I've built my first trade. What's next?

Things you can do after you've created your first trade.

James Howard
James Howard
August 5, 2024

“What’s Next?”

So you’ve uploaded a purchase order, or perhaps a few, and you may be wondering, what can I do next to keep my company moving forward on KLEAR?

Here are a few things to check to make sure your trades are in good shape to be considered for funding and that you’re doing all you can to help KLEAR’s team support your working capital needs.

  • Have you added financial milestones to your trade?
  • Is it time to publish your trade?
  • Have you submitted your Customer and Supplier Lists for upload?
  • Bonus: Add operational milestones
  • Bonus: Add your branding
  1. Have you added financial milestones to show when your customer is paying you? 
  • For a trade to be considered for invoice purchasing, KLEAR needs to see when you are expecting to invoice your customers and when they are expected to pay. This is done through a “Financial Milestone” which you can create quickly once you’ve uploaded a PO and created a trade. The trade above still needs Financial Milestones. From the Trade Activity screen, click on an operational milestone (either “Purchase Order Issuance”—mostly used if you’re entering a down payment invoice—or “End Delivery to Customer”—used for all subsequent payments including a single payment on delivery), then choose “+ Financial Milestone”. Once you’ve created the Financial Milestone, your trade should look like this:

Ideally, your financial milestones should reflect the payment schedule indicated in the PO or contract, if there is one. If you are unsure about the timing or it has changed from when the PO was issued, use your best estimate, and include an explanation in the Additional Information field which you’ll see if you scroll down in the form shown below. 

For every milestone, you can also always add Updates, which can be used to communicate when anything, including a date, is changed in the future. 

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  1. Uploading customer and supplier lists (Bulk Link) (Customer Link) (Supplier Link)
  • After creating your first trade, if you still have more than 20 customers or suppliers to add to the platform, you may want to use the bulk upload option. This option allows you to export customer or supplier data from your own database (eg. your accounting or sales system) and send it to KLEAR who will upload it to your account for you. Use this link to access a template to help with exporting your data. Uploading all your customers and suppliers will:  
  1. Help you easily build transactions on the platform
  2. Help KLEAR perform credit qualifications on customers in advance (helps you go faster if you have an order)
  3. Help KLEAR prepare and advise (what is possible) with a customer
  1. Publishing a trade
  • Once you have built a trade and added all up-to-date operational and financial milestones, you must publish your trade for it to come out of draft status. Refer to this article to learn more about Trade Status. You can change your trade status in the trade activity section.

  • Publishing your trade will make the trade visible to the KLEAR team and is important if you are interested in receiving financial help/support from KLEAR
  • Active trades become Published trades on the first milestone date, and will still be visible to KLEAR staff

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  1. Bonus: add operational milestones

If you’re looking to build out your trade more, you can add operational milestones. However, this is not required. Operational milestones are required if you want a trade to be eligible for procurement as a service (PaaS), however, they are not a guarantee that a trade will be eligible for PaaS. PaaS allows you to receive advanced funding to purchase goods and services from your suppliers. Please note that you must first have received and accepted an offer for invoice purchase to proceed to PaaS. Ask your Customer Success Manager if you have any questions about how Invoice Purchase and PaaS work. Not just for PaaS: Operational milestones give you the most complete view of your order to cash cycle and may help you and your team better collaborate around the management of projects as well as working capital. KLEAR, when used this way, offers a single place for your team to see and manage everything going on in a given order from the time it is received until the last event which is often the final customer payment.  To add an operational milestone, select the “+ Add operational milestone” in the bottom right-hand corner. This can also be done through “Edit Trade” in the top right corner.

After you’ve added your operational milestone, you must attach a financial milestone to it as well. Do this by selecting your newly created operational milestone from the “Trade Activity” section, then click the “+ Financial Milestone” option. 

Fill out the required fields, and once you’re finished, your trade should look like this:

Once you have filled out your milestones, you can publish your trade. Now KLEAR can advance your funds!

  1. Bonus: Adding a logo
  • To add your company branding to your KLEAR account, refer to this article.

If you have any questions or would like to check if you’re on the right track, reach out to your Customer Success Manager.