Introduction to PALBONTradeFinance
PALBONTradeFinance runs a commodity trade house's work from the first offer to the final payment: the trade and its two legs, the contracts, the letters of credit, the vessel and its laytime, the surveyors' certificates and shipping documents, and the settlement of each leg in the books.
It is built for any company that buys and sells physical commodities internationally: traders in coal, ores, metals, agricultural goods, fertilisers, oil and gas, and the banks, funders, shipowners and surveyors they work with. Every rule it applies is held as data, so each company changes it to fit its own way of working.
1. The trade chain
A trade house usually trades back-to-back: it buys a cargo from a supplier and sells the same cargo to a buyer. Each side is a leg.
Supplier ──(purchase leg)──► Your company ──(sale leg)──► Buyer
◄── money under the purchase LC ── ◄── money under the sale LC ──
Goods and documents move right; money moves left under each letter of credit.
PALBONTradeFinance keeps both legs on one Trade record. Everything else hangs from that trade:
| Area | What happens | Main records |
|---|---|---|
| Trading | Offers, confirmations, the confirmed trade and its margin | Trade, Price Formula, Discount Matrix |
| Contracts | One contract per leg; drafting, deviations, signing, addenda | Trade Contract, Contract Template, Contract Clause, Trade Contract Type |
| Trade finance | The sale credit received from the buyer, the purchase credit opened for the supplier, amendments, presentations, payment | Letter of Credit, LC Presentation, SWIFT Message, Bank Facility, Bank Guarantee |
| Shipping | Vessel nomination, clean-vessel acceptance, voyage and statement of facts, laytime with each counterparty | Vessel, Port, Vessel Nomination, Voyage, Laytime Calculation |
| Documents | Surveyor of each leg, document instructions from the credit, draft checks, final documents | Surveyor Work Order, Document Instruction, Trade Document |
| Settlement | Final value of each leg: quality price adjustment, laytime, freight, charges; invoice and payment | Commercial Settlement |
| Risk and treasury | Onboarding, sanctions, credit limits, alerts, funding and hedges | Counterparty Profile, Sanctions Screening, Credit Assessment, Trade Alert, Funding Request, Hedge Contract |
2. The four flows of a trade
Once a trade is confirmed, four flows run side by side. Each flow is a set of records with its own workflow:
- Contract flow: draft contract shared → query or amendment → deviation approval → finalised → signed → addendum (if the terms change later). See Trade contracts.
- Trade finance flow: sale credit received and checked → purchase credit drafted, quoted, approved and issued → amendments → documents presented → payment. See Letters of credit.
- Shipping flow: vessel nominated → clean vessel accepted → voyage tracked → loading completed (bill of lading) → laytime at the load port and the discharge port → laytime settled. See Voyages.
- Document flow: surveyor appointed per leg → work order → document instructions → draft documents checked → approved by trade finance and the buyer → final documents issued and couriered. See Document sets.
The flows hand information to each other: the contract's terms feed the credits; a contract addendum flags the credit for amendment; the bill of lading date from shipping sets the presentation deadlines; the surveyor's analysis sets the adjusted price in the settlement. Each hand-off is an automation rule your company switches on, changes or replaces.
Example: a back-to-back coal trade, end to end follows one trade through all four flows with every figure.
3. What makes it different
- One record from offer to final payment. Contract, credit, vessel, documents, settlement and the accounting entries all link to the same trade, and the trade shows the expected and the realised margin.
- Rules the banks apply, applied for you. Credits read the bank's MT700 text; the 46A documents and 47A conditions become checks that run on every document; presentation deadlines come from the bill of lading date; discrepancy fees and bank charges reduce the proceeds.
- Laytime to the minute. SHINC, SHEX, weather working days, turn time, WIBON and WIPON, partly counted periods and shared cargoes, with the debit or credit note raised from the result.
- Quality pricing to the cent. A price formula turns the surveyor's result into the adjusted price, applies bonus caps and rejection limits, and freezes the settlement when a cargo is rejectable.
- Everything is designable. Each company designs its own workflows, automations, dashboards, forms and print layouts, without a developer.
- Text and voice. Every action can be typed or spoken in the command bar; when something is missing the assistant asks for it and reads back the request before changing anything.
4. Where to start
| You are | Read first |
|---|---|
| New to the app | Finding your way, then the end-to-end example |
| Setting it up for your company | First-time setup and Roles and access |
| A trader | Trades, Trade contracts |
| In trade finance | Letters of credit, Presentations and payment |
| In shipping | Vessels, ports and nominations, Laytime |
| In documentation | Surveyor work orders, Document sets |
| In risk or treasury | Counterparty risk and compliance, Facilities, funding and hedging |
| A developer | API and integrations and the API reference at /api-docs |
5. What is not in this release
These parts of a full global trade platform are not available yet: company-registry and bank-account verification services, credit-bureau connections, order intake from EDI or PDF with automatic mirror orders, in-transit and bonded inventory, electronic letters of credit on a distributed ledger, live AIS vessel tracking feeds, Indian e-invoice and e-way bill from trade settlements, withholding tax, funder syndication, host-to-host bank payments, virtual accounts, escrow, intercompany splits of a trade, a counterparty self-service portal and multi-tenant isolation. The pages of this manual describe only what the app does today.