Core concepts
The mental model behind OnlyTons. Understanding these makes every screen obvious.
Commodity
A commodity is a canonical product in the broker-curated catalog — "Organic durum wheat", "Chickpeas", "Extra-virgin olive oil". Commodities are the anchor: supply and demand are always about a commodity. Each commodity has a category (raw / semi-processed / processed) and an attributes schema — extra fields (variety, protein %, caliber…) that supply and demand for that commodity can fill in. Only the broker edits the catalog. See Commodities.
Supply entry — an offer of availability
A supply entry is a producer or processor saying "I will have this much of this commodity available during this window, at this price." The crucial word is window: supply is not stock-on-hand, it's availability across a span of dates. See Supply.
Availability window & forward supply
Every supply entry has an availability window — a start and end date. This is the forward primitive that makes OnlyTons different from a spot marketplace:
- A window in the future (starts after today) is forward supply — a promised harvest. It is shown distinctly everywhere (a "Forward" badge, a striped bar on the timeline).
- A window that spans today is current.
- A window entirely in the past is expired.
"Forward" is derived from the dates, not a separate flag — so it can never go stale. The availability timeline on each commodity draws every window against a time axis with a "today" line.
Demand entry — a plan for what you need
A demand entry is a buyer or processor saying "I need this much of this commodity by this date, to this standard." It can carry a window start (don't offer me supply available before this), a requires-organic flag, and a list of required certification schemes. Demand can also be recurring (e.g. quarterly). See Demand.
Intermediation (the broker in the middle)
OnlyTons is broker-intermediated by design. The broker is a party to every deal; organizations do not transact directly with each other. Two rules make this real rather than a slogan:
- On-request pricing is masked. A supply price posted "on request" shows as "On request" to everyone except the broker and the owning organization — so a buyer can't price around the broker.
- Internal notes stay internal. The broker's private notes on a deal are filtered out before the buyer or supplier ever sees the timeline.
Matching
Matching is how the broker turns a demand into a shortlist of candidate supply. It is deterministic — "the engine is SQL plus the broker", with no machine learning. Candidates are found by hard rules (same commodity, active, overlapping window, organic/cert filters) and then ranked by five transparent, weighted factors, each with a plain-language "why". The broker decides. See Matching.
Aggregation & reconciliation
One demand can be filled by several supply entries — this is aggregation. When the broker selects multiple producers, OnlyTons reconciles the total: are the selected quantities short of, equal to, or over the demand? It warns, never blocks — partial fills are normal, and the broker decides. Quantities in different units (kg vs tonnes) are converted; incompatible units raise a warning. See Matching.
Deal
A deal is the coordinated transaction the broker builds from a demand and its
matched supply. It has a reference (DEAL-YYYY-NNNN), one or more lines (each
line = an allocation from one supply entry), a status pipeline, a timeline
of events, and — once agreed — a value and a fee. See Deals.
Organic qualification (the organic gate)
A supply entry is organic-qualified only if a linked certification is an organic scheme (EU Organic, Bio, or Demeter), is currently active, and its validity covers the entire availability window. This is recomputed by the server every time supply is saved — the platform never simply trusts a checkbox. See Certifications & verification.
Traceability & provenance
A traceability chain records the steps a product passes through — origin, grower, harvest, processing, packaging, transport — in sequence. On a delivered deal, these chains assemble into a provenance view per line. See Traceability.
Verification & trust
Organizations carry a verification status (unverified / pending / verified), set by the broker, plus their certifications. Unverified organizations are never silently excluded from matching — they're surfaced with a warning, and the broker decides. See Certifications & verification.
Money & quantities
Prices and quantities are handled as exact decimals, never rounded floats, so sub-cent per-unit prices (e.g. €0.8525/kg) stay precise. Every amount carries an explicit currency (EUR by default). This matters for anyone reconciling deal values and fees.
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