Forest Management — Simple Management Plan (PSG), PEFC/FSC Chain of Custody and Geolocation (Odoo Online)

The slot is empty, and that can be verified

Search for “sawmill”, “timber harvesting”, “forestry management”, “chain of custody FSC PEFC” or “forest management plan” in the Odoo apps: zero results. The timber industry keeps its management plans in spreadsheets and its chain of custody in people's memory.

What the module refuses

Recording a harvest is refused, on a property above the simple management plan threshold (code forestier, art. L312-1), if no approved plan covers the harvest date, or if the harvest is not linked to any of the harvests scheduled in that plan. The refusal is lifted by an off-plan harvest authorization, provided its reference is entered: the module issues none, and a checked box without a number proves nothing.

Selling timber with a PEFC or FSC claim is refused if the originating harvest is not certified, or has not yet been recorded. Certification is established at the date of the harvest and does not change afterwards: membership taken out the following year does not retroactively certify timber already cut — which is exactly what a chain-of-custody audit looks for.

Selling more timber than was harvested is refused, harvest by harvest, with the exact remaining balance. And reducing a harvest's volume after the fact below what has already left it is refused too.

Declaring a sale intended for the EU market is refused from a plot without geolocation coordinates.

Validating a chain-of-custody balance is refused as long as a species shows a negative certified balance.

Geolocation, before anything else

Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on the making available on the Union market of certain commodities and products associated with deforestation requires the geolocation coordinates of the plots of land of production. Without them, the due diligence statement cannot be completed, and without it the product cannot be placed on the market.

The module displays no application date, and this is deliberate: this regulation's timeline has been amended several times since its adoption, and a wrong deadline in compliance software is worse than no deadline — it gives false reassurance. Check the date currently in force with your trade association.

What the module does, however, depends on no timetable: geolocation can be entered right now, plot by plot — a point in WGS 84 decimal degrees, or a GeoJSON polygon — and a dedicated menu lists what remains to be done. This is fieldwork that takes months, not a field to fill in the night before.

The chain of custody

It is to timber what the material balance is to organic farming. Species by species, over the requested period

certified opening stock + certified cut − certified sold = closing stock

Opening stock is calculated over the full history, never entered by hand: without it, selling in March timber cut the previous year would look like fraud, and the alert would be ignored from the second time onward.

What is recorded

Properties with their configurable simple management plan threshold; plots with their area, species, stand, certification and geolocation; simple management plans with their approval and felling schedule; completed fellings with their volume and certification frozen as of the felling date; sales with their claim and destination.

What the module does not do

It does not draft or approve the plan simple de gestion (forest management plan): approval is granted by the centre régional de la propriété forestière (regional forest ownership center). It issues no authorization for felling outside the plan. It certifies nothing: PEFC and FSC are private standards, and the module verifies none of their silvicultural criteria — it records the membership taken out and checks sales against it. It displays no map, converts no projection and calls no mapping service. It calculates no volume from tree measurements, handles neither invoicing nor transport, and transmits nothing to any authority.

Two roles

Technician: plots, geolocation, harvests and sales. Manager: properties and thresholds, management plans and their approval, harvest records, validation of chain-of-custody reports.

Legal bases

French Forestry Code (Code forestier), art. L312-1, for the simple management plan. The general threshold of 20 contiguous hectares — lowered from 25 to 20 hectares by Law No. 2023-580 of July 10, 2023 (art. 30) and Decree No. 2023-1281 of December 26, 2023 — is the module's default setting, editable property by property: an order of the minister responsible for forests, issued on a proposal from the board of the Centre national de la propriété forestière (French national forest ownership center), can lower it to 10 hectares, and a module that hard-coded it would give a wrong answer to every owner in such a region.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 for geolocation. No application date is displayed, for the reason stated above.

PEFC and FSC are private standards, not regulations: the module cites no article for them, because there are none.