From one email to a managed deal
Most trading systems start with a blank form and ask your desk to feed it. opsPhlo Lite starts where your deals already start: in email. Forward one message and the system constructs the contract from it; every message after that is read, attached to the right deal, and used to move it forward. Seven stops, about four minutes, no login needed. Then, if you like what you see, the real thing is a self-serve signup away.
The screens below are illustrative and use sample data. The counterparties are fictional; the workflow is the product’s.
Your workspace has its own address. Forward the deal to it.
Every opsPhlo Lite workspace comes with a private email address. When a contract recap, a broker confirmation or a signed contract lands in your inbox, you forward it on, exactly as you would forward it to a colleague. That is the entire data-entry ceremony. No template, no import wizard, no retyping the trade you just negotiated.
Attachments come too: PDF contracts, scanned confirmations, spreadsheets. If you would rather not touch email at all, the same documents can be dropped straight onto the screen.
———— Forwarded message ————
We confirm sale of 26.4 MT frozen boneless beef trimmings 85CL, packed 27.5 kg cartons, 1 × 40’ reefer, CFR Ho Chi Minh City, shipment Aug/Sep 2026, price USD 4,187.50/MT CFR, payment by irrevocable letter of credit at sight…
New deal — extracted, awaiting your confirmation
DRAFTThe trade is read out of the document, with its working shown
The system reads the recap and constructs the deal: parties, quantity, price, quality spec, incoterm, shipment window, payment terms. Next to every extracted value is where it came from and how confident the model was, so checking it takes seconds, not faith.
And this is the part that matters if you have been burned by black-box software: nothing is filed until a person confirms it. The AI does the typing; your desk keeps the judgement. Where a value cannot be read with confidence, the field says so instead of guessing.
The paperwork files itself against the right deal
A deal is not an event, it is a stream: booking confirmation, certificates, bill of lading, insurance, invoice. In most systems each arrival means someone opens the record and updates it. In Lite, you forward the message to the same address, and the system works out which deal it belongs to, attaches it, ticks the document checklist, and pulls out what the document knows.
The bill of lading is the classic: one forwarded email and the vessel, B/L number and ETA are on the deal, with the checklist two items shorter. Duplicates are recognised and dropped, so the same B/L forwarded twice never files twice.
MDI-2608 · document checklist
IN TRANSIT- ✓Contract recapfiled from your email · 12 Aug
- ✓Export health certificatefiled from forwarded email · 21 Aug
- ✓Bill of lading — vessel + ETA extractedjust now · vessel MV Pacific Harrier · ETA 14 Sep
- Certificate of origin
- Commercial invoice
| DEAL | BOXES | MARGIN | DOCS | ARRIVAL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MDI-2608Beef 85CL | 1 | +€7,241.50 🔒 | 3/5 | 14 Sep |
| LBX-2611Lamb carcase | 2 | +€7,374.62 | 1/4 | 2 Oct |
| HVT-2601Shrimp 16/20 | 1 | exposed · 45% | 4/5 | 21 Sep |
Back-to-back desks hold no position. The board shows what you do hold.
If most of what you do is buy a container and sell it on the same terms, a long/short position board describes somebody else’s business. What you actually carry is a list of pairs, each asking four questions: is the margin locked, is the currency covered, are the documents in, and when does the box land. That is this screen, one line per pair.
Margin is stated only when it is a fact. Same-currency pairs are arithmetic. A pair that buys in dollars and sells in euros is restated at the rate of the forward you actually booked against it — locked, not marked. Cover it only halfway and the board says exposed, 45% covered rather than inventing the rest.
The credit is checked against the contract before the bank checks you
When the letter of credit arrives, paste it in, straight off the clipboard. The workbench compares the credit with the contract you actually struck, term by term, the day it is advised, not the day documents are refused: quantities and tolerances, ports, dates, documents called for, soft clauses that put payment in the buyer’s gift.
Found a problem? It drafts the amendment request for you. And before presentation, document examination runs findings and verdicts over the pack, so a fixable discrepancy is fixed in your office rather than found in the bank’s.
Workability review · 2 findings
AMEND BEFORE SHIPMENTBanking · this week
RECONCILED| RECEIPT | AMOUNT | ATTRIBUTED TO |
|---|---|---|
| Mekong Delta Imports Co. | $110,550.00 | MDI-2608 |
| Harborview Trading DMCC | $74,662.50 | HVT-2601 |
| Unmatched receipt | $12,940.00 | NEEDS REVIEW |
Invoices issued from the deal record · postings exported to your accounting package
Loosely coupled with your accounts, on purpose
Lite is deliberately not an ERP. It issues the commercial invoices, watches the bank and attributes each receipt to its deal, then hands clean, deal-referenced postings to the accounting package your finance team already runs and trusts. Trading problems stay on the trading side; finance keeps its own system, its own controls and its own close.
That separation is a design decision, not a missing feature. A trading system should make the deal book bulletproof and leave the general ledger to the people who own it. If you have ever fought a system where one side’s problem froze the other side’s work, this is the cure.
The best demo is your own deal
Signup is self-serve with a work email: no card, no sales call, and your workspace is seeded with a starter pack for your commodities so the first sign-in lands on a working system. Then run the tour for real: forward one contract recap you actually sent this month, and judge the product on how well it read your trade, not ours.
Want the founding-company terms and the honest list of what Lite does not do yet? Read the opsPhlo Lite page →