What is TRADE
TRADE is the Physicals Maintenance Procedure incorporating quotations, contracts management, position administration, logistics, operations and traffic .
Using TRADE, the life of a physicals trade can be recorded from bid/offer to execution to liquidation and archiving. During this time the contract may be tranched, split, shipped, warehoused, processed, allocated and eventually invoiced. All of these activities and others e.g. insurance claims, declarations, trust receipts, loans, F&O and FX hedging are recorded using TRADE. Brokerage, 3rd Party and Internal contracts can also be recorded and administrated in TRADE. Brokerage business can use most of the ITAS features but the trade detail/content will not be included in the company P&L and Risk management systems nor in its Open position reporting. Brokerage contracts are automatically allocated with each other and any tranching/splitting should be actioned prior to contract-completed entry. Thereafter TRADE/traffic will maintain both sides of the allocation consistently whether weight changes/call offs or traffic detail updating e.g. Vessel name, BL dates
3rd Party trades are used where the operating company is administering another stock with the features of borrowing for their own deliveries. 3rd Party sales contracts will be fulfilled from 3rd Party Stock with special standardisation routines applied in some bulk product handling. Internal trades are used when a company is operating profit centre (departments) and inter-department selling is needed.
To assist TRADE entry for the trader, there is a simplified form of TRADES setup, i.e. Short Trade entry. Documentation (e.g. Contract Advices, Shipping Notification, Bank Release, Insurance Certificate) and reports can be created from TRADE for single or multiple contracts. The current contract P&L can be viewed at any time using the latest market price, estimates of cost and price fixing information.
There are sub-systems for administrating Business Confirmation with dates of Advice sent, reminders and received acknowledgement e.g. CONTMAN. FX cover can be initiated in TRADE and administrated from TRS/FX. The ITAS design allows for many FX deals to a TRADE tranche and/or many TRADE deals to a TRS deal. There is an enquiry style in TRADEQ that will list any uncovered FX according to what has been specified as the requirement in TRADE. Trust Receipt / Loans: Every TRADE can have loan details associated i.e. bank account, reference, currency and amount of loan and whether the loan is finished. The details are maintained on the Financial page and the TRADE ?help explains how the information is used in conjunction with the status of the purchase tonnage e.g. BANKRVU and whether a Stock receipt, Receivable. There is a TRADEQ/Style 20 feature that provides a detail review of purchases that have not been sales invoiced and/or cash received for receivable.
Not all the features in TRADE will be relevant to your operation as trading companies operate in different ways.
TRADE handles refining, processing, mixing of stock tonnage, back to back trading and delivering from stock. Cost estimates may be entered as a fixed list of costs or individual costs that apply to a specific contract. There are procedures for group Traffic update of costs, weights and shipping details.
There are some Reporting features available from the task bar i.e. Archiving status, Mix/Process, Process audit, Shipment book, Shipment book (options only) and ReportWriter. The Archiving Status is a summary list of selected TRADEs indicating status of readiness for archive (overnight process or manual). The Process reports show Mixing/Manufacture activities completed with in-turn and out-turn weights etc. The Shipment book lists TRADEs which are unallocated, open status that are not fully invoiced and that are in a forward position i.e. no Shipping status. The report content will also list any Commodity Options below the main TRADE detail.If the user filters on Shipping status, then only TRADEs with the selected Shipping status are listed. The Shipment book (options only) will only list TRADE and their Option rows where the TRADE has a commodity option. The Pre Payments list will illustrate both Sales (Deposit) and Purchase (Supplier Advance) TRADEs that have executed a Pre Payment advice (Invoicing subsystems) and have not yet had the goods shipped i.e. not Invoiced. The ReportWriter options are setup in REPORT whereby the template is assigned to TRADE for application.
TRADE is a code-based procedure. Most of the support codes are maintained in ITAS Menu Option PHYSCODES See how some specific tasks can be accomplished. See Physicals FAQ for further information on some TRADE related processes