The Brief
Hive Foods makes premium honey cakes. Beautiful product, brutal logistics. Ten-day shelf life. Two legal entities, one produces, one trades. Every day, finished goods have to move between them via intercompany entries before distribution can even begin.
Ten delivery vans hitting Carrefour, Lulu, mall outlets. Returns coming back from shelves at expiry. Online sales through Shopify. POS in six malls. And they were planning to do all of this in five countries. The brief wasn't "implement ERP." It was: "figure out how to run all of this on one system without breaking the cake."
Intercompany stock transfer between production and trading entities
Batch production and traceability across 3 production stages
Custom driver mobile app for on-site delivery and returns
Shopify integration for real-time online order sync
ERPNext replicated across 5 countries with local compliance
POS for 6 UAE mall outlets and multiple Oman locations
Talabat and Noon integration (in progress)
Android POS with card payment SDK (in progress)
01
Intercompany Operations
Two legal entities. One seamless daily handoff.
Production and trading are separate legal entities. Before a delivery vehicle can leave, finished stock has to move from one to the other through a formal intercompany sale and purchase, posted correctly in both sets of books. Get this wrong and the whole day stops.
We built it the way Hive operates. Stock is produced and batched on the production side, transferred through native ERPNext sales-and-purchase entries, and lands on the trading side ready to dispatch. Both ledgers stay accurate every day, no manual reconciliation.
Daily intercompany flow
Production entity
Bakes, batches, and quality-checks finished cakes
Intercompany transfer
Formal sale from production + purchase into trading
Trading entity
Stock received and ready for distribution
Distribution fleet
10+ vehicles depart to Carrefour, Lulu, and retail chains
02
Production and Batch Traceability
Batter, layers, cakes. Every batch tracked from oven to shelf.
Ten-day shelf life leaves no room for guesswork. We modelled the production process around how the team makes the cake: batter, layers, finished goods, batched at every stage. Every finished cake carries the full lineage of every ingredient batch behind it.
Then we built a custom batch traceability and expiry report. The expiry report surfaces batches approaching the window across all locations, so the team acts before stock is lost, not after.
10-day shelf life window
Batch expiry tracked in real time from production date across all warehouse and retail locations
Stage 01
Batter and Mix Preparation
Ingredients measured and combined into batter batches. Each batch is tagged, dated, and traceable from this point forward.
Stage 02
Layer Making
Batter batches move to layer production. Each layer sheet is linked back to its parent batter batch.
Stage 03
Cake Assembly
Layers assembled into finished cakes. The final product carries the full batch lineage through to delivery and return.
03
The Van Sale App
Built for drivers. On the road, not in the office.
Ten vehicles, multiple routes, daily deliveries and returns. We built a driver app that handles the whole run on the road. View assigned stops, check van inventory, deliver goods, process returns, issue delivery notes and credit notes on-site. Drivers never have to come back to base to close the loop.
Wednesday, Oct 24
Good Morning,
Ahmed K.
Toyota HiAce
Plate: DXB-1234
Current Km
45,200 km
Route
Lulu Route
Current Trip
In ProgressGo To Trip
Next stop: 8 mins away
Driver Home
Trip
Toyota HiAce
ActiveDXB-1234 · 45,200 km · Lulu Route
Trip Completion
3/12 stops
25%
Stops Left
9
Sales Today
AED 2,450
Manage Trip
Inventory
Visits
Dashboard
Trip Overview
Inventory
Search products...
Sales Inventory
28Honey Cake Classic
SKU-HF-2024
60
Box
Honey Cake Mini
SKU-HF-2024
45
Box
Honey Cake Premium
SKU-HF-2024
30
Box
Return Inventory
8Expired Inventory
2Inventory
Van Inventory
Demo screens. All data shown is illustrative.
04
Returns and Expiry Management
Returns tracked. Expiry caught before it costs.
At Lulu, the cakes sit on shelf under a merchandising arrangement. Unsold stock comes back at expiry. Those returns have to be captured against the right batch, matched to the original delivery, and turned into credit notes without delay. The driver app handles all of it on the road.
We built a dedicated returns and expiry analysis report on top. It tracks return rates by customer, by product, by batch, so the team can see which routes or production runs are bleeding and adjust the plan before it bleeds again.
Before
- Returns logged on paper and reconciled at end of day
- Credit notes raised back at the office, hours later
- No visibility into which customers or batches generated the most returns
- Expiry losses recorded but not analysed
After
- Returns captured on-site via driver app, same trip
- Credit note issued immediately against the correct batch
- Expiry analysis report shows return rates by customer and product
- Management can see full return trends without manual collation
05
Shopify Integration
Online orders arrive in ERPNext the moment they are placed.
Hive sells online through Shopify. Before we wired it up, every online order was being keyed into ERPNext by hand. That meant lag, and the constant risk of stock mismatches between what the website said was available and what was on the shelf.
Now Shopify pumps live data into ERPNext. Stock is reserved the moment an order is placed. Fulfilment runs through the same dispatch process as everything else. The books stay accurate without anyone bridging the two platforms.
Shopify
Online store
ERPNext
Orders, stock, finance
06
GCC and India Expansion
Five countries. One system. One consolidated view.
As Hive expanded, we replicated the ERPNext structure across UAE, Kuwait, Oman, KSA, and India. Five countries on a unified ERPNext, each entity with its own chart of accounts, tax framework, and country-specific compliance. At the group level, a consolidated multi-currency report pulls financials across all five entities into one view.
UAE
Headquarters
VAT 5%Kuwait
Regional ops
VAT registeredOman
POS + distribution
VAT 5%KSA
High-growth market
VAT 15%India
Origin market
GST compliantConsolidated group report with automatic multi-currency conversion, pulling all five entities into a single management view
07
Retail POS
Six UAE malls. Multiple Oman outlets. All live.
Hive runs their own branded outlets across UAE malls and Oman. We set up POS profiles for six UAE malls and Oman outlets, all on the same ERPNext instance. A sale at any outlet posts instantly, stock is deducted, and revenue flows to the right entity, no reconciliation pain.
What is next
The build does not stop here.
Talabat, Noon, and an Android POS with card payment SDK are on the way. Hive is our most operationally complex client. Also one of the most enjoyable to work with.
Talabat Integration
Orders from Talabat flow directly into ERPNext as they are placed, same as Shopify today.
Noon Integration
Noon marketplace orders synced in real time, inventory reserved automatically.
Android POS App
Custom-built Android POS designed for handheld terminals and network payment machines.
Card Payment SDK
Direct integration with card payment SDK for seamless in-store checkout at outlets.
Results
Intercompany daily transfer process
Structured and automated in ERPNext
Batch expiry visibility
Real-time, from production through to shelf
Driver return processing
On-site via mobile app, same trip
Countries on unified ERPNext
5 (UAE, Kuwait, Oman, KSA, India)
Working at this scale requires a partner who understands both the ERP and the business behind it.