For example, if a purchase order comes into the system, who should be told about it? If a shipment is late, who should be told about it? If a shipment is supposed to be completed by a particular date and that date is fast approaching, who should be told so that they can begin to examine the transaction to ensure that goods are going to arrive on time? This level of visibility and active management is only possible when ALL of the paper is eliminated from your supply chain.

• Payment Automation
• Work in Process
• Factory Xpress
• Shipment Tracking
• Warehouse Receipts and Chargebacks

Payment Automation
TradeCard holds purchase order, invoice, factory shipment, carrier shipment, and warehouse receipt data, therefore it can match information together to automate the payment decision. Not only can TradeCard do a traditional n-way match, TradeCard can look at any data you wish to automate the payment. When the payment decision is made the scheduled payment date is shared with the supplier, eliminating all of those phone calls asking "when am I getting paid?" If there is a discrepancy, that information is shared instantly as well, allowing the supplier to fix problems at the source or at the very least, allowing problems to be identified early. TradeCard payment automation not only supports trade payments, but also supports freight payments. No more un-reconciled freight payments that need to be audited sometime in the future in the hope of clawing back fees. TradeCard matches freight rules against the payment to make sure the bill is correct in real time, allowing you to correctly allocate freight costs against the SKUs shipped and calculate a more accurate true landed cost.

Work in Process
The old way of doing work in process tracking is with dozens of excel spreadsheets flying around the planet in an attempt to track what's going on in the factory. But when vast amounts of data are passed around, it can take days to determine what is going on and more time is spent capturing and analyzing data than actually acting on it.

Instead of spreadsheets, TradeCard creates a set of predicted activity dates based on pre-agreed rules. For example, if you were sourcing a shirt, you might want to know when the fabric was ordered from the raw material supplier, when the fabric was received, when it was cut, when it was sewn, and finally when it was tagged and packaged. Based on your rules, a set of predicted dates are calculated for each of these activities. These dates are provided to the factory and the factory is asked to only update the dates where they are ahead of or behind schedule. These changes are flagged as either potential problems or potential opportunities. If the fabric arrives 10 days late, odds are the shirt will be shipped 10 days late. You know early enough in the process to have a chance to act. Likewise, if the sewing process finishes 10 days early and POS data says the shirt is selling well, you now have the opportunity to ship early, capturing additional high margin sell through.

Factory Xpress
This set of tools sits on the factory floor and helps the factory better meet shipping requirements. With these tools the supplier can generate UCC 128 packing labels, mark for store, generate ASNs, and direct ship. When sewing is completed early and the shirt is selling well, a PO amendment can be delivered to the factory and the factory can generate the required labels immediately, allowing early shipment of the hot shirt. The factory is better equipped to deal with changing requirements, more high margin sales are generated and everyone profits.

Shipment Tracking
In most companies shipment tracking information is found in a stand-alone system separate from other important order status information. TradeCard takes a very different approach. Rather than keeping it separate, TradeCard gathers information from the shipping companies and freight forwarders and integrates it with WIP and other data to provide one place to look for the status of goods. A merchandiser can drill down by SKU and find the answer to the question, "Where are my goods?" no matter where they are in their lifecycle.

Warehouse Receipts and Chargebacks
TradeCard can take a feed from your warehouse receiving system to automate the generation of a chargeback. By looking at the data, TradeCard can compare what was ordered with what was invoiced and what was received. Based on rules, TradeCard generates and schedules a chargeback. If the payment has already been made for the problem shipment, the chargeback is queued for the next payment. Because the cause of the chargeback is immediately visible to the vendor, much of the acrimony goes away. Additionally, since all data about PO, shipment and invoice errors is connected to the chargeback, all of the reconciliation issues are eliminated. Related to this is a scorecard process which allows you to rate and score your partners on a number of variables, including chargebacks.