Trading ERP Consultant, USA

How a US import moves through the ERP

For a typical US importer, the flow I map runs like this: supplier quote, purchase order in dollars or the supplier's currency, deposit or letter of credit, booking with the forwarder, ocean or air shipment, entry filed by your customs broker, duty and fees paid, drayage to your warehouse or a third-party logistics provider, receipt, putaway, sale, shipment to the customer and collection on net terms.

Each handoff produces a document that should land in the ERP against the right purchase order: the bill of lading, the broker's entry summary and invoice, the freight bill, the delivery receipt. When those documents arrive by email and get keyed into accounting weeks later, cost of goods sold for that period is wrong and nobody can say by how much.

Some importers use bonded warehouses or foreign-trade zones to defer duty until goods leave. That adds a stock status the ERP has to respect, because inventory physically under your control may not yet carry its final duty cost. I note these variations in the process map early, because they change which platforms are realistic for you.

Tariffs, duty and a landed cost you can trust

Tariff exposure is the part of US trading that most often breaks an existing costing method. When duty on a product category changes, the next container costs more or less than the last one, and selling prices set on an old average lag behind reality. A trading ERP needs to carry duty as its own cost element per item, not as a lump buried inside freight.

The decisions I get agreed with your controller or outside accountant before configuration include:

• which charges are capitalized into inventory and which are expensed
• how duty is allocated across a mixed container: by value, weight, volume or line
• how a broker invoice that arrives after part of the stock has been sold is handled
• whether landed cost is estimated at receipt and adjusted later
• which report shows duty paid by supplier, origin and tariff code

That last report matters when you are weighing alternative sourcing countries. Classification itself remains your broker's and advisor's responsibility; the ERP's job is to hold the code against each item and make the numbers visible. The costing mechanics are covered in more depth in my guide to ERP for trading companies.

Sales tax, resale certificates and selling across states

US trading companies mostly sell business to business, so a large share of customers buy for resale and should not be charged sales tax, provided you hold a valid certificate for them. In practice I often find certificates stored in a shared drive, with no expiry tracking and no link to the customer record. If a state reviews your sales, that gap becomes your exposure.

The requirements I write cover how the taxing location is determined for each order, which your tax advisor should confirm; how exempt status is flagged per customer and per state; how certificates are stored, linked and renewed; and how online or direct-to-consumer orders are treated differently from trade orders. Where you have obligations in many states, a dedicated tax calculation service connected to the ERP is usually more reliable than maintaining rates by hand.

The tax position itself is your advisor's call. My part is a system able to apply it consistently, and that the evidence behind each exempt sale can be produced quickly. My ERP consulting work in the USA covers sales tax design for other industries as well.

Systems US traders outgrow, and what to migrate

The usual starting point is QuickBooks Online or Desktop with an inventory add-on, sometimes Sage, sometimes a warehouse tool bolted onto accounting. The move to ERP tends to follow a second warehouse or 3PL, a second entity, an e-commerce channel next to wholesale, or a lender asking for inventory reporting the current setup cannot produce with confidence.

For migration I focus on what keeps trading alive on cutover day: open purchase orders and their deposits, containers on the water with costs accrued so far, open receivables with their credit terms, customer exemption records, and opening stock at landed cost rather than supplier price. Years of finished shipments can sit in the old system as a read-only archive.

Integrations commonly needed are bank feeds, the 3PL or warehouse system, EDI with large retail customers if you sell to them, the sales tax service, and a shipment visibility feed from your forwarder. I plan each one with an owner and a direction of data flow through ERP integration planning and data migration work, so nothing is left for the week before go-live.

Why US trading companies bring in an independent advisor

Many US implementers have a preferred platform and a template built for generic distributors. That template may be fine, but it rarely reflects tariff-driven cost swings, a customer base split between resellers and taxable end users, and a broker workflow you have refined over years of shipments. I write the requirements, test platforms against them and review the implementer's design, so the system follows your trade rather than the template.

Because I work remotely, I plan live workshops in the hours that overlap best with your head office, then share recorded walkthroughs of process maps and system designs so warehouse leads and outside accountants can review them on their own schedule. Buyers, warehouse staff and finance in different states can all contribute without everyone sitting in the same call.

If you are not yet sure you need a new ERP at all, start with a short diagnostic of the current process. Sometimes the right fix is a cleaner landed cost routine and proper certificate management in the system you already own. For wider context see the USA overview and the general trading ERP page; if you mainly sell in volume to trade accounts, wholesale ERP is also relevant.