How to Conduct a Back-to-Back Review Across a Multi-Tier Contract Chain?

Fields for Line-by-Line Comparison

Product/Grade, Quantity/Packing, Manufacturing Mill, Unit Price and Total Value, Trade Terms (Incoterms) and Delivery Point, Shipping/Delivery Schedule, Payment Terms, Documentary Requirements, Quality Specifications, Time Limit for Quality Claims, B/L Party Roles (Shipper/Consignee), Insurance, Force Majeure, Liability for Breach, Dispute Resolution, Governing Language and Version Priority.

B/L party roles must remain operationally enforceable across the contract chain: who acts as Shipper and who as Consignee must be supported by every tier of contracts and import arrangements, and shall not be changed without written approval.

Three-Category Discrepancy Treatment

Fully Aligned: Execute directly.

Variance Acceptable: for example, the upstream claim period is 15 days and the downstream is also 15 days but with a different commencement date—identify the variance, confirm acceptance in writing, and build in lead time for internal operations.

Revision Mandatory: hard conflicts involving counterparty, amount, quality tolerance window, or payment milestones—do not sign or make payment until amended.

Pass-Through of Payment Terms

Common practice is to mirror upstream payment timing downstream (e.g., aligning the upstream deposit/final payment structure with the downstream collection structure) to ease working capital pressure; any tenor gap that cannot be mirrored represents real financing cost and must be factored into the delivered mill cost.