Commodity Brokerage Overview

cieTrade helps take your operation to the next level by replacing spreadsheets and multi-silo workarounds with an integrated workspace that helps maximize productivity, improve oversight and reduce overhead. Our solution starts with our unique “Buy/Sell” Worksheet concept which organizes financial and logistical information for each shipment in an intuitive way that helps improve visibility and avoid costly errors. From each Worksheet, brokered products or grades can be bought and sold with different names, currencies or units of measure, while sales, purchases and freight expenses can be viewed together with commissions to instantly show estimated profit. Customizable templates save time by generating your shipping and billing documents while photos, emails and other files can be attached directly to loads for fast access and retrieval.

Built-in productivity tools track service requests, schedule loads, manage mill releases, request received weights, adjust light load shipments and more while real-time accounting integration eliminates double-entry and costly mistakes. cieTrade offers native support for blanket and spot orders and support for index price formulas or provisional prices. It also offers tools to easily manage bulk price updates and index price changes. Specialized industry reports provide the insight you need to improve oversight and decision making, saving time and improving accuracy by avoiding manual spreadsheets, and where custom reports are required they can be added to the software as needed. For a complete break down of the associated features and benefits, please see Commodity Brokerage Solutions (PDF).

Key Features

Buy/Sell Trading Form

• Organizes financial & logistical data around each load, while attaching emails and documents, just like a file
  folder.
• Buy and sell in different weights, units of measure, currencies, and product names.
• Automatically matches expense accruals with revenue on a trade by trade basis to determine gross profit.

Documentation & Email

• Automatically generates all of your specialized shipping and billing documentation for inland or ocean transport using fully customizable templates and digital signatures.
• Predefined document types include: packing lists, bills of lading, confirmations, freight and shipping instructions, commercial invoices and more.
• Captures and saves emails directly from Outlook.
• Emails documentation, photos, and file attachments to your clients or trading partners directly from cieTrade in one click.

Gross Profit & Commissions

• Calculates the projected profitability of every brokerage trade.
• Calculates profit at multiple levels including by customer, supplier, product, sales representative and more.
• Generates commissions based on user-definable formulas and multiple payment methods.
• Supports internal interest calculations for cost of payment spreads.

Logistics Management

• Built-in workflow features help organize open orders, in-process shipments, approvals, logistics notifications, mill releases and more.
• Quickly find shipments by any reference including order, pickup, truck and invoice number, bill of lading, carrier, and more.
• Each transaction groups all financial and logistical information for the shipment.
• Document Event tracking helps you stay on top of shipping requirements and notifications.
• Universal search engine makes it easy to retrieve attached documents and photos from anywhere in the system.

Pricing & Orders

• Handles both spot and contract orders. 
• Allows you to establish pricing by account, grade, weight, packaging type, per each and more. 
• Supports market and index-formula pricing. 
• Automatically rolls‐over pricing agreements.
• Features “confirmed pricing workflow” to avoid settlements on unconfirmed prices.
• Provides a central dashboard to manage and edit pricing and view pricing history from one place.
• Shows real-time order status, budget to actual analysis, and more. 

Reporting

• Generates all of the specialized, Excel friendly reports and multilevel drill-down inquiries you need to manage daily activity and business performance.
• Advanced reports include: gross profit at multiple levers, tonnage and pricing trends, order matching and fulfillment, settlement statements and more.
• Integrated Self-Service Portal provides your customers and supply chain partners with on-demand access and visibility to shipments, pricing, payments, documents and more.

Additional Tools

Self-Service Portal

cieMobile

cieTrade’s mobile reporting app provides sales reps and managers with real-time access to your cieTrade account information and key management reports from the road or anywhere else. For more information on cieMobile, please see our helpfile here. 

FAQ

Workflow

Below is the basic commodity brokerage workflow, with links to other helpfiles with more information.

Common/Main Workflow:

1. Create Counterparty & Location(s)
2. Create Purchase Order and/or Sales Order (both are optional)
3. Create Brokerage Worksheet(s) for the Fulfillment of Said Order(s)
4. Generate Invoice and Related Documents for Distribution
5. Post (Vendor) Expenses from the AP Ledger
6. Receive (Customer) Payment on the Receipts Ledger

Additional Tools:

• Order Budget
• Sales Tax
• Buy/Sell Reps
• Location Lookup
• Order Management
• Group Invoices (for Billing Sheets/Invoices)
• Inbox
• Inland Freight
• Document Tracking
• Blind Bill of Lading
• Worksheet Generator
• Attach Files

User Defined Fields⮝ ⮝ ⮝