

If that conversation confirms custom reporting is a hard renewal condition, we’ll bring the trade-off back for an explicit roadmap decision rather than promise a feature we haven’t scoped or prioritized.