Working capital and cash
See where inventory, receivables and purchasing are absorbing cash before the pressure becomes obvious in the bank balance.
Commercial strategy, decision systems and technology for African businesses
Start with the business.
Not the technology.
Northlea helps African enterprises solve commercial constraints in working capital, forecasting, operational visibility and risk by connecting the economics of the business to the right information and the right technology.
We do not begin with an AI use case. We begin with the management decision that would materially improve revenue, gross profit, cash or risk if it became better, earlier or more informed.
Executive view
What changed, what it means, what needs a decision
FY26 · W39
Net sales$18.4m+6.8%
Gross margin28.6%-1.4pp
Working capital$6.2m+$840k
Receivables >45d19.7%+3.2pp
Decision signalsPriority
01
Procurement is outrunning receipts
ACTThree categories account for 71% of the cash absorption.
02
Regional demand has shifted
WATCHNorth region order velocity is 12% above plan for a third week.
03
Margin leakage is concentrated
REVIEWDiscounting on two enterprise accounts explains most of the decline.
Management questionRecommended next step
Where can we release cash without constraining the sales plan?
MODELRephase purchase orders in three categories and test service-level impact.
01What Northlea works on
Commercial problems where a better decision can change the economics.
Northlea sits between strategy, finance, operations and technology. We help management understand the constraint, identify the decision that matters and build the decision layer around it when technology is justified.
Forecasting and allocation
Use earlier signals to improve commitments around demand, inventory, capacity, procurement and capital.
Operational visibility and risk
Bring fragmented commercial information together so leadership can act on changes in margin, customers, credit and operations while options still remain.
02What that can become
From commercial diagnosis to a system management can actually use.
The output is not necessarily a presentation. Where the economics justify it, Northlea can turn the decision logic into a practical management tool: a forecasting engine, a credit decision layer, an executive dashboard, a workflow or a bespoke operating application.
That system should sit around the way the business already works, not force the business into a fashionable technology stack.
Season Commitment Engine
Model volume, capacity, error cost and revenue scenarios before a seasonal commitment becomes difficult to reverse.
Merchandise decision layer
Bring open-to-buy, margin, stock cover and demand signals into one commercial view around the ERP.
Economic behaviour ledger
Combine formal records with payment, purchasing and operating behaviour to improve a human credit decision.
Interfaces shown on this site are illustrative Northlea prototypes, not representations of deployed client systems.
03The African operating reality
Useful commercial signals rarely arrive in one neat system.
Across African operating environments, management information can be spread across ERP systems, mobile payments, spreadsheets, point-of-sale data, field teams, WhatsApp and human operating knowledge.
The opportunity is not to collect everything. It is to identify which signals materially change a decision and make them useful while management still has options.
A customer can be economically legible before they are institutionally legible.
04Why Northlea
Finance taught me to follow the economics. Technology taught me how systems get built. Business ownership taught me the cost of seeing problems too late.
Northlea is built around that combination: corporate finance discipline, hands-on technology implementation and the operating reality of having your own cash on the line.
A useful place to begin
Which decision is costing the business because management sees it too late?
That gives us something concrete to examine: the economics, the information, the operating constraint and whether a better decision system can materially change the outcome.
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