Key points
- The commercial model answers who owns the goods and how revenue is recognised – for example own-account, agency, outsourced processing or contract processing.
- The supervision mode answers how customs controls the goods and how taxes are levied or refunded – for example general trade, processing trade, bonded logistics or entrepôt trade.
- The deal channel answers how the deal is struck – bilateral negotiation, framework agreements, exchange matching or e-commerce platforms; it usually does not change accounting policy or customs treatment.
In practice
Many companies manage their business with a flat set of labels such as “domestic”, “foreign trade”, “agency” and “processing”, and the labels overlap: agency business can also be processing trade, and an own-account export can also be bonded. Pick the wrong label, and invoicing, declarations, refunds and bookkeeping all go wrong with it.
A more robust approach is to split the trade model into independent dimensions, set each one, and let the combination drive downstream processing: the commercial model determines revenue and inventory treatment, the supervision mode determines the declaration, handbook and refund path, and the deal channel determines the price source and fill reporting. Hedging, credit insurance and open-account sales are then layered on as attributes rather than treated as new models.
How Tranexio supports it
Tranexio models trade along three dimensions – commercial model × supervision mode × deal channel – onto which overlay capabilities can be layered, with quick presets for common combinations. The current release supports six trade models: domestic trade, own-account import and export, agency import and export, entrepôt trade, processing trade and multi-party trade chains. See Trade models.