The audit trail
Nothing here can be quietly deleted. Including by us.
Most of this trade runs on email attachments and memory. A Nelum consignment keeps its own record instead — every document, version, request and confirmation, held so that a correction leaves the earlier version readable.
A consignment is not a workflow with ten stages. Every company runs its own fulfilment and every jurisdiction demands its own paper, so Nelum stopped pretending to know the sequence — and put its effort into the record instead.
What a broken record costs
None of these are hypothetical failures. They are the ordinary consequence of keeping a trade’s paperwork in the places this trade normally keeps it.
The version nobody can identify
Three assay certificates for the same parcel arrive over five weeks. Two are drafts, one is final, and all three are called assay.pdf. The email thread that would tell them apart belongs to a trader who left in March.
On Nelum they are one slot with three versions, in order, each stamped with who filed it and when. The current one is shown; the earlier two did not disappear to make room for it.
The document that quietly changed
A certificate of origin is replaced after a question is asked about it. The new file has the same name, sits in the same folder, and reads slightly differently. Nothing anywhere records that a different document was there first.
Filing a replacement here does not overwrite anything. The earlier version stays on the record, and the filing of the replacement is itself a line in the consignment's history. If a document changed after a question was asked, the sequence shows it.
The message that was never sent
A dispute turns on whether the buyer was told about a delay. One side produces a screenshot. The other says it was never received, and both are working from private inboxes with no shared record.
Business correspondence on Nelum sits in a thread both companies read, kept as the record of what was said. Which kind of thread it is is decided by the server from the thread itself, never by a setting either side can flip afterwards.
The review that comes two years later
A compliance function, an auditor or a tax authority asks how a specific parcel reached a refinery: who sold it, what was known about its origin, what was requested, what was produced, and what was accepted.
That is a reconstruction job across mailboxes, drives and memory — or it is one consignment page, with every document, version and confirmation, and its history in order.
Four guarantees, and how each one is kept
These are properties of how the record is stored, not policies we ask you to trust us on.
01
Documents version. They never overwrite.
File a paper into a slot that already holds one and it becomes the next version. Every version stays listed, in order, each showing who filed it and when. Nothing is replaced, so nothing has to be trusted to have stayed the same.
Every earlier version stays readable.
02
A filed document cannot be removed.
There is no delete for a filed document. A paper filed in error is corrected by filing the right one over it, and both stay on the record. The only thing that can be removed is an empty slot, by the company that added it, and the removal is recorded in the audit log.
Only the company that added an empty slot can remove it.
03
A query stays on the record.
The other side can accept a filed paper or query it with a note. The statement is recorded with who made it and when, and a new version answers a query without erasing it.
A queried paper still downloads: a query is a statement, not a gate.
04
The history is written as it happens.
Every filing, request, review, release and confirmation writes a line to the consignment's history at the moment it happens, naming the company and the person who acted. The server writes the history; neither party can.
Each party's own consignment keeps its own history.
One consignment, as its history reads it
A seller files the wrong export licence, the buyer queries it, and the seller files the right one. The point is not that the mistake was prevented — mistakes are not preventable. The point is what the record says afterwards.
Each line names who acted and when, and none of them can be edited afterwards.
Consignment taken forward from the intent's thread — its document list added as empty slots
21 Apr ·Abuja Metals
Seller filed Soft Corporate Offer (sco-zamfara-bullion.pdf)
22 Apr ·Zamfara Bullion Ltd
Buyer added a slot: Export licence
29 Jul ·Abuja Metals
Seller filed Export licence into the slot
30 Jul ·Zamfara Bullion Ltd
Buyer queried Export licence — “this one covers the June lot”
31 Jul ·Abuja Metals
Seller filed Export licence (v2) — v1 stays on the record
31 Jul ·Zamfara Bullion Ltd
Buyer accepted Export licence (v2)
2 Aug ·Abuja Metals
Both parties confirmed the consignment complete
9 Aug ·Both parties
Who can see what
A complete record is only safe if its boundaries are just as strict. These are enforced in the database, beneath the application — not by the screens you are shown.
The parties to the consignment
What the holder has released to them: the lots and papers, their versions, and what was done with them.
Anything the holder has not released to them.
An engaged laboratory, vault or carrier
The lots its work touches, and the papers released to it for the job.
Anything else on the consignment.
Anyone else on Nelum
Nothing. A consignment's documents are seen only by its parties.
No view shows the whole chain end to end, to anyone.
Nelum staff
Opening a business thread needs a stated reason and the approval of a second staff role, and every request is recorded.
Never a private one-to-one conversation: Nelum holds no key to it.
What Nelum cannot do
A record is worth what the platform holding it is prevented from doing to it. These limits are the product, not a disclaimer at the bottom of it.
- We cannot change your record
There is no administrative edit for a document row, a message or a confirmation. Support can help you use the product; it cannot rewrite what the product recorded.
- We cannot hold your money
Nelum is not a bank, broker, dealer or escrow agent. Bank instruments stay between you and your banks.
- We do not decide when you are finished
A consignment is completed only when every party to it confirms. There is no stage counter that closes a trade on your behalf, because no two companies in this trade run the same fulfilment.
The five questions a review actually asks
Whether it comes from your own compliance function, an external auditor, a refiner’s onboarding team or a tax authority, the questions are largely the same — and they are asked long after the trade closed.
- 01Who did you trade with, and did you check them?
A counterparty met on the board is a company that completed business verification — registration, control, and sanctions screening — with a named representative whose identity was checked.
- 02What did you ask for, and what did you get?
Every slot carries what was asked for, whether it was filed, accepted or queried, and who said so. Every document carries its versions and who filed each one.
- 03Did anything change after the fact?
Versions, queries and acceptances are all in the consignment's history with their timestamps. A document replaced after a query reads as exactly that.
- 04How long do you keep it?
Verification and transaction records are retained for at least five years after the end of the business relationship, and trade documents for six years from the end of the matter they relate to — longer where local law requires it.
- 05Can you produce it per consignment?
Yes. Each consignment keeps its own documents, and each lot keeps its origins through merges and splits — which is what OECD five-step due diligence and chain-of-custody schemes require when a single intake draws on more than one source.
Nelum provides the record. It does not certify origin, quality or lawful ownership, and it does not perform your due diligence for you — those remain yours, which is precisely why the evidence has to be yours too.
Questions people ask about this
- Can a filed document be deleted?
No. A correction is filed as a new version, and every earlier version stays readable with who filed it and when. The only thing that can be removed is an empty slot, by the company that added it, and that removal is recorded in the audit log.
- What about the consignment's history?
Every filing, request, review, release and confirmation writes a line to it, with the company and person who acted and the time. Nothing in the product edits or removes a line — not for either party, and not for us.
- Who owns the documents?
You do. Nelum stores them and controls access to them for the parties on the consignment; we make no claim to them and use them only to serve them to the parties they were released to, and to read them for the company that filed them.
- Does the trail cover the board as well as consignments?
Offers carry their own record — what was offered, when, and how it was answered. A consignment can be taken forward from an intent's thread, carrying the intent's document list as empty slots.
Start keeping the record from the first trade
Registration and verification cost nothing. Consignments, and the record they keep, come with company membership.