AWRA OpsHub Search

For Egypt

The operations layer, alongside whatever handles your compliance

We do not integrate with the Egyptian Tax Authority, our interface is in English, and Egyptian statutory payroll is not ours. What we do run is everything underneath: stock that is true continuously, procurement that refuses, route and cash custody, and imported cost measured at the rate that actually applied.

Three refusals
No ETA integration. No Arabic interface and no right-to-left layout. No Egyptian statutory payroll. Any one of the three can be decisive here, so they are in the first screen rather than the last answer.
On Arabic
It is engineering, not translation — mirrored layout, numeral formatting, column order. If it is your first requirement rather than your third, an Egyptian vendor is the better purchase and we would rather say so now.
The subject
Warehouse software is built around a building, and your inventory largely is not in one. It is on a route, in a rep's hands, at an unpaid customer, or on a truck between two of your own places.
The working week
Configurable, and real. Ticking Friday and Saturday flows through leave arithmetic, the attendance present-rate average, workflow due dates and escalation, with holidays set separately. Ageing buckets stay on calendar days, as is conventional.

Where the stock actually is

Five places your stock can be. Most systems have a word for two of them.

Warehouse software is built around a building, and an Egyptian distributor's inventory largely is not in one. It is on a route, in a rep's hands, sitting at a customer who has not paid for it yet, or on a truck between two of your own places. Read the middle column. Where a system has no word for a position, that stock does not stop existing — it becomes an adjustment at month end, which is the same thing as saying nobody knows.

3/5 positions that are usually not modelled at all — and they are the three this market lives in.
In the warehouse

TypicallyA real position. This is the one every system models properly.

HereA location with its own position, blind counts and valued variance.

In a branch or shop

TypicallyUsually real, sometimes a sub-total of the national figure rather than a position that can disagree with it.

HereEach branch holds its own position and is allowed to disagree with head office, which is the only way a disagreement gets found.

On a van, mid-round

TypicallyRarely modelled. The load is deducted at load-out and reappears as sales, and in between it is nobody's.

HereThe load is a movement to a location that happens to move, with one owner. Sales come off it during the round and the close is a variance by route and by person.

On a truck between two of your places

TypicallyUsually not a state at all. Confirmed on despatch, so it is counted at the destination days before it arrives.

HereIn transit is a real position. Transfers confirm on arrival, so the days on the road are visible instead of being a discrepancy somebody explains later.

At a customer, unpaid or on consignment

TypicallyAlmost never. It has usually left your inventory entirely, which makes it invisible until it is written off.

HereStock held at a location you do not own is still a position with a custodian, so it is countable, agable and recoverable rather than gone.

Three of five, and the three are exactly the ones an Egyptian distribution business lives in. The test to take into any demo on this market is not "can you show me stock" — it is "show me the stock that is on a van right now, and tell me whose it is." If the answer involves an adjustment, a spreadsheet or the words "at the end of the day", you have your answer about the other four rows too.

Operations in Egypt

Stock on a van is still stock. Most systems only have a word for it once it comes back.

The three refusals are in the hero and they are real. What is left is the layer an Egyptian distributor actually spends the day in, and its defining feature is that a large share of the inventory is not in a building. It is on a route, in a rep's hands, being sold and collected against all day, and the systems most organizations run only acquire an opinion about it at the evening reconciliation — by which point a variance is an argument rather than a record.

Stock transfers

A van load as a position with an owner

The load-out is a movement to a location that happens to move, sales come off it during the round, and the close is a variance by route and by person rather than a discussion. One owner per stock position, including the positions with wheels.

POS reconciliation

Cash custody closed at the shift, not at the month

Shift reconciliation with takings, variance and stock movement on one record, against the same inventory the back office is counting. Where cash and goods change hands together, the shift close is where the shrinkage argument is either settled or postponed.

Inventory

Stock that is true continuously rather than at month end

Each warehouse, branch and van holds its own position, transfers confirm on arrival, counts are blind and adjustments carry a reason and a person. A figure that is only correct on the last day of the month is a figure you cannot buy against.

Procurement

Approvals that refuse

Requisition, threshold, RFQ comparison, purchase order, three-way match — with the threshold blocking the transaction instead of logging a caution. The audit file is a by-product rather than a project.

Landed cost

Imported cost at the rate that actually applied

Duty, clearing, port charges and inland transport attach to the consignment as their invoices arrive, and the foreign-currency purchase keeps both amounts and the genuine rate rather than a stale assumption.

Assets

Named custody on everything that leaves a building

Custodian, location, condition at each hand-off, movement history and documents attached — the record that answers who had it, which an ownership register does not.

One genuinely useful thing that is built and easy to miss: the working week is configurable per organization. Ticking Friday and Saturday makes leave arithmetic, the attendance present-rate average, workflow due dates and escalation all follow the Egyptian week, and public holidays are configured separately. Ageing buckets stay on calendar days, as is conventional.

Recognisable, we hope

Four failures that all live between the fixed points

A cost that was never real

Goods priced at the rate assumed when the order was placed, paid weeks later at a different one, with duty and clearing arriving later still. The margin looks fine and was gone before the first sale.

A van full of stock the system has no word for

Loaded in the morning, cashed up at night, and forty drops in between that nobody recorded — so a shortfall has forty explanations and no evidence.

Two systems that both think they own the stock

A compliance product and an operations product with no written boundary between them is the most reliable way to end up trusting neither.

Evidence assembled under pressure

The quote, the approval, the delivery note and the invoice all exist — in four places, held by three people, retrievable only by whoever remembers.

Scope in Egypt — the refusals are in the hero, and here they are with the detail

Running in the product today

  • Van and route stock as a position with an owner, with sales coming off the load and variance by route and by person at close.
  • POS shift reconciliation with takings, variance and stock movement on one record against the same inventory.
  • Stock true continuously across warehouses, branches and vans, with blind counts and adjustments carrying a reason and a person.
  • Procurement thresholds that refuse, RFQ comparison, purchase orders and three-way matching.
  • Landed cost open after receipt and foreign-currency purchases held at the rate actually applied.
  • Asset registers with named custody, movement history and condition on every hand-off.
  • A configurable working week — Friday and Saturday as non-working days flow through leave arithmetic, attendance averages, workflow due dates and escalation, with holidays configured separately.

Absences — on the roadmap, and commissionable now

  • No ETA integration. We do not transmit to the Egyptian Tax Authority in any form. Our e-invoicing transmission is Kenya's eTIMS and it is Kenya-only.
  • No Arabic interface and no right-to-left layout. Documents are produced in English. For an organization whose warehouse, route or branch staff work in Arabic this is likely to be disqualifying, and Arabic is engineering rather than translation — mirrored layout, numeral formatting and column order.
  • No Egyptian statutory payroll. The maintained statutory engine covers Kenya only. Employee records, attendance, leave and payroll cost allocation are real; the calculation is not.
  • No bank statement reconciliation, for any market, in any form.

What we would decline, and would rather say now

  • We will not file with the ETA, and we will not describe the product as compliant in Egypt. We hold the operational record that a compliant process is fed from. Whether your process meets the mandate is a question for your adviser, and this page opens with what we do not do precisely so that nobody has to ask it twice.
  • We will not sell you a product your floor staff cannot read. If Arabic is your first requirement rather than your third, an Egyptian vendor is the better purchase and we will say so in the first call rather than the third month. Test the interface with the person who will key transactions, not with the person signing the contract.

The middle column is absences rather than positions, and each is commissionable now on a written specification, a timeline and a price agreed before any money moves — and for Arabic we would show you a customer-facing document before you signed anything. Kenya is the evidence that this is real: its eTIMS transmission and its statutory payroll engine were both built exactly this way. The honest caveat is that a vendor already shipping the language starts where we would be finishing.

The order of this page is deliberate. The three things we cannot do are in the first sentence rather than in the last answer, because in Egypt any one of them can be decisive and a reader who has to hunt for them has been treated badly.

How this starts

Three moves, and the first is one route

01

Settle your fiscal layer first

Establish your ETA obligation with the authority or your adviser and choose whatever satisfies it. Every other decision here is downstream of that answer.

02

Draw the boundary in writing

Customers, items, prices, stock, invoice numbering — one owner each, agreed before go-live and visible to both vendors. This is the step that decides whether two systems is stable or painful.

03

Then run a real month

Your sites, your routes, your imports and your approval chains, on your data, with training for the people who key transactions rather than the people who read reports.

Questions we are asked in Cairo

Straight answers, and what the ETA and Arabic builds would involve

Do you integrate with ETA electronic invoicing?

No, and we would rather lead with that than have you find it in month three. There is no connection to the Egyptian Tax Authority of any kind — nothing is structured, submitted, registered or retrieved, and no e-receipt is produced. Our only fiscal e-invoicing integration is Kenya's eTIMS and it is Kenya-only. Where an Egyptian obligation applies to you, a separate compliant solution handles it and AWRA runs the operations layer alongside it. Confirm the scope and timing of your own obligation with the ETA or your tax adviser. That is on the roadmap rather than a boundary, and it is commissionable now. The ETA interface is published and clearance-based, which makes it a defined engineering job rather than an open question. Kenya's eTIMS transmission and its maintained statutory payroll engine both exist because Kenyan clients needed them and commissioned them — neither arrived on a roadmap by itself. If this is the thing standing between you and a decision, say so and we will come back with a written specification, a timeline and a price before you commit to anything. What we will not do is print a date nobody has paid for.

Is the interface available in Arabic?

No. The interface is English only, there is no right-to-left layout, and documents such as invoices and purchase orders are produced in English. This is a genuine limitation rather than a setting, and for organizations whose warehouse, route or branch staff work in Arabic it is likely to be disqualifying — in which case an Egyptian vendor is the better purchase and we will say so. For organizations whose back office works in English it is usually a non-issue. Test it with the person who will actually key transactions. That is on the roadmap rather than a boundary, and it is commissionable now. Arabic is not a translation job — it is mirrored layout, numeral formatting and column order — so we would scope and price it as engineering and show you a customer-facing document before you signed anything. The honest caveat: a vendor already shipping the language starts where we would be finishing, so if it is your first requirement rather than your third, buying locally is the rational move and we would rather write that sentence than lose your third month to it.

Does it handle the Egyptian pound and VAT?

The pound and an Egypt VAT rate ship as built-in presets, and every sales and purchase line separates net, tax and gross at the point of capture. Foreign-currency purchases record the rate actually applied to that transaction rather than a standing rate, and landed cost folds duty, freight, clearing and inland transport into true unit cost. We ship one maintained VAT preset rather than a maintained rate history; additional tax lines are configurable but yours to keep current. Confirm all rates and treatment with the ETA or your adviser.

What about Egyptian payroll?

Our maintained statutory payroll engine covers Kenya only. Egyptian income tax withholding and social insurance are not calculated, no statutory output is produced, and nothing is submitted or remitted on your behalf. We recommend an Egyptian payroll specialist for that layer, with AWRA holding employee records, attendance, leave and payroll cost allocation to projects and cost centres.

Does the system know the Egyptian working week?

Once you set it. Non-working days are configured per organization, so ticking Friday and Saturday makes leave-day arithmetic and the attendance present-rate average follow the Egyptian week. Public holidays are configured separately, and workflow due dates and escalation read the same week and the same holidays, so an approval deadline will not land on your weekend. Support SLA targets can be set to count working hours per ticket category, so a commitment worded in working hours is measured that way. Ageing buckets stay on calendar days, as is conventional.

So when does AWRA make sense for an Egyptian organization?

When your fiscal obligation is already handled by a compliance product or a local specialist, your back office works comfortably in English, and your real problem is operational — stock across sites, route and cash custody, procurement governance, imported cost, assets, or project and donor attribution. That is a real and reasonably common shape, particularly for importers, distributors, international organizations and group subsidiaries. Outside it, buy locally.

Where does support come from?

Nairobi, with remote onboarding and live training in English. Cairo is one hour behind us, so your working day overlaps ours almost entirely.

Find out quickly whether we fit

Tell us your fiscal arrangement and your working language. In one call we can usually say whether the operations layer is worth discussing or whether you should buy from an Egyptian vendor.