A trade-income system of record for multi-format retailers running supplier-funded promotions on spreadsheets, email, and LINE. TradePlus digitises the agreement, tracks the execution, calculates the claim, generates the Thai VAT-compliant debit note, and gives the supplier the same view as the buyer. Designed for groups running THB-billion annual trade income. Thai-first.
Large multi-format retailers in Thailand — the groups that run a chain of supermarkets, a fleet of electronics stores, a handful of department banners, and a marketing-supply arm — manage between THB 7 billion and THB 13 billion of trade income a year. That is supplier-funded money: slotting fees, volume rebates, co-op advertising, display allowances, scan-down discounts, seasonal campaign contributions, and new-store-opening support. At every retailer of that scale, the mechanics of collecting that money look the same.
Each category buyer keeps a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has one tab per supplier, one row per agreement, and one column per promotion period. The terms live in an email thread or a scanned appendix. The proof-of-execution is a LINE photo the area manager sent last month, already three hundred messages back in the group chat. The claim amount is calculated in a calculator app on the buyer's phone, copied into a second spreadsheet owned by finance, and keyed into the AP system a week later.
When a supplier disputes the amount, the thread becomes a chain of forwarded emails with conflicting attachments. Nobody can find the original agreement. The area manager who took the photo has rotated to a new store. The promotion ended two months ago. The claim ages past the window the agreement allowed, and the supplier quietly refuses to settle. The finance team spends the last two weeks of every quarter reconstructing this picture across two hundred suppliers. They close the books. They book a write-off. They start the next quarter.
That figure is a trade-marketing industry benchmark cited across Nielsen, Kantar, and the consumer-packaged-goods trade press. The reason it persists is measurement. Without a system that links agreement terms to POS outcomes to settlement records, the retailer cannot say which promotion types work in which stores at which price points. Every quarter the same promotions get renewed because they cannot be cleanly ranked against the ones that were cancelled.
A benchmark from AP-automation and order-to-cash research (HighRadius, BlackLine, APQC). At a THB-50-billion-a-year retailer that is THB 2.5 billion to THB 10 billion of cashflow sitting in dispute at any moment. The dispute is usually not fraud — it is a version mismatch: the buyer's agreement says one rate, the supplier's contract says another, the area manager's photo might be missing, and nobody is authorised to decide in under a week.
SAP TPM, Vividly, HighRadius, AFS — none of them generate a Section 86/9 Thai debit note in Thai with the amount in Thai words, sequential numbering without gaps per fiscal year, 7% VAT correctly separated, 13-digit tax IDs on both sides, and the bilingual layout a Thai revenue officer expects. That is not a feature gap — it is the reason every large Thai retailer still relies on spreadsheets. The tooling that would replace the spreadsheet cannot file a compliant debit note, so the spreadsheet stays.
"We do not know, at the end of a quarter, what we were owed. We know what we booked. The gap between the two is the conversation we keep not having."
Conversation with a commercial finance director at a Thai multi-format retailer · February 2026
TradePlus collapses the lifecycle onto a single spine. Every agreement is a structured record. Every execution ties back to an agreement. Every claim is calculated deterministically from the agreement terms and the source data. Every debit note is generated from the claim, in Thai, compliant with the Revenue Code. Every supplier sees the same view the buyer sees — same numbers, same photo, same calculation breakdown. The spreadsheet, the email thread, and the LINE group stop being the record. They become the informal chatter around a system that already has the answer.
Every claim is computed from agreement terms and source data with a plain-English formula, a per-store or per-tier breakdown, and a frozen snapshot of inputs. Two runs of the same inputs produce the same output, always. The claim carries its own calculation proof — the buyer approves, the supplier audits, the regulator can reconstruct.
Debit notes and credit notes are generated inside TradePlus in Thai, bilingual, with Section 86/9 fields, sequential numbering per fiscal year, 7% VAT separated, the amount rendered in Thai words, and Sarabun/TH SarabunPSK typography. Withholding tax rates (2%, 3%, 5%) are auto-applied per payment type. The output is filing-ready; finance does not re-keystroke it into anything.
The supplier view is not a status page — it is the same claim, the same photo, and the same calculation table the buyer sees, with a structured dispute workflow in place of a "please explain" email. Disputes carry reason codes, auto-escalate on time, and resolve on the same data both parties already share. Industry data suggests 30–50% dispute reduction when both sides see shared evidence; we design for that baseline.
This is not a category-management tool and it is not an AP-automation tool. It is the ledger of trade income — the place where agreement, execution, claim, and settlement all live as one record.
One structured form. Four agreement types in MVP. No free-text appendices.
The buyer creates the agreement in TradePlus from a structured form. Four agreement types are supported at MVP: slotting fee (fixed fee per store per period), volume rebate (tiered percentage against purchase volume, retroactive or marginal), display allowance (fee per display per store per period, photo-proof required), and co-op advertising (percentage of actual ad spend, invoice-proof required). Seasonal campaign, promotional price support, and new-store-opening support enter the catalogue post-pilot. The agreement carries supplier, brands and products covered, stores and regions covered, period, fee structure as structured JSON, claim window in days, VAT treatment, and total committed baht.
Display photo. EXIF timestamp. GPS store match. One-line AI validation.
For display-based agreements, store staff photograph the display from the browser on a phone. The photo is stamped with agreement ID, store, timestamp, and GPS coordinates from EXIF. TradePlus checks the GPS against the seeded store coordinates (100m radius by default), then calls Claude Vision synchronously to confirm the photo shows the required display — correct supplier, correct product, correct display type — and returns a confidence score and a one-sentence explanation a non-technical buyer can read. For POS-based agreements, TradePlus ingests sales transactions during the promotion period and calculates units sold, discount value, and supplier co-funding obligation without manual data entry.
Formula in plain English. Per-store or per-tier breakdown. Frozen input snapshot.
At period end the buyer (or finance, depending on role) clicks Generate on the agreement and the period. In under two seconds, TradePlus returns the calculation: the formula in plain English ("12 of 15 stores × 30 days × THB 500/day = THB 180,000"), the inputs table, the per-store or per-tier breakdown, and the total in Thai baht. The calculation is deterministic; identical inputs always produce an identical result. Every claim stores an immutable snapshot of the inputs used. Subsequent changes to source data do not retroactively mutate a calculated claim.
One click. A filing-ready Thai VAT debit note in under three seconds.
Once the claim is approved, the buyer clicks Generate Debit Note. A headless-Chrome renderer (Browsershot) produces a Section 86/9-compliant Thai debit note PDF in under three seconds. The output carries sequential note number with no gaps per fiscal year, retailer entity tax ID, supplier 13-digit tax ID, line items from the calculation breakdown, 7% VAT on a separate line when the agreement is VAT-subject, the amount rendered in Thai words (สี่ล้านสองแสนบาทถ้วน), issue date, reason for adjustment, and a bilingual layout with Thai primary and English secondary. Sarabun and TH SarabunPSK render correctly.
The supplier sees what the buyer saw. Same data, different role.
The supplier's view of the claim is the same data the buyer and finance see, scoped by supplier ID. The supplier lands on a statement page that lists every agreement with the retailer, every claim raised against them, every proof photo, every calculation breakdown, and every debit note issued. If they disagree, they click Dispute on the claim, pick a reason code (incorrect quantity, incorrect period, proof insufficient, terms disagreement, other), and write a note. The dispute lands in the buyer's queue with the claim already open. Unresolved disputes auto-escalate — fourteen days to category manager, thirty days to commercial director.
Unclaimed rebates. Expiring claim windows. One month of recoverable revenue.
At quarter end, finance opens the Leakage Report. The report lists volume rebates earned but not claimed (system compares actual purchase volume against every active tiered agreement), display allowances with verified photos but no claim filed, claims with windows expiring in the next fourteen days, and under-calculated claims the engine has re-checked. The total recoverable baht sits at the top of the report. The commercial director's dashboard sits above — trade income year-to-date against target, breakdown by agreement type, breakdown by category, supplier scorecards, forward-looking forecast from active agreements, and year-over-year comparisons. Period-end close is an hour of reviewing open items, not a week of spreadsheet forensics.
Every supplier agreement lives as a structured record — supplier, brands, stores, period, fee structure, claim window, VAT treatment — not a PDF attached to an email. A calendar view shows every active agreement on a month grid; overlap detection flags when a new agreement conflicts with an existing one for the same supplier, category, or store.
Slotting fee, volume rebate (tiered, retroactive or marginal), display allowance, co-op advertising at MVP. Seasonal campaign, new-store-opening support, and promotional price support added at v1. Each type has its own structured form, calculation rule, and proof-of-execution requirement.
Display-based promotions are verified by photo. EXIF timestamp and GPS are extracted on upload; GPS is checked against seeded store coordinates with a configurable radius (default 100m). Claude Vision confirms the photo shows the correct supplier, product, and display type, returning a confidence score (0–1) and a plain-language explanation.
For promotional price support, TradePlus ingests POS sales data during the promotion period and calculates units sold, discount per unit, and supplier co-funding — no manual data entry. At MVP the POS feed is seeded; in pilot the feed comes from the retailer's POS via batch file or REST API.
Every claim is calculated synchronously from agreement terms and source data, using NUMERIC(15,2) precision (no floating-point). The result carries a plain-English formula, an inputs table, a per-store or per-tier breakdown, and a frozen snapshot of the inputs. The same inputs always produce the same output.
Section 86/9 debit notes and Section 86/10 credit notes are generated from an approved claim in under three seconds. Output: sequential note number per fiscal year, retailer and supplier 13-digit tax IDs, line items, 7% VAT separated, amount in Thai words, bilingual Thai/English layout, Sarabun typography.
TradePlus applies the correct WHT rate per payment type — 2% for advertising, 3% for services to Thai entities, 5% for services to foreign entities without a Thai HQ, 5% for rental. E-WHT 1% reduced rate is auto-applied where eligible. Monthly VAT reconciliation supports PP 30 filing.
The supplier sees the same claim, the same photo, and the same calculation the buyer sees. Disputes use reason codes, land in the buyer's queue, and auto-escalate on time (L1 at 14 days, L2 at 30 days). Industry data suggests 30–50% dispute reduction when both sides share evidence.
The Leakage Report surfaces volume rebates earned but unclaimed, display allowances with verified proof but no claim filed, claims with windows expiring in the next 14 days, and under-calculated claims. The total recoverable baht sits at the top. In a typical retailer this is the first 3–6 months of payback.
Every action — agreement creation, amendment, approval, execution submission, claim calculation, debit note generation, settlement, dispute — is logged with timestamp, user, entity, old and new values, and IP. Append-only table. Seven-year retention matches the Thai Revenue Code requirement for accounting records.
A multi-format retailer running THB 50 billion a year in gross sales and THB 7–13 billion in annual trade income typically carries an estimated 5% leakage — THB 380 million to THB 635 million of trade income earned but never claimed. The industry target for a mature TPM deployment is to reduce that to under 1%. At the midpoint, that is roughly THB 190–318 million recovered in year one. The headline metric is revenue recovery; the quieter metrics matter more over time.
| Metric | Before TradePlus | After TradePlus (8-week pilot on top 50 suppliers) |
|---|---|---|
| Unclaimed trade income | ~5% of pool (THB 380–635M) | Under 1% |
| Claim cycle time (period end → supplier) | 30–60 days | Under 7 days |
| Dispute resolution time | Weeks to months | Under 14 days |
| Finance team time on quarterly reconciliation | 2–3 weeks per quarter-end | 2–3 days per quarter-end |
| Agreement visibility | Scattered across 100+ buyer inboxes | 100% centralised, searchable |
| Audit readiness | Manual document assembly | Instant export |
| Supplier portal adoption (top 200 suppliers) | None | 80%+ by end of month 5 |
Figures derived from industry benchmarks (Nielsen / Kantar for promotion ROI; HighRadius / APQC for dispute rates; AP-automation vendor disclosures for cycle-time deltas) and the measurement model seeded in the TradePlus MVP. Individual pilot results vary by supplier concentration, existing workflow, and data-quality starting point. No Inline One customer has completed a full pilot as of the publication date of this page.
In operational terms, a THB-bn-scale retailer recovers the equivalent of a full finance headcount's annual cost in the first month of pilot. In commercial terms, the category buyers get the first structured view of which promotions drive which outcomes — a baseline for the renegotiation cycle. In compliance terms, the quarter-end close stops being the forensic exercise it currently is. In supplier-relationship terms, the trade conversation shifts from invoice-chasing to joint promotion planning, which is where trade income compounds year on year.
| Stack | Laravel 13 + Livewire 4 (+ Volt) + Preline UI 4 + Tailwind CSS 3 + Alpine.js + PostgreSQL 18 |
|---|---|
| AI | Claude API (Sonnet 4.6 + Vision) for photo validation and invoice extraction |
| PDF generation | Browsershot (headless Chrome) with embedded Thai fonts (Sarabun, TH SarabunPSK) |
| Numeric precision | NUMERIC(15,2) for all THB amounts. No floating-point arithmetic in the claim engine. |
| Data residency | Thailand (Thai Revenue Code 7-year retention); Singapore fallback available for pilot phase |
| Languages | Thai (primary), English. Bilingual debit notes. |
| Auth (pilot) | Retailer SSO via OIDC/SAML; MFA for finance roles; magic-link + optional password for supplier portal |
| Authorisation | RBAC with row-level security. Suppliers see only their own data. Buyers see their categories. Finance sees all. |
| API | REST + OpenAPI 3.0. Versioned (/api/v1). Rate-limited (1000 req/min internal, 100 req/min supplier portal). |
| Integrations (v1) | ERP (SAP / Oracle) for AP/AR and supplier master; POS feed for sales data; procurement feed for purchase volumes; SSO; email; LINE Notify |
| Uptime target | 99.9% (financial system) |
| Deployment | Dedicated tenant on the retailer's preferred Thai cloud; on-premises available under enterprise licence |
| Audit log | Append-only. Every action timestamped with user, entity, old value, new value, IP. 7-year retention. |
| Scale target | 200+ concurrent users at pilot; 10,000+ suppliers and 500+ stores at full rollout |
TradePlus is built for a Thai-enterprise financial-system procurement review, not a SaaS trial. Financial data lives in NUMERIC(15,2); there are no hard deletes on claims, debit notes, or settlement records — only soft-delete with audit trail; every monetary amount passes through server-side validation, never client-side only.
Production deployments run in Thailand (AWS ap-southeast-7, NIPA Cloud, or the retailer's preferred Thai-registered cloud), satisfying Thai Revenue Code retention rules, PDPA, and BOT-regulated supply-chain expectations.
Every state transition — agreement approval, claim calculation, debit note issuance, dispute escalation, settlement — writes an append-only record. Export is instant per supplier, per agreement, or per period. The structure is designed for ISO 27001 and SOX-style compliance reporting.
TradePlus is built to sit inside an ERP landscape, not replace one. Inbound: supplier master and AP/AR from SAP or Oracle, purchase volumes from procurement, sales data from POS, authentication from retailer SSO. Outbound: debit notes and settlement records to AP/AR for posting, notifications via email and LINE Notify. Integrations are staged — the MVP runs on seeded data so the demo does not depend on connector work.
TLS 1.3 in transit. AES-256 at rest via PostgreSQL TDE and S3 SSE-KMS for proof photos and generated PDFs. Supplier contact data is classified as personal under Thai PDPA and handled accordingly.
Claim amounts cannot exceed agreement.total_committed minus previously claimed. Duplicate-claim prevention is a database unique constraint on (agreement_id, period_start, period_end). Approval thresholds escalate by baht amount in v1 (MVP uses one-click approve to keep the demo flowing).
TradePlus deploys as a fixed-scope pilot with written KPIs, a measured leakage number, and an honest ending. At pilot close either the measured recovery clears the KPI and we scale — to the full supplier base, to the supplier portal, to ERP write-back, to on-premises — or it does not and we hand over the findings. No open-ended contracts. No forever-pilots.
Workshop with the commercial finance team, two category buyers, and one AP lead. Extract the top 50 suppliers by trade-income exposure. Classify their active agreements into the four MVP types. Agree the KPIs: target leakage percentage recovered, target claim cycle time, target dispute resolution time, target reconciliation days. Fixed pilot price confirmed.
TradePlus deployed to a dedicated tenant on the retailer's preferred Thai cloud. Top 50 suppliers' agreements migrated via bulk CSV import. First claim cycle runs — executions captured, claims generated, debit notes issued. The top five suppliers are onboarded to the supplier portal. Weekly review meetings are working-software demos, not slide decks. Leakage is measured continuously.
Measured results against the written KPIs. Honest gap analysis — where it cleared, where it did not, and why. Recommendation: scale to the full supplier base, continue pilot on an adjusted scope, or walk away. All three endings are valid; the pilot is designed to be walk-away-able.
If the pilot cleared the KPI: rollout to top 200 suppliers, supplier portal onboarding, ERP write-back for AP/AR, dispute escalation workflow, multi-step approval thresholds, on-premises or dedicated-tenant deployment. If it did not: we hand over the pilot report, the migrated agreement data in a CSV, and part ways. The data is yours, either way.
Fixed-price pilot. Walk-away clause. Roadmap influence for design partners. No surprises. No auto-renewal.
Deploy to one retailer entity, top 50 suppliers, four agreement types. All costs fixed in week 0.
Single-retailer deployment at full supplier scale. Renewable annually.
Group-level deployment across multiple retailer entities and formats. Cross-format analytics. Shared supplier master.
NUMERIC(15,2) — no floating-point drift. The same inputs always produce the same output. The calculation record is append-only and exportable per supplier, per agreement, or per period.The walkthrough takes forty-five minutes. Your commercial director, CFO, and head of AP see the full lifecycle — agreement creation, photo-verified execution, deterministic claim, Thai VAT-compliant debit note, supplier view, leakage report — on seeded data shaped to your retailer archetype. We bring the seeded tenant; you bring the three questions that decide whether this solves your quarter-end.
TradePlus draws on our founder's prior enterprise delivery across Southeast Asia (2017–2026) — auto-auction platforms, B2B finance portals, supplier and dealer payment-request workflows, buy-now-pay-later loan ledgers, and Thai-localised commerce systems at retailer and group scale. The trade-income archetype — structured agreement, verifiable execution, deterministic claim, compliant debit note, shared supplier view — is a pattern that generalises across the platforms our founder has previously shipped.
That history is why the claim engine is designed for determinism from day one, why the Thai VAT layer is not a localisation afterthought, and why the supplier view is the same data as the buyer view rather than a status page bolted on at the end. It is also why the numbers on this page are attributed to industry benchmarks and prior-role experience — Inline One Systems was founded in March 2026 and has not yet completed a customer pilot.
Read the full track record →