Discrepancies

How Mercora checks a document against its trade, and how to resolve the differences it finds. Also covers the expected documents checklist.

Once a document is matched to a trade, Mercora compares it with the trade, and with its shipment if it has one, and flags each difference as a discrepancy. You decide whether each one is acceptable or needs fixing before you approve the document.

Examples come from aluminium trade ALU-2026-0012 of Veltana Metals SA (Altamira Metals DMCC → Extrunord Metallwerke GmbH), shipped under B/L CBAY-JEA-RTM-88213.

Before you start: checks need the Trades module. Resolving discrepancies, and correcting document values, needs permission to edit documents.

What gets checked

Mercora compares the document field by field with the trade’s record: its contract or recap, its legs, and what its approved documents have already established. Checks run when the document is matched, and again when you edit a field, click Run checks, or another document on the trade is approved.

• Contracts, recaps, amendments, invoices, L/Cs, credit advices and B/Ls get a full check: parties, product, quantities, prices and amounts, ports, dates, terms and references.
• Every other type, such as certificates and packing lists, is checked on product, quantity and weights, ports and vessel.
• Container seals are checked on every document that lists containers.

Severity	Typical fields
Critical	Prices and amounts, buyer and seller, ports, product, contract status
Warning	Quantities outside tolerance, dates, other parties and banks, terms, currency, containers and seals, document numbers
Info	Shipment checks on a document covering several B/Ls, where Mercora can’t isolate this shipment’s part

Prices and amounts must match exactly. Quantities may vary within the trade’s tolerance from its contract or L/C, or 5% if none is stated.

When Mercora holds back

When a comparison might not be fair, Mercora skips it rather than raise a false alarm:

• Wording and number formats don’t count (“Santos” and “Port of Santos, Brazil” match). If a number can be read two ways, either reading passes.
• Units are converted; an unknown unit is skipped. Gross weight is never compared with contract quantity.
• Quantity is skipped on a multi-leg trade when the document doesn’t say which leg it’s for.
• Document issue dates aren’t compared.
• A purchase contract is checked against the sale contract only on product, quantity, ports and dates, never on price, terms or parties: those differ by design.
• A B/L number is flagged only if the trade doesn’t know it yet.

Reviewing discrepancies in the Inbox

Open discrepancies sit at the top of the document’s review panel in the Inbox, and the document shows a status such as 2 disc. Each card shows the field, its severity, the document’s value (Doc) and what it was compared with. Click a card to highlight the value on the page.

There are two kinds of card. A shipping document can carry both, and the same seal can be flagged on each.

Card	Compared with	Your choices
Trade	The trade’s record	Approve if the difference is acceptable (the trade’s value stands). Decline if it must be fixed at the source: it’s marked Declined — needs fixing and included when you request a correction.
Shipment	The document’s shipment	Keep doc value if the document is right: the shipment is updated to match. Keep shipment value if the shipment is right: the discrepancy is marked Declined — needs fixing.

Every card also has Note… to record why. Resolved cards stay listed, muted, below the open ones; Undo reopens one.

A trade discrepancy: the weight certificate's seal for container GCLU4021440 is GSL7152207; the trade has GSL7152270.

A critical shipment discrepancy: the shipment says Antwerp, Belgium; the packing list says Rotterdam, Netherlands. Keep doc value moves the shipment to Rotterdam.

Keep doc value updates the shipment straight away if the document is already on it, otherwise when you approve the document. It applies to the shipment’s own fields (quantity, vessel and IMO, ports, B/L number and date, ETD). For a single container’s weight or seal, the decision is recorded but the shipment doesn’t change.

If Mercora misread the document, double-click the Doc value, correct it and press Enter. The discrepancy disappears if the value now matches. Seal values can’t be edited this way.

Approving a document accepts all its open trade discrepancies, as the line beside Approve says (“accepts 2 differences”). Open shipment discrepancies aren’t accepted: they stay open on the shipment.

Discrepancies on a trade

A trade’s Discrepancies tab lists its trade discrepancies under Open and Resolved, with field, severity, status, source document and date. Click a row to resolve it in the Inbox.

Shipment discrepancies are on the shipment’s own Discrepancies tab, where you can choose Keep doc value or Keep shipment value directly. See Shipments.

Expected documents

A trade’s Documents tab has an Expected Documents checklist of what the trade still needs.

1. Click Generate to build it from the document requirements in the trade’s contract and L/C (marked Contract/LC). Click Refresh after a new contract or L/C arrives.
2. As documents are approved, Mercora ticks off the requirements they fulfil, for example a phytosanitary certificate read as a compliance certificate.
3. Click an item’s status icon to mark it Pending, Satisfied or Not needed, or Remove it. Click Add for a document the contract doesn’t mention.

A terminated trade expects no further documents. Changing the checklist needs permission to edit trades.

Every document the contract and L/C require for sugar trade VCS-S-2026-0714 has arrived: 10/10.

Next steps

• Trades overview: the trade your approved documents built.
• Trade financials: invoices and payments on the trade.