Money moves faster than your records.
Transactions clear at the bank days before anyone posts them, so the books describe last week rather than today.
Elroi brings sales, accounting, inventory, payments, tax, cash flow and operations into one intelligent business system built for Ethiopian companies.
Elroi doesn't just help you record your business. It helps you control it.
Know what has happened, what is coming, what needs your attention, and what actions keep your company profitable, liquid and compliant.
Transactions clear at the bank days before anyone posts them, so the books describe last week rather than today.
The obligation was building all month, but it only becomes visible in the week it is due — when the cash is already committed.
Revenue and collection are not the same event. A strong month on paper can still leave you short on payday.
A receipt lives on someone's phone, an invoice in a chat thread — and the evidence has to be rebuilt months later.
Elroi is designed around these problems.
Sales · Inventory · Purchase · Production · Services
Same configuration underneath. A different question on top — one a person who runs a business can answer without a manual.
Configure analytic dimensions.
Would you like to see profit separately for each branch?
Configure stock valuation accounts.
Do you keep products or materials in stock?
Configure fiscal document mode.
How does your business issue official sales receipts?
Not a blank database and a consultant's invoice. Pick your industry and Elroi proposes the modules, chart of accounts and configuration that business actually needs.
Not marketing renders — these are the working surfaces: the trial balance, the stock ledger, a work order, a payroll run and the board pack. Click through, or let it advance.
| Account | Code | Debit ETB | Credit ETB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & bank — CBE main | 1010 | 14,208,400 | — |
| Accounts receivable | 1200 | 9,845,120 | — |
| Inventory — finished goods | 1310 | 27,640,900 | — |
| VAT payable | 2210 | — | 2,404,813 |
| Withholding tax payable | 2215 | — | 318,640 |
| Pension payable — 7% / 11% | 2230 | — | 1,102,455 |
| Total | 51,694,420 | 51,694,420 | |
| Item | Bole | Adama | Hawassa | Van fleet | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooking oil 5L — batch B-2418 | 1,240 | 860 | 410 | 96 | Healthy |
| Wheat flour 25kg | 318 | 92 | 44 | 12 | Reorder |
| Packaging film — roll | 64 | 18 | 6 | — | Below min |
| Detergent 1L — batch D-1190 | 2,410 | 1,880 | 960 | 204 | Healthy |
| Bill of material | Planned | Consumed | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base oil — bulk | 8,400 L | 8,512 L | +112 L |
| Bottle 5L — preform | 4,200 | 4,248 | +48 |
| Label — printed | 4,200 | 4,196 | −4 |
| Labour — line 2 | 64 hrs | 61 hrs | −3 hrs |
| Real cost per unit | ETB 214.60 | ||
| Component | Basis | Amount ETB |
|---|---|---|
| Gross salary | 142 employees | 3,864,200 |
| Overtime & allowances | Attendance, Nehase | 318,940 |
| Employment income tax (PAYE) | Progressive bands, 2018 E.C. | −842,110 |
| Pension — employee 7% | Basic salary | −270,494 |
| Pension — employer 11% | Employer cost | 425,062 |
| Net to bank | 2,918,750 | |
Turn your company's rules into the system's rules, so nothing depends on whether a staff member remembers that a customer hasn't paid or that an invoice was never issued.
A delivery request checks invoice status first. Without a valid invoice it stops — unless the customer is an approved credit account and the policy allows it.
Delivery requested
Invoice status checked
Blocked
Order, invoice, verified payment, release. Which of those gates apply is your decision, set per customer or per channel — not a single rule forced on every business.
Order
Invoice
Released
Every override is recorded — who approved it, when, and against which policy.
Elroi connects both.
Money Inbox · Bank assurance · Payment verification
Money left the account. Someone knows why. Elroi asks while the answer is still fresh, then keeps the evidence attached to the transaction for good.
What was it for?
Once a week, every account is checked: statement received, lines matched, differences explained. Nothing is allowed to quietly drift for a quarter.
Completeness measures how much of your bank activity is both received and explained. Below 100%, Elroi names the exact accounts and lines responsible rather than reporting a vague percentage.
Operational and financial alerts arrive where your team already talks, and payment notifications become accounting evidence instead of a screenshot in somebody's phone.
Bank or payment SMS
Possible transaction match
Bank statement
An SMS or a screenshot is evidence, never proof of payment on its own. Elroi treats it as a strong hint and waits for the bank or provider record before the transaction is confirmed.
Capture on iPhone uses a Shortcuts bridge; on Android, the Elroi companion app with the user's explicit permission. Elroi never reads messages it was not given.
Sales targets · Cash forecast · Loans · Safe-to-Spend
Ten signals, on one screen, answering the questions an owner actually asks. Each one is a number you can act on today — not a report you interpret next month, and not a brochure screenshot: this is the screen your team opens every morning.
A single score from cash, margin, collections and reserve cover.
What is genuinely free after reserves and committed obligations.
Weeks of operating cost your current position covers.
Where the balance goes, week by week, before it happens.
Booked and forecast against the number you set.
What should arrive, dated by each customer's real behaviour.
Payroll, tax, rent and suppliers on their due dates.
What is set aside against what will be owed.
Gross and net margin by branch, product and job.
How much of your bank activity is reconciled and evidenced.
Before you commit to a purchase, see what it does to your cash position on the days that matter — payroll, VAT, rent. Move the amount and watch the floor move with it.
Elroi watches the same handful of things a good finance director would watch, every night, and only speaks when something is genuinely off.
Payroll, VAT and a supplier run land in the same week that two large invoices are still outstanding.
These accounts have paid 18 to 31 days past terms on their last four invoices. The forecast has already dated them accordingly.
You are selling more and keeping less of it. Input costs on two product lines rose without the price list following.
Stated in one sentence, in business language.
The chain of events that produced it.
A figure, not an adjective.
A specific next action you can take today.
A target is a sales number. Payroll is a cash number. Elroi converts one into the other so you can see the gap while there is still time to close it.
To safely cover payroll, tax, rent and suppliers this month you need to collect ETB 3,400,000 — which means invoicing ETB 4,250,000 and chasing the three late accounts.
Tax you have already incurred, payroll that runs next week and supplier commitments you have made are all spoken for. Elroi subtracts them first, so the number you act on is the one that is actually free.
Most businesses that run out of cash were never short of revenue. They spent money that had already been committed — to the Ministry of Revenues, to their own staff, to a supplier who had not invoiced yet.
Safe-to-Spend is the number that answers the only question an owner actually asks before a decision: can I do this without creating a problem in six weeks?
Every protected bucket is traceable — click a line and you see the obligations behind it, not a rounded estimate.
Release a reserve deliberately and Elroi records who approved it and why. It never quietly frees itself up.
Elroi includes future loan principal and interest in your liquidity forecast, so a repayment never arrives as an unexpected cash shock.
Principal and interest are split on every scheduled payment, so the interest lands in the P&L and the principal reduces the liability.
Each future repayment is a dated line on the 13-week forecast, next to payroll and tax — the three things that most often collide.
Change a repayment date and the forecast, the runway and Safe-to-Spend all move with it.
Tax Center · Reserves · Advance income tax · Withholding evidence
Every obligation, its filing status, its deadline and whether the money to pay it actually exists — on one screen, updated as you post rather than assembled at the deadline.
Obligations accrue as documents post, so the figure on screen is today's position rather than last month's close.
Missing evidence is named specifically — which document, on which transaction — because that is what blocks a period close.
Elroi prepares and organises the figures. Filing, and responsibility for it, stays with you and your accountant.
Elroi helps you prepare for VAT, withholding, payroll obligations and income tax before they are due — so tax deadlines don't become cash-flow emergencies.
Where applicable under current Ethiopian tax rules, Elroi can use the verified advance-payment rule based on prior-year income-tax liability to estimate upcoming installments — and then tells you what to set aside each month to be ready for one.
That is not an emergency. At your current forecast it is two ordinary months of setting money aside, and the low point in week 4 still clears your protected minimum.
A note on the 25% figure: it is an advance-payment planning basis where legally applicable — not a corporate income-tax rate, and not a statement of what you owe. Every production figure comes from Elroi's effective-dated, professionally reviewed Ethiopian tax-rule engine, using the rule in force on the transaction date.
At your current cash-flow forecast, reserving approximately ETB 70,000 per month would close the gap before the expected due date.
Obligations accrue as documents post, so the reserve target moves with the business rather than appearing in the week it is due.
Every tax obligation is placed on the 13-week cash forecast beside payroll, rent, suppliers and loan repayments — not tracked on the side.
Reserved tax is subtracted from Safe-to-Spend. Money already owed should never look like money you can spend.
A letter from the Ministry of Revenues, a box of receipts, a calculator, and three days you will not get back. Elroi does not make the tax go away — it makes the answer already be there when you are asked for it.
Every invoice carries the TIN and a sequential receipt number as it is issued — there is nothing to reconstruct in Nehase.
VAT and withholding accrue as documents are posted, so the monthly summary assembles itself rather than being rebuilt.
Your auditor gets read-only access to the ledger — not a box and a calculator.
Job profitability · Branch margin · Cost leakage
Revenue is easy to see. The true cost of a job — materials, outsourcing, delivery, labour and machine time — is where the margin quietly disappears. Elroi assembles it as the job runs.
Quoted margin was 28%. Elroi compares the estimate line by line against what the job actually consumed.
Paper overrun and unplanned outsourcing account for ETB 22,000 of the ETB 31,500 gap — the two things to quote differently next time.
The same view works per project, per branch, per customer and per product line, because every cost carries its dimensions from the moment it is posted.
Ethiopian accounting · IFRS · E-invoice · Regulatory updates
VAT, withholding, payroll tax and pension are structured the way Ethiopian filing expects them. The calendar, the tax structure and the reporting formats were the starting point of the design, not a localisation layer added at the end.
Meskerem to Pagumē, running beside the Gregorian date. Hover a month to read it.
15% VAT added, 2% withholding deducted at source — the arithmetic your customer will check.
TIN, sequential receipt number and the tax breakdown printed on the document itself — not bolted on at filing time.
Choose the framework that applies to you during onboarding, in plain language, and Elroi keeps tax, management and financial-reporting adjustments separate from that point on.
For businesses on the Ethiopian fiscal-year cycle, Elroi closes the year, reconciles accounts, calculates depreciation, prepares tax schedules and assembles the annual financial-statement package around the Sene / Hamle transition. The fiscal year is configurable for companies whose approved reporting period differs.
Elroi is designed to support IFRS and IFRS for SMEs reporting. We do not describe it as certified or unconditionally compliant until independent professional validation is complete.
Elroi is designed around electronic invoicing, fiscal receipt controls, tax evidence and structured integration with Ethiopia's evolving digital-tax ecosystem.
We do not claim ministry certification or official integration. Those statements will appear here only once they have actually been completed and approved.
Rule packages are reviewed, versioned and released centrally with an effective date — so a change reaches every tenant the same way, on the day it actually applies.
Official Ethiopian source
Elroi regulatory review
Rule validation
Versioned release
Tenant notification
Effective-date activation
Affected: VAT calculation · invoice validation · tax reporting.
Historical transactions keep the rule that applied on their transaction date. A rule change never silently rewrites a period you have already closed and filed.
There is no nightly export, no reconciliation between two systems, no separate tax database. Capture happens at the edge — often offline — and lands in a single posted ledger that the revenue office, the banks and the board all read from.
Everything below is something we can point at and show you. We have deliberately left out the phrases that sound reassuring but describe nothing.
Each company runs in its own database with its own credentials — no shared tables between customers.
Backups are encrypted at rest and stored separately from the running environment.
All traffic between your browser and Elroi is served over TLS.
Role-based permissions per user, per company and per module.
Postings record who made them and when, and are not silently editable.
Updates are applied on a managed schedule, not pushed unannounced.
A documented restore procedure, exercised rather than assumed.
Built on a widely audited open-source core rather than an unexamined stack.
No certification badges, no “military-grade” anything, and no compliance statement we cannot evidence on request. The figures above are contractual targets in the Managed Custom plan, not marketing numbers — ask to see the agreement and the incident log.
Sales gap · Collections · Marketing · Marketplace
A target you are behind on is only useful if it comes with the next move. Elroi works back from the obligations you actually have to the collections and sales that would cover them.
Elroi recommends campaigns. It does not publish them, and it does not spend advertising budget, without a person approving each one.
Financial need
Sales need
Commercial action
Marketing action
Switch on the marketplace and your approved products and services get a public storefront — with orders landing straight in the same sales, inventory and invoicing flow you already run.
Marketplace order
Elroi sales order
Inventory or production
Invoice
Payment
Delivery
No second system, no re-keying, and no separate stock figure to reconcile at month end. The storefront is a channel on the ledger you already have.
Not a chatbot bolted onto a help centre. It reads your ledger, your ageing and your forecast, and answers in the terms of your own business.
AI explains, forecasts and suggests. Important accounting and tax actions require human approval — nothing is posted, filed or paid on the strength of a suggestion alone.
Why is cash getting tight even though sales increased?
Sales increased 18%, but average collection time increased from 27 to 46 days. ETB 1.2m is overdue while payroll and VAT totalling ETB 710k are due within 14 days.
Prioritise collections from Customer A and Customer B this week.
The story above is what Elroi is for. This is what is in it. Pick a category rather than scrolling through forty features you may not need.
Ten signals on one screen — health score, safe-to-spend, runway, receivables, payables, reserves and what needs attention today.
OpenBank cash minus tax reserve, payroll, rent, supplier commitments and your minimum operating buffer.
OpenEvery expected inflow and dated commitment — payroll, rent, suppliers, loans and tax — on one line you can read in five seconds.
OpenOutstanding balance, next payment, principal and interest split, and twelve months of scheduled repayments in the forecast.
OpenExpected obligation, amount reserved, shortfall, due date and the weekly or monthly amount that would close the gap.
OpenTrue cost per job including outsourcing, delivery, labour and machine time, compared against the margin you quoted.
OpenPick the framework during onboarding in plain language; tax, management and financial-reporting adjustments stay separate afterwards.
OpenThirteen periods including Pagumē beside the Gregorian date, statutory report formats and a configurable fiscal year.
OpenFourteen statements and schedules assembled at close, from the statement of financial position to the approvals sheet.
OpenSeparate books per company, common group reporting, account mapping, intercompany reconciliation and eliminations.
Chart of accounts, customers, suppliers, opening balances, AR/AP and journal history — validated and reconciled before go-live.
Compatibility is confirmed per Peachtree edition during discovery rather than assumed.
Delivery is blocked without a valid invoice, with an exception path for approved credit customers and authorised overrides.
OpenFull payment, deposit, approved credit, cash on delivery or milestone — chosen per customer and per channel, not forced.
OpenEvery unexplained bank line gets a question, a suggested match and attached evidence — never an unlabelled entry.
OpenA completeness score per account and a nudge when a statement has not arrived, so reconciliation never slips months behind.
OpenScreenshots and SMS are treated as evidence alongside the stronger bank or provider record — never as proof on their own.
OpenWithholding certificates captured against the invoice they relate to, so credits can be claimed without a year-end search.
OpenQuotations, orders, price lists per channel, commissions and point of sale, all writing to the same ledger.
Requests, purchase orders, supplier bills, three-way matching and supplier ageing.
Multi-warehouse, batch and serial traceability, reorder rules, transfers and van stock.
Bills of material and routings, work orders, scrap and yield, and true cost per unit.
Proforma, FX application, LC / TT / CAD, shipment, customs, clearing, goods in transit and every charge that lands on the item — so you know what an imported product really costs before you price it.
Timesheets, project costing, progress billing and retention for construction and consulting work.
Say what business you run and Elroi prepares the chart of accounts, journals, tax structure, workflows, roles, reports and UAT scenarios — then asks only for what it cannot know.
Payments received, missing statements, reserve shortfalls and orders ready to ship, delivered where your team already talks.
OpenBank and payment notifications become candidate transactions, with the user's explicit permission on each device.
OpenReviewed, versioned, effective-dated rule packages — and historical transactions keep the rule that applied when they happened.
OpenExplains the numbers, forecasts and suggests. Important accounting and tax actions require human approval.
OpenE-invoice, fiscal cash register, authorised printed invoice or a mixed mode during transition.
OpenTarget against forecast, and the collections figure that would actually cover payroll, tax and supplier commitments.
OpenOverdue customers ranked by what chasing them would actually do to the forecast, not just by age.
OpenA suggested week of campaigns tied to the gap — recommended, never published or funded without approval.
OpenA public storefront for your approved products and services, with orders landing in the sales flow you already run.
OpenThe same profitability view by branch, customer and product line, because every cost carries its dimensions.
OpenTen business types with their own chart of accounts, workflows and reporting prepared in advance.
OpenThe modules, permissions and reporting depth change. The ledger, the calendar and the tax engine never do.
Retail, services and trading companies moving off Peachtree, spreadsheets and a receipt book.
Factories, importers and wholesalers where cost per unit and stock accuracy decide the margin.
Holding groups and large firms consolidating several companies, branches and currencies.
Each industry arrives with its own chart of accounts, costing method and reports — so the first month is operating the system, not building it.
Recipe costing, table and delivery channels, daily cash-up, stock by ingredient.
Job costing, paper and ink consumption, machine dimensions, work in progress.
Bills of material, routings, scrap and yield, real production cost per unit.
Appointments, stylist commission, retail stock alongside services.
Van sales, multi-warehouse transfers, landed cost, distributor stock visibility.
Time and project billing, retainers, staff utilisation, work in progress.
Elroi is not only for factories. The same ledger, calendar and tax engine run a four-chair salon in Kazanchis and a distribution group with eleven branches. Turn the wheel, or let it turn.
Spreadsheets are free and infinitely flexible. A global ERP has two decades of depth. Here is where each of them costs you, and where Elroi doesn't.
| Capability | Spreadsheets & Peachtree | Global ERP, localised | Elroi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethiopian 13-period fiscal calendar | Manual mapping | Custom add-on | Native |
| VAT, withholding & PAYE from the ledger | Rebuilt monthly | Partner module | Built in, kept current |
| Full Amharic interface & documents | None | Partial strings | Per user, everywhere |
| Telebirr / CBE Birr reconciliation | By hand | Not supported | Automatic matching |
| Selling through a power or network cut | Paper, then re-key | Cloud-only | Offline POS, ordered sync |
| Landed cost on LC & franco-valuta imports | Separate sheet | Strong | Built in |
| Depth for very large multinationals | No | Deeper than us | Groups, not conglomerates |
| Typical time to first branch live | Immediate, then never closes | 9–18 months | 5 weeks |
| Support in your timezone and language | None | Regional reseller | Addis Ababa, EAT hours |
Comparison reflects typical deployments we encounter in the Ethiopian market — your mileage will vary by vendor and partner.
Each step depends on the one before it — which is why we publish the sequence and hold to it. A named implementation lead stays with you through hypercare.
Your processes, documents and approval chain mapped with the people who actually run them.
Week 1Accounts, cost centres, tax codes and opening balances agreed with your auditor.
Weeks 2–3Customers, suppliers, items and stock counts loaded — with Amharic and English names on every record.
Weeks 3–4One branch runs real transactions in parallel for a full close cycle.
Week 5Remaining branches switched on, staff trained in the language they work in.
Weeks 6–8Daily support through the first month-end close, then a quarterly review of how you're using it.
OngoingEvery newly onboarded Elroi company receives one year of included standard support from production go-live.
The detailed pricing page reads the current package records from Odoo. These cards mirror the live 2026.07 catalog so the landing page and subscription database say the same thing.
For a first managed Odoo launch with one operating team.
For multi-branch teams that need tighter support and training.
For regulated, multi-company, or roadmap-dependent requirements.
Catalog source: published Odoo package records · excludes VAT · public selection routes to consultation and never provisions a tenant
If yours isn't here, the walkthrough is the fastest way to get a straight answer — bring your accountant.
“We stopped arguing about whose spreadsheet was right. There is one number now, and everybody is looking at it.”
The contact form creates a reviewed CRM lead, captures your company, users, branches, timing and preferred package, and does not create infrastructure or activate service automatically.