The cyclelifecycle.
A cycle is a sequence of milestones, each with a date, a deliverable and a written acknowledgement. The supplier owns four of them. The platform owns four. Every milestone writes to the cycle ledger.
Cycle lengths vary by category. A cardamom cycle from Kerala into a London hub runs around 70 days. A Swiss watch component cycle into a regional channel runs around 30. The milestones are the same. Only the calendar around them changes.
The brief clears the six gates, the cycle is sized against member capacity and authorised. Member purchases open. The supplier receives the authorisation pack within 24 hours of the cycle going live.
The supplier procures or produces against the authorised quantity. A weekly written update goes into the cycle ledger. Where production deviates from plan, the supplier raises the variance immediately, not at the next milestone.
The supplier confirms readiness in the portal, including final quantity, lot codes and certificate-of-analysis where applicable. The platform appoints a pre-shipment inspector against the cycle category.
The inspector attends the supplier’s facility or appointed warehouse, samples the lot, photographs the goods, verifies labelling, weighs and counts. The inspection report goes into the cycle ledger within 48 hours of inspection close.
The supplier despatches against the agreed incoterm and uploads the bill of lading or air waybill, the commercial invoice, the packing list and the certificate of origin. Document quality matters as much as goods quality at the customs leg.
The hub receives, opens, re-inspects and stores. A hub-receipt acknowledgement is written to the ledger. Any discrepancy from the pre-shipment inspection is raised the same day as a cycle exception.
According to member authorisations, goods are despatched to channel partners for resale or routed to direct member delivery. Each despatch event writes to the ledger with carrier, weight, date and receiving signature.
The cycle window closes. Channel sell-through and member deliveries reconcile. The settlement statement is prepared, reviewed and published to the supplier portal and the member account within 14 calendar days of the close date.
Procurement, pre-shipment readiness, despatch and document accuracy. Four points where the supplier is the named accountable party. Everything else is platform-owned with supplier visibility. The clarity matters at exception time, the cycle ledger reads any deviation against the named owner and the resolution is routed to that party first.
The most frequent deviation from the milestone calendar is a pre-shipment readiness slip, the supplier signals readiness on the agreed date but the lot is not in fact ready when the inspector attends. The cost of a missed inspection visit is recovered through the exception reserve. The supplier is asked to set a new readiness date and a second visit is scheduled. Repeated readiness slips weigh against the timeliness domain in the quarterly scorecard.
The second is documentation gaps at despatch, a missing certificate of origin, an out-of-date phytosanitary, a packing list that does not reconcile with the commercial invoice. Documentation gaps trigger customs holds at destination, hub costs accumulate against the cycle and the supplier is in the integrity domain conversation. Documentation matters as much as the goods.
Hub addresses, incoterms, packaging spec and the customs paperwork that prevents holds at destination.
What the inspection desk checks, what flags fail and how the report writes to the cycle ledger.
A real settled cycle walked through line by line, brief to settlement.
Eight milestones.One ledger.
The cycle ledger is the single source. Every milestone writes once. The settlement statement is a view over what was written.