# Integrated physical and futures management (期现一体)

Integrated physical and futures management, or futures–spot integration, is a management approach in which a company plans, executes and accounts for physical purchases and sales and their futures hedges as one business. Matching futures to physical trades allocates futures P&L to the related physical orders, showing the true combined result.

Chinese：integrated physical and futures management

## Key points

- Core steps: hedging plan → hedge instruction → futures fill → futures–physical matching → futures P&L allocation → combined order P&L.
- Each match records the matched quantity, the basis and the P&L on both the futures and the physical side, as the basis for evaluation and analysis.
- Futures transaction records, settlement statements and positions must be reconciled daily, so that the P&L allocated to orders agrees with the futures broker’s settlement.

## In practice

In companies without integrated management, the business unit is assessed on physical gross margin and the futures desk on futures P&L, and each works in isolation. A physical profit is credited to good trading and a futures loss is blamed on the trader, when in fact they may simply be two sides of the same hedge.

Integration ties the two together from the planning stage. Hedging plans are set annually, quarterly and monthly; every hedge instruction is attached to a physical contract, order or lot; futures fills are matched by rule; and at month end futures P&L is allocated into order P&L. Management then sees the true return on each order, customer and commodity after the effect of hedging.

## How Tranexio supports it

Tranexio provides tiered hedging plans, hedge instructions bound to physical anchors, import of futures transaction records and reconciliation of settlement statements, futures–physical matching, monthly allocation of futures P&L into order P&L, and deviation monitoring. See [Hedging and hedge accounting](https://tranexio.com/en/capabilities/hedging-accounting/).

## FAQ

### Why should a physical loss and a futures gain be looked at together?

Because the futures position was opened to hedge that physical business. On its own the physical side shows a loss and the futures side shows what looks like a speculative gain; neither reflects the real result. Only when futures P&L is allocated to the corresponding physical order can you see how much basis the business actually earned.

### Is futures–spot integration the same as hedge accounting?

Not quite. Futures–spot integration is a management view used for performance evaluation and business analysis, and all hedge positions can be allocated under its rules. Hedge accounting is an accounting treatment that can be applied only to hedging relationships meeting the designation and effectiveness criteria, and it affects the published financial statements.

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Source：https://tranexio.com/en/resources/glossary/futures-spot-integration/ · Updated 2026-10-06 · © 上海赛淘数据技术有限公司 / Shanghai Saitao Datatech Co., Ltd