Skip to content

Trading

merchantCENTRAL Trading turns a sales order into a supplier purchase order on its own: it compares the offers of every connected supplier connector, picks the source of supply by total landed cost, creates the drop-shipment purchase order and hands it to the connector for transmission. Every decision — including every one that did not happen — is logged and can be explained.

What does Trading do?

Feature Description
Source of supply Compares the offers of every connected supplier for an order and picks by landed cost — not by goods value
Automation ladder Five levels from "Off" to "Full Automation". Each does everything the one below it does, plus one more step
Five safety gates Margin, offer age, order value, price deviation and a daily limit per vendor — each can be switched off individually
Emergency stop One switch blocks every transmission immediately. Purchase orders keep being created and wait
Drop shipment The purchase order is linked to the sales order; posting the receipt ships to the customer
Approval worklist Whatever a gate parked collects in one place, with the reason next to it
Sourcing log Every run with every vendor compared, including the ones that lost and why
Invoice check Supplier invoices are matched against the ordered value — only the expensive direction is flagged

Good to know

Trading calls no external services and needs no credentials. It works exclusively with the offer data the supplier connectors have already placed in Business Central, and hands the purchase order back to the same connector for transmission.

Trading is not the Price Engine

Both evaluate supplier offers, but at different moments and for different purposes:

Price Engine Trading
When ahead of time, after every supplier import at the moment of the sales order
Why calculate sales prices pick a source of supply for this order
Result price lists one purchase order at the cheapest vendor

They complement each other but do not require each other. Trading runs without the Price Engine, and the Price Engine without Trading.

Quick start in 5 steps

  1. Install and set up the hub — Trading requires a configured merchantCENTRAL hub (Initial Setup)
  2. Activate the license — module TRADING; a demo can be started right on the setup card
  3. Set the automation level to "Simulate" — Trading decides and logs, but orders nothing (Automation Levels)
  4. Set the gates — above all the minimum margin and the daily limit per vendor (Safety Gates)
  5. Read the log, then move up — after a few days the sourcing log shows whether the decisions are right

Full Automation orders with real money

The Full Automation level places binding orders with your suppliers without anyone looking at them first. The safety gates are what keeps that in bounds — set at least the daily limit per vendor before you move up.

Topics in detail