Cheaper, more accurate, easy to extend: imported raw materials, from order to paid invoice

13 October 2026 · AgenticAuto

For a Nigerian manufacturer, imported raw materials are where money is most exposed. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria reported that the cost of imported raw materials rose 118% in 2024, to ₦6.64 trillion, with members' documented foreign exchange losses reaching ₦1.62 trillion. Every day a shipment is held costs more: in exchange rates, in port charges, and in production lines waiting for inputs.

Shipments are rarely held because of the goods. They are held because of the paperwork: a dozen documents, prepared by different people at the supplier, the bank, the insurer, the shipping line and your own team, that all have to tell the same story.

Where it goes wrong

The supplier ships 24,000 kg instead of the 20,000 kg on the order. Nobody notices, because the order sits with procurement, the Form M with the bank, and the bill of lading with the clearing agent. The difference surfaces at the port, when the shipping documents do not match the Form M. The shipment is queried, the Form M has to be amended, the port's free storage days run out, and the factory waits.

MadeEasy reads every document for a shipment as it arrives and checks it against all the others: the supplier, the product, the quantity, the value and the shipping terms. The mismatch is found the day the final invoice lands, before the vessel arrives, and goes straight to the people who can fix it.

A shipment is only as fast as its least consistent document.

Every date that costs money, watched

A Form M is valid for 180 days for raw materials. The bank can extend it once; after that, the Central Bank must approve. Ports allow a few free storage days before charges start. Suppliers have payment terms. MadeEasy keeps every shipment's dates in one place and warns the person who can act, in time to act: the procurement officer when a Form M is about to expire, the logistics lead when free days are running out, finance when a payment is due.

From goods received to paid invoice

When the materials arrive, the warehouse count and the quality report are matched against the order. When the supplier's invoice arrives, it is matched against both: what was ordered, what was received, and what is being charged. This is the "three-way match" finance teams know well, and done by hand it is slow. Research benchmarks put a manually processed invoice at around $10 to $13 and one to two weeks or more, against under $3 and about three days for the best teams.

MadeEasy does the matching in code, so every invoice is checked the same way. Invoices that agree go straight to finance for approval; the ones that do not go to procurement, with the differences already worked out.

Throughout, AI reads the documents, including scanned and photographed ones, code does the comparisons and the arithmetic, and people make every decision: procurement resolves mismatches with the supplier, the bank approves the Form M, and finance approves every payment.

How the process is set up in MadeEasy

MadeEasy is an AI operations platform: a team describes how a process works, and MadeEasy builds and runs it. The procurement team describes its process in its own terms. For example:

"For every raw-material import: when a purchase order is approved, ask the supplier for a proforma invoice and prepare the Form M documents for our bank. Check every document for the shipment against the order and the Form M as it arrives, and tell procurement the same day if anything differs. Warn me 30 days before a Form M expires and when a shipment has two free days left at the port. When goods are received, match the warehouse count and the quality report to the order. When the supplier's invoice arrives, match it to the order and the goods received; send matched invoices to finance for approval and the rest to procurement."

1. Connect the systems you already use. Purchase orders and goods received from your business system, and the folders or mailboxes where suppliers, the bank, the insurer and the clearing agent send documents.
2. Set the rules for a match. Which details must agree on which documents, and the tolerances you accept, such as a small difference in weight. Written as checks that run in code and reviewed before use.
3. Set the dates to watch. Form M validity, the port's free days, payment terms, and who is warned for each.
4. Choose the approvals. Who resolves a mismatch, who approves an invoice, and the limits at each level.
5. Test on past shipments before go-live. Replay completed imports and invoices, including the ones that went wrong. The gate refuses go-live until the process finds the mismatches your team found, including the ones that were only discovered at the port.

Beyond imports

The same platform runs the rest of a manufacturer's paperwork: distributor orders taken on WhatsApp and email, credit checks and collections, rebate calculations, local supplier invoices, and product registration renewals and certificates. Each is described, tested and switched on the same way.

What it costs

MadeEasy Cloud starts at $10 (₦10,000) per process a month, or self-hosted inside your own infrastructure, priced for your organisation. If you would rather we build it (its first year on MadeEasy Cloud is included), supplier invoice matching costs from $500 (₦600,000), and the full import process connected to your business system from $1,250 (₦1,500,000). See pricing, and our fraud and compliance article for how this compares with traditional automation.

Three questions boards ask

Sources

1. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria on the cost of imported raw materials and foreign exchange losses in 2024, reported June 2025.
2. A Nigerian bank's published guide to Form M validity and extensions.
3. An inspection agency's guide to filing the e-Form M and its supporting documents.
4. A summary of published invoice processing benchmarks, including APQC and Ardent Partners research.
5. MadeEasy pricing.