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What is your real margin per shipment, per contract, per unit?
Gross margin is easy and nearly useless. The real margin appears once freight, handling, financing and currency effects are attributed to the shipment that caused them. That attribution is a business decision, not a technical one. Once it is agreed, the model can show margin at four levels from group down to a single shipment.
International commodity trading ERP, Business Central, Power BI
The challenge
An international commodity trader knew its gross margin and could not tell which deals actually earned. Freight, handling, financing and currency effects sat in different systems and were allocated, if at all, by hand at month end.
Our approach
We started with the allocation rule rather than the dashboard: which costs attach to which shipment, and on what basis. That conversation produced a rule the business recognised, which we then applied consistently in the model.
Sources were loaded incrementally into a modelled layer, with article codes and units reconciled across suppliers so the same product is the same product.
Results
Margin visible at four levels, from group down to individual shipment, on one model with one agreed definition. The discussion moved from which number is right to which deals to do more of.
Expertise involved
ERP and Business Central connections, incremental loading, data modelling, and the commercial conversation needed to make a cost allocation explicit.
See also
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Why does gross margin mislead?
Because the costs that decide whether a deal was good sit outside it. Freight, handling, financing and currency effects can turn a healthy gross margin into a loss, and they land in different systems.
Who decides how costs are attributed?
The business, not us. An allocation rule is a commercial decision: it determines which deals look good. We make the rule explicit and apply it consistently, which is usually the first time it has been written down.
At what level can you show margin?
Four levels, from group down to an individual shipment, from one model. Not four reports each calculating their own version, because that is where the argument starts rather than ends.