Import/export trading: from RFQ to proforma invoice

By the Onsites AI team · Last updated August 28, 2026 · 4-minute read

An import/export trader's desk is the purest support pipeline in commerce: an inquiry arrives from nowhere in particular, and eighteen steps later a container lands, a balance invoice closes, and somebody finally files the B/L. The tools the industry runs on — Outlook, WeChat, a quoting spreadsheet, a folder of proforma PDFs — turn those eighteen steps into eighteen opportunities to retype a price, lose a version, or forget a follow-up. This guide designs the desk the way traders actually work: every inquiry starts a thread that carries the RFQ, the quote (with its validity), any requotes, the proforma invoice (#1041), the deposit, the order, the shipment updates and the final invoice — quote to order without retyping, on a catalog shared by everything downstream. The tool shown is Onsites — three seats free, $15 beyond — but the workflow is the deliverable.

The seven stages of every deal, as one thread

Trade deals breathe in a fixed rhythm; the desk should follow it. Stage one — the RFQ: "FOB Shanghai, 500 units, what's your best for 1,000?" arrives as a conversation; the buyer's card is created or found automatically, and the thread opens. Stage two — the quote: quote #1042 writes from the product catalog — FOB or CIF lines, validity dated (14 days is fair), MOQ noted — and is sent as the reply, not as an attachment to hunt later. Stage three — the negotiation: counters happen in the thread; when the 20ft becomes a 40ft or the quantity moves from 500 to 800, the quote edits in place and version four sits beside version one. Stage four — the proforma: acceptance converts the quote to a proforma invoice in one click — banking fields, deposit terms (30/70 is common), the buyer's country requirements. Stages five through seven — the order, the shipment, the balance: the PI becomes the order, tracking and updates join the thread, and the balance invoice closes the loop in the same conversation that started it. Seven stages, zero retyping, one scrollable memory.

The catalog: the trader's real asset

The pipeline's honesty depends on one source of truth for SKUs. Build it once: every sellable item with its unit, FOB price, and the surcharges that move (the 40ft requote, the November freight index) lives in the shared catalog; the desk's quotes, proformas and invoices all read it. Price edits propagate: the FOB move from $4.10 to $4.35 is one edit — next week's quotes carry it, and no PDF sent from an old sheet ever quotes the old price. The catalog's gravity: "do you have it in 24k gold finish?" is answered by lookup, not memory; the thread shows the item card beside the conversation. Multi-currency, noted honestly: quotes state currency and validity explicitly — the RMB revaluation of quote validity is a risk the desk should surface in the text itself, not discover later. Traders who keep prices in spreadsheets drift them; the desk's drift-free catalog is why the quote-in-thread pattern pays for itself on the first requote.

Deposits, balances and the follow-up rhythm

Money in trade flows in two beats, and both are queue work. The deposit: PI sent, deposit due in 7 days per the terms; the follow-up writes itself — a reminder drafts on day 5 ("gentle nudge, banking details attached again") and the seller approves per the copilot discipline; the thread shows the PI beside the reminder. The overdue deposit: day 8 moves the thread to "awaiting deposit" in the pipeline view; the overdue-email ladder (polite → firmer → final) applies with trade-appropriate tone — relationships compound across years, and the ladder's rungs are never skipped. The balance: goods shipped, B/L released against the balance; the final invoice and the documents send together, and the thread closes paid. The aging view: deposits aging past 7 days and balances aging past 30 sit as lists — the trader's morning coffee read that replaces the inbox archaeology. The pipeline that remembers is the difference between chasing deals and having them chase you.

Multilingual threads: WeChat, Mandarin, and the buyer who isn't on email

Trade conversations cross channels and languages in the same message. Channels: email for the buyer in Rotterdam, WhatsApp for the one in Dubai, WeChat for the one in Chongqing — one desk, all native, no personal phone as infrastructure (the WeChat guide carries the setup). Translation: the buyer's Mandarin question drafts its reply in English with the translation billed at 3 credits (per the published rates), human-reviewed — the "confirm deposit received, B/L released on balance" message is too commercially loaded to send unreviewed. Time zones: Shanghai's evening is Rotterdam's morning; the desk keeps threads moving without waiting for the office hours overlap, and the follow-up sequences fire in the buyer's timezone. The desk does not replace the trader's judgment on language; it removes the retyping around it.

What this desk replaces, and what it costs

The honest ledger. Replaced: the quoting spreadsheet (the catalog is it, shared and edit-once), the proforma PDF folder (PIs are documents in the thread, numbered and paid), the "which email had the deposit?" searches (the thread carries everything), the personal-WeChat-as-CRM (accounts and conversations linked automatically), the "did we answer the Dubai RFQ?" anxiety (the queue shows every open thread by stage). Costs: three seats free forever — a solo trader or a two-desk partnership rides at the credits line, a few dollars monthly for drafts, translations and summaries; the team of six prices $45/mo billed annually plus credits; storage is included to 100 MB and $1/GB for the document archive; self-hosting exists for compliance-bound traders (the Docker guide). The freight guide covers the forwarder's variant of the same desk — RFQs that expire, requotes, exception relays — and the workflow shown here is its sibling. The trader's edge was never typing speed; it is a pipeline where no price forks and no deal forgets itself — and every stage of it, from RFQ to balance, is auditable on one screen the morning the auditors or the VAT letter arrives.