From provisional invoice to final settlement, on one cargo record

A pipeline stage that ends at signature is the wrong shape

Most CRMs assume the interesting part of the relationship finishes when the contract is signed. In bulk mineral export that is roughly the halfway point. After signature there is a laycan to hit, a rake programme to feed the port, a draft survey, a load-port certificate of analysis, a provisional invoice, a voyage, a discharge-port assay, a variance, and only then a final invoice that may differ from the provisional one by more than the trading margin. A system that closes the record at “won” leaves every commercially significant event afterwards in email.

Know what is genuinely free to sell

Grade at a mine is not uniform, and the tonnage a trader can honestly offer is whatever is on the stockpile minus what is already committed against open contracts. When those commitments live in separate spreadsheets it is entirely normal for two people to offer the same lot in the same week, and the second buyer finds out at nomination. Holding the lot, its declared grade, its tonnage and the cargo it is committed to on one record makes the free balance something you can look up rather than something you reconstruct.

Both results, on the same screen, with the gap

A bulk cargo is invoiced provisionally on load-port results and finally on discharge-port results, and the difference is settled in cash. On a Capesize parcel a movement of half a unit of Fe, or a moisture deduction argued a different way, is a material sum. When the load certificate sits in one folder and the discharge certificate arrives months later as an attachment to a claim, nobody sees the variance until it is a dispute. Keeping both on the cargo, with the sampling reference and the issuing agency, makes the variance a number you watch rather than one you receive.

Penalties belong in fields, not in a PDF

Every contract has its own schedule: a base grade, a rate per Fe unit above and below it, thresholds for silica, alumina, phosphorus and sulphur, a moisture basis, and rejection limits beyond which the buyer can refuse the cargo outright. Those terms are what turn an assay into an invoice. Left inside the executed PDF they get re-read by whoever happens to be doing the settlement, and re-read differently. Recorded as terms on the contract, the adjustment is calculated the same way every time and the argument moves from what was agreed to what the lab found.

The umpire clause needs a date and an owner

When load and discharge results fall outside the agreed tolerance the contract usually names a third lab. In practice this is the moment a settlement stalls, because the clause is clear about the mechanism and nobody owns the calendar. Tracking the umpire step as a stage — lab nominated, sealed sample dispatched, result due, cost allocation per the clause — keeps a six-figure balance from ageing quietly while two commercial teams wait for each other.

Quotational period, index and averaging basis

Index-linked cargoes are priced on a reference published over an agreed window, and the window is negotiable — month of shipment, month after, an average of quotes across a stated period. Two cargoes agreed a fortnight apart can settle very differently because their quotational periods differ, and the detail lives in one clause of one contract. Holding the index, the period and the averaging basis as fields means the settlement team prices from the record, and the exposure across all open cargoes can be read in one view instead of assembled by hand each month-end.

Offtake commitments draw down visibly

A long-term offtake is a promise measured in tonnes per quarter, and it is usually tracked in a separate spreadsheet from the spot book that actually competes with it for the same stockpile. Linking shipments to the agreement they draw against turns the remaining commitment into a running number. A shortfall that would otherwise appear in the last three weeks of a quarter shows up while there is still time to plan rakes for it.

Laycan pressure is visible before it becomes demurrage

The vessel arrives in its window whether or not the port stock is there. Demurrage accrues per day and lands in final accounts long after anyone could have acted on it. Keeping the laycan, the nominated vessel, the NOR time and the agreed loading rate on the cargo, and linking the rake programme feeding the port to the same record, means a shortfall against an approaching window is a visible risk rather than a retrospective cost. HelloGrowthCRM does not run the port and does not replace a terminal operating system; it keeps the commercial consequence in the same place as the contract that created it.

Certificates attached where the settlement happens

Certificate of analysis, draft survey, weight certificate, bill of lading, certificate of origin: each is produced by a different party and each is needed by the bank. Attaching them to the cargo as they are issued means the presentation under a letter of credit is assembled from a complete set rather than chased, and a discrepancy is caught before the documents go in rather than after they come back.

A trader and a mill are not the same counterparty

An end-user consuming the material has a plant to feed and a reason to come back next quarter. A trader may be reselling your cargo into the market you are quoting, and a term commitment made to one on the assumption they behave like the other is how an exporter ends up competing against its own tonnes. Recording counterparty type, KYC and sanctions screening date, credit limit and the history of cargoes actually lifted against enquiries merely made puts that judgement on evidence.

Where the line falls

To be plain about scope: HelloGrowthCRM is a commercial system. It does not do mine planning, grade control, statutory returns to the mining regulator, or royalty computation, and it is not a replacement for your ERP or your port operations software. What it holds is the counterparty, the contract terms, the cargo, the assays, the settlement balance and the correspondence around them — the part that today is spread across inboxes and one trader's spreadsheet. See how it compares with Zoho CRM for export workflows, read the sales pipeline management guide for structuring a post-signature pipeline, or look at how exporters manage buyer pipelines more broadly.