SOLUTIONS · IMPORTERS & DISTRIBUTORS

Run your import book like one operating system, not eleven tabs.

An import operation is twelve suppliers, four origins, six freight forwarders, and a working-capital line that's always slightly stretched. TradeOS holds the whole thing in one record per order — supplier, production, container, customs, document chain, landed margin, payment — so the morning answer to “what needs me today” is on screen, not in seven inboxes.

Book a demo See pricing →

TradeOS

HomeOrdersSuppliersShipmentsFinance

YOUR IMPORT BOOK · TUESDAY, MAY 5

14 orders in flight · $2.41M committed · 4 items need you

OperatorManagerCEO

EXCEPTIONS · TOP 4

Updated 2m ago

HIGH
Container MAEU-7821 holding at Hamburg · CO missing
Order #ORD-1184 · Supplier Yangzhou Linfeng · Buyer MediCo DE · landed delay 3–5 days · margin at risk $4,200
MED
PO #1192 unconfirmed by supplier · 36h overdue
Supplier Foshan Excell · 8,400 boxes · auto-reminder #2 sent 6h ago
MED
Margin variance · Order #1167 · −2.4 pp vs quote
Cause: BAF surcharge $1,840 above estimate · freight invoice posted today
LOW
CE certificate expiring · Protect-M Sterile · 18 days
Supplier Linfeng · renewal evidence requested · awaiting upload

LANDED MARGIN · 30D ROLLING

22.7%

+0.4 pp vs prior 30d

CASH POSITION

$1.84M

$680K committed · runway 11 weeks at current burn

Free$1.18M

SUPPLIERS · ACTIVE

3 origins · 2 new this quarter · avg perf score 87

PORTFOLIO MAP · 14 ORDERS IN FLIGHT

6 routes · 5 origins · 6 destinations · live

THE PROBLEM

Eleven tabs is not an operating system.

Most importers run their book across an ERP that doesn't track shipments, an inventory tool that doesn't track suppliers, a forwarder portal locked to one carrier, a shared spreadsheet of POs, an email folder per supplier, and a quarterly margin review that's always two months late. The result isn't broken software. It's a coordination tax that quietly compresses margin.

Suppliers live in WhatsApp.

You have eight suppliers. Six of them communicate via WhatsApp, two via email, one via WeChat. The PO confirmation, the lot number, the QC photo, the bill of lading — all of it is in someone's phone. When that person is on leave, the order is on leave too.

Margin is a quarterly conversation.

You quote at 24% gross. The order ships, customs clears, the freight invoice arrives, the supplier credit note arrives a month later, the broker invoice arrives the month after that. By the time the order's actual margin is computable, you've already quoted the next ten orders to that buyer at the same rate.

Your ERP doesn't know the cargo is moving.

The ERP has a PO line and an invoice. It doesn't know the container was rolled at the origin port, that the BAF surcharge just bumped, that the buyer asked for a delivery push, or that customs is holding for a missing CO. The ERP records the past. It doesn't run the present.

ONE WORKSPACE FOR ALL SUPPLIERS

Eight suppliers, one directory. Performance, capacity, lead time, network rating.

Every supplier lives as one record — your relationship history, their on-time rate, their QC pass rate, their average lead time, their pricing across your product mix, and their network rating built from anonymized data across every operator who's ever bought from them. The verified ones (network rating 4.0+) are the suppliers other operators are actively buying from this quarter.

Supplier · origin

Lead time · variance

On-time · QC

Capacity used

Network rating

Yangzhou LinfengYangzhou, CN · 6 active orders

42d ±3d

94% / 98%

78%

★★★★★4.6 · 312 ops

Foshan Excell MedicalFoshan, CN · 4 active orders

35d ±7d

86% / 95%

64%

★★★★☆4.2 · 187 ops

Hangzhou AuroraHangzhou, CN · 2 active orders

38d ±2d

98% / 99%

41%

★★★★★4.8 · 94 ops

Port Klang SterilabPort Klang, MY · 1 active order

45d ±5d

90% / 92%

28%

★★★★☆4.0 · 62 ops

Saigon NitriLabHo Chi Minh, VN · 1 active order

48d ±9d

82% / 91%

18%

★★★☆☆3.6 · 48 ops

PER-ORDER ECONOMICS

Live margin, before the cargo lands.

Every order has a quoted margin and a live margin. Costs accrue as estimates against historical averages, then get replaced as actual invoices arrive. By the time the container is at the destination port, you know the order's real margin to two decimal places — not next quarter, not when accounting closes the books.

ORDER #ORD-1167 · MEDICO DE

Live margin: 21.3%

Quoted at 23.7% · variance −2.4 pp · cause: BAF surcharge

Revenue$184,200

Goods cost$107,800 actual

Freight$24,640 actual

Duty$8,830 est

Insurance · misc$3,710 actual

Margin$39,220 · 21.3%

SAME PRODUCT · 3 SUPPLIERS · NETWORK COMPARE

Where margin is bleeding.

Protect-M Sterile · 50K boxes · Rotterdam delivery · 30d ago to today

Yangzhou Linfeng23.7% · landed $2.19/box

Foshan Excell19.4% · landed $2.36/box

Hangzhou Aurora22.8% · landed $2.22/box

Network median21.6% · 412 ops

Foshan is 4.3 pp behind. Cause: longer lead time forces airfreight on rush orders. Worth a renegotiation.

DOCUMENT CHAIN

Eleven documents per order × eight suppliers = handled.

Commercial Invoice, Packing List, Bill of Lading, Certificate of Origin, COA, MSDS, Insurance, Customs Declaration, Inspection Report, FDA filing, end-buyer compliance. EDMA generates what it can, auto-collects what counterparties produce, validates against the order context, and tracks every signature and expiry. Counterparties get free-seat portal access — they upload there, not to your inbox.

CIPLBLCOCAMSINCDIRFDEB

Yangzhou Linfeng · Order #1167CIPLBLCOCAMSINCDIRFDEB11/11 · cleared

Yangzhou Linfeng · Order #1184CIPLBLCOCAMSINCDIRFDEB9/11 · CO holding

Foshan Excell · Order #1192CIPLBLCOCAMSINCDIRFDEB3/11 · in production

Hangzhou Aurora · Order #1175CIPLBLCOCAMSINCDIRFDEB11/11 · cleared

Saigon NitriLab · Order #1180CIPLBLCOCAMSINCDIRFDEB10/11 · IR pending

collected · pending · not yet required or missing

CI Commercial InvoicePL Packing ListBL Bill of LadingCO Cert. of OriginCA Cert. of AnalysisMS MSDSIN InsuranceCD Customs Decl.IR InspectionFD FDA FilingEB End-buyer comp.

CASH & WORKING CAPITAL

Finance the cargo, not just the books.

Importers carry cargo for 60–120 days between paying the supplier and getting paid by the buyer. EDMA holds your LCs, factors your receivables, and is building a marketplace (Q3 2026) where vetted financiers can compete to fund the cargo against the order data they can already see. The same record that runs your operations runs your financing.

LC management

Issue, amend, present, claim. Every Letter of Credit lives in the order record with the document checklist auto-mapped to LC clauses, discrepancy detection at presentation, and bank-ready PDF assembly.

Receivables factoring

Sell the buyer-side invoice the moment it's issued. Pre-approved financiers see the order data, the buyer history, and the document chain — funding decisions in hours, not weeks.

Trade marketplace

Request financing on any in-flight order. Pre-vetted financiers — banks, factors, alt lenders, supply-chain finance funds — bid against the order data they can already see. You pick the best offer, the funds arrive against the cargo.

NETWORK EFFECTS

The platform gets sharper with every order on it.

Importers don't operate alone. Every supplier you onboard joins a network where their performance, capacity, and pricing data feed anonymized benchmarks for every operator. New verified suppliers appear in your matching feed. Doc templates compound across the network. The longer EDMA runs your book, the more it knows about the markets you trade in.

ONE EVENT, FIVE EFFECTS

Container delayed 4 days at Hamburg.

A single status change at the destination port flows through the system. Nothing requires you to push it manually. The buyer sees what they need to see; the financier sees what they need to see; the operator sees the full chain. Five sections respond to one event.

CUSTOMS HOLD

Container MAEU-7821 · CO missing

Order #ORD-1184 · Hamburg · 09:14 CET

Trigger event

ORDER TIMELINE

Hold event written. Margin recomputes against +3d demurrage estimate. Lands on operator briefing.

Order #1184

SUPPLIER PORTAL

Document task created for Yangzhou Linfeng. Provide CO referencing PO #1184 · vessel MAEU-7821.

Yangzhou Linfeng

BUYER COMMUNICATION

Notification drafted, not sent. Suggested arrival window May 12–14 → May 16–19. Operator approves, edits, or holds.

MediCo DE

FINANCIER DASHBOARD

Marketplace factor sees the same delay event. Repayment forecast nudged. No surprise call.

Marketplace

AUDIT TRAIL

Hash-chained event written: actor, timestamp, source, all linked records. State reconstructable on demand.

+8s elapsed

No operator action required for steps 1, 2, 4, 5. Step 3 surfaces a decision; the operator approves, edits, or holds. Total elapsed: 8 seconds.

VS THE WAY IT'S DONE TODAY

Where importers live now — and what's missing.

Capability	TradeOS	ERP module	Inventory tool	Spreadsheets	Forwarder portal
Multi-supplier in one record	✓	partial	✓	manual	—
Live shipment tracking, all carriers	✓	—	—	—	single carrier
Real-time per-order landed margin	✓	at month close	—	manual	—
Auto-collected document chain	✓	—	—	—	shipment docs only
Trade finance built into the record	✓	—	—	—	—
Network benchmarks & verified suppliers	✓	—	—	—	—
Deploy time	days	9–18 months	2–4 weeks	already running	days

ERPs record what already happened. Inventory tools track SKUs, not orders. Spreadsheets are flexible until they aren't. Forwarder portals are locked to a single carrier. EDMA holds the whole import book — supplier, production, container, customs, document chain, landed margin, financing — in one record per order.

FREQUENTLY ASKED

Five questions importers ask before switching.

We're already on an ERP. Why add another system?

EDMA doesn't replace your ERP — it sits in front of it as the operating layer for cargo in motion. The ERP records what already happened (POs, invoices, GL postings). EDMA runs what's happening now (shipment status, document chain, live margin). At month-end EDMA exports the actuals back into the ERP with full lineage. Most importers keep both, with EDMA being the screen they actually live in during the day.

How long does onboarding take if I have 8 suppliers and 200 SKUs?

Can my buyers see the same information I see?

What about working capital? Do you actually fund cargo or just track it?

Both. EDMA holds your LCs and factoring relationships in the same record as the order, and is building a marketplace (Q3 2026) where vetted financiers (banks, factors, alt lenders, supply-chain finance funds) can compete to fund any in-flight cargo against the order data they can already see. You don't have to pre-share anything — funding decisions happen on the same data that runs your operations. There is no per-deal platform fee on the financing itself — EDMA earns from subscriptions on both sides.

We're not a medical importer. Does this still fit?

Yes. EDMA Group itself is a medical-glove distributor, so the platform was built against a real importer book — but the underlying mechanics (multi-supplier records, multi-modal shipments, document collection, landed margin, trade finance) are vertical-agnostic. Consumer goods, industrial B2B, food and beverage, specialty chemicals — the trade flow is the same shape; the product-specific compliance fields are configurable per category.

Run your import book on EDMA.

Book a 30-min demo and we'll plug in three of your suppliers and one of your buyers, walk through a live order from quote to landed margin, and run a working-capital scenario against the marketplace — all in the half-hour.

Book a demo Or book a demo →