Purchase Built for the Complexity of Metal

LME Volatility Erodes Margins Daily

Copper, aluminium, lead and nickel prices shift every hour on the London Metal Exchange. Without a system that links purchase price to LME rate at the moment of commitment, your procurement team is operating blind — buying high and locking losses into every container.

Container Management Is a Manual Nightmare

A single import shipment can arrive as six separate containers with different products, weights, and quality classifications. Tracking each container from Bill of Lading through customs clearance to plant receipt — in one connected system — is something most ERPs simply cannot do.

Declared vs Actual Yield Creates Financial Exposure

When a Chinese supplier commits to 85% copper recovery and your plant breaks down the scrap to find 61%, you have a significant commercial dispute on your hands. Without a structured quality claim workflow, that variance either goes unrecovered or turns into a months-long manual negotiation.

Import Compliance Requires Precision at Every Step

Bill of Entry registration, import licence debit, customs duty allocation, freight forwarder billing under RCM — each of these steps must be executed correctly and linked to the originating purchase order. A single missed linkage creates audit exposure and GST reconciliation nightmares.

Demurrage Costs Accumulate Silently

Every day a container sits at port beyond its free time costs real money. Without automated tracking and escalation alerts, containers go unmonitored and demurrage charges quietly compound — costs that are entirely avoidable with visibility and timely action.

Budget Leakage Through Uncontrolled Purchasing

When procurement, plant operations, and finance teams operate across different systems or spreadsheets, budget overruns go undetected until period-end. Project-based procurement, capital purchases, and general supplies all need budget allocation, approval routing, and real-time tracking against sanctioned limits.

LME-Linked Pricing & Unpriced PO

Raise a parent Unpriced PO for your full committed tonnage, then fix rates in tranches as the LME moves in your favour. Each tranche becomes a child priced order — your hedging strategy lives inside your procurement workflow.

Container-Level ASN Management

Capture Advance Shipment Notices at container granularity — product breakdown, weight, metal content percentage, and expected arrival date for every container in the shipment. When cargo lands, the ASN drives your MRN with zero rekeying.

Internal & External Weightment

Record in-plant weighbridge readings alongside external third-party weighment data for every MRN. The system tracks both, flags variances, and carries the net verified weight into vendor billing and quality claim calculations automatically.

Import Licence Tracking & Renewal

Every import receipt debits your licence balance in real time. The system monitors validity dates, raises alerts when consumption approaches the limit, and tracks the cost difference between renewal and fresh licence acquisition.

Bill of Entry & Customs Integration

Register your Bill of Entry number against the MRN transaction, ensuring customs duty is correctly captured in the landed cost layer. The BoE-to-MRN linkage creates the complete audit trail your import documentation requires.

Multi-Currency & Multi-Entity Procurement

Handle USD, EUR, CNY and other currencies natively across import orders. The system converts at the rate prevailing at PO, ASN, and billing stages separately — giving you accurate forex exposure at every transaction point.

Recovery Percentage & Yield Tracking

Capture the supplier's committed recovery percentage at PO stage and compare it against the actual yield measured at breakdown. The variance is the commercial basis for your quality claim — calculated, documented, and ready for negotiation.

Demurrage Alerts & Container Holding Reports

The system tracks free-time windows for every container and auto-escalates to senior authority when 75% of free time is consumed. Daily container holding reports are emailed automatically so your team is never caught by a demurrage surprise.

Vendor Bill with Multi-GRN Linkage

Match a single vendor bill against multiple MRNs from the same purchase order. Once a GRN is invoiced, it drops from the selection list — preventing double billing. The linkage between receipt and bill is maintained end-to-end for GST input credit accuracy.

Continuous Rate Monitoring Support

The system captures LME rates at the time of tranche fixing, creating an immutable price record for every committed quantity. Your procurement team monitors the market and acts; the ERP ensures every decision is timestamped and auditable.

Tranche-Level Price Commitment

Order 500 MT under a single Unpriced PO. Lock 100 MT at Monday's rate, 200 MT on Wednesday when the LME dips further, and the balance when conditions are right. Each lock produces a child priced PO with full lineage back to the parent order.

Hedging Buy & Sell Mapping

Map LME hedging positions against actual procurement and sales transactions. Track open hedge exposure, broker margin updates, and LME settlement entries — providing your treasury team with the data they need to manage commodity price risk with precision.

Weighted Average Pricing for Scrap

Incoming scrap consignments arrive with varying metal content percentages. The system supports weighted average pricing across multiple containers within a single shipment, correctly blending the cost basis for inventory valuation and margin reporting.

MRN with ASN (Import Containers)

Container-specific receipt mapped to ASN, PO, and Bill of Entry. Mandatory Gate-In Pass linkage. Internal and external weighment fields. Lot number auto-generated. One MRN per container is enforced — there is no shortcut that allows a single MRN to absorb multiple containers and blur the audit trail.

MRN — Domestic Raw Material

Raised against domestic scrap purchase orders. Simpler flow — no ASN dependency — but still carries gate pass linkage, machinery tracking (which weighbridge was used), and multi-level approval before stock is posted.

GRN — General & Store Items

Used for procurement of non-raw-material items — stationery, consumables, spare parts, and general supplies raised through Material Requisition or General Purchase Indent. Follows a lighter approval path while maintaining the same receipt-to-bill linkage discipline.

SRN — Service Receipt Note

Acknowledges completion of services purchased through Service PO — freight forwarding charges, maintenance work, and outsourced operations. The SRN is the trigger for service vendor billing, with RCM tax automatically flagged for qualifying transporter services.

Provisional Claim

Raised immediately when the breakdown at plant reveals a yield below the agreed recovery percentage. The provisional claim captures the MRN reference, the committed percentage, the actual measured yield, and the indicative commercial value of the shortfall. Vendor is formally notified and negotiation is opened.

Final Claim

After detailed sample testing and physical assessment, the final yield figure is confirmed. The Final Claim is raised against the Provisional Claim, with the provisional data auto-populated. The procurement team enters the final claim amount and the proposed percentage of recovery to be claimed from the vendor. Both parties negotiate to this number.

Bill of Entry Management

BoE number registered against the ASN at customs clearance stage and linked to the downstream MRN. Customs duty is automatically allocated into the landed cost layer of the inventory. The BoE-MRN linkage is mandatory — receipts cannot be posted without it, ensuring every import has a complete documentation trail.

Import & Export Licence Control

Licences carry a quantity balance (e.g. 1,000 MT authorised). Every import receipt debits the balance. The system warns when the balance approaches zero and tracks the validity expiry date — ensuring renewal happens before exhaustion rather than after a compliance breach.

TDS on Vendor Bills

TDS applicability is prompted at the time of vendor bill processing based on vendor classification. The system suggests the correct TDS percentage (194Q and other applicable sections), flags when the user intends to override, and maintains a complete TDS deduction register for quarterly filings.

Incoterm & Port Master Management

Source and destination ports are selected from a comprehensive global port master, supporting freight calculation and export documentation. The agreed Incoterm is captured at freight forwarder agreement level, correctly determining who bears freight, insurance, and at which point title and risk transfer.

Purchase vs Indent Report

Track how much of each sanctioned indent has been converted to POs and received — by department, by project, and by period.

Container Holding Report

Daily auto-email to logistics head and senior authority. Shows every container in holding status, free-time remaining, and estimated demurrage exposure.

Yield Variance Dashboard

Vendor-by-vendor and container-by-container comparison of declared versus actual recovery percentage — the foundation for supplier accountability.

Quality Claim Aging Report

Open claims by stage (Provisional / Final / Settlement) with days-outstanding buckets. Surfaces claims that are at risk of expiring without resolution.

LME Hedging Position Report

Parent Unpriced PO versus locked tranches — committed tonnage, locked rates, weighted average cost, and open exposure for each metal group.

Budget Utilisation Report

Real-time budget consumption by department, project, and purchase category — flagging categories approaching exhaustion before the next purchase is committed.

Commodity Price Risk — Controlled

Tranche-level LME fixing stops procurement teams from buying entire seasons of scrap at unfavourable rates. The Unpriced PO structure gives you the framework to buy in windows, spreading price exposure across the LME cycle with every fix decision documented and linked to inventory cost.

Demurrage Costs — Eliminated

Automated escalation alerts at 75% of free-time consumption, daily container holding reports to senior authority, and gate-to-MRN timing tracking together remove the silence that lets demurrage accumulate. What was previously discovered at month-end is now visible in real time.

Import Compliance — Airtight

BoE-to-MRN linkage, licence balance real-time debit, and RCM billing automation remove the manual steps that create compliance gaps. Your GST input credit reconciliation, customs documentation, and licence renewal management are driven by transaction data — not spreadsheets maintained by one person.

Procurement Governance — Visible

Three-level approval, payment request gate, budget tracking against indent, and immutable audit log mean that unauthorised commitments, informal phone-call agreements with vendors, and over-budget purchases are structurally prevented — not just discouraged by policy.