TradeCircle vs individual grants

There are two ways to share restricted documents with buyers:

• Individual grants — case-by-case approval, one buyer per request. Detailed in Granting and revoking access.
• TradeCircle grants — pre-approve a known group of buyers; anyone in the group automatically gets access.

The right choice depends on how repeatable the relationship is.

When individual grants are right

Use one-at-a-time approval when:

• The buyer is new — first time you've heard of them, no prior context.
• The asset is high-value and you want to keep a clean audit trail of exactly who saw what.
• The relationship is transactional — single deal, then likely no further interaction.
• You're still figuring out how serious the buyer is. Make them earn each document.

Most cross-border first-time deals fall into this bucket. The marginal effort of approving each document is small, and the audit trail per buyer is clean.

When a TradeCircle is right

Use a TradeCircle when:

• You resell to a known network — same 20-50 dealers month after month. Approving each new listing's documents for each of them is repetitive work.
• You wholesale or syndicate — you want all your repeat buyers to see new inventory immediately, before it goes wider.
• You operate within a regional or industry network that already trusts each other — you don't want to make them request access every time.
• You want a tier of preferential buyers — "premium tier" members of a circle get earliest access to new listings; the public marketplace sees them later or not at all.

In these patterns, the friction of per-request approval is what you're trying to remove.

How a TradeCircle changes the access model

A TradeCircle is a list of business profiles you've grouped together. You decide who's in it; new members either follow it (if the circle's access mode is FOLLOWERS) or request to join (if it's REQUEST_APPROVAL). See Access modes — Followers vs by request.

Two access patterns it unlocks:

1. Listing visibility limited to circle members

A listing's visibility can be set to TRADECIRCLE. The listing is then only discoverable by members of the linked circle — not the public marketplace. Anyone in the circle sees it immediately; no per-request approval needed for the basic listing view.

2. Document access for circle members

For each restricted document in UnitVault, you can grant access to everyone in TradeCircle X in a single action. New members joining the circle later inherit access automatically; revoking the circle's access (or removing a member from the circle) cuts access.

The trade-offs

Mixing both

The two modes coexist. A listing can:

• Be visible only to a TradeCircle, but still accept individual document-access requests from circle members for documents that aren't pre-shared with the circle.
• Be publicly visible and pre-share documents with a TradeCircle, while requiring individual approval for non-circle buyers.

Most active sellers end up with a tiered setup: a circle of known repeat buyers who get early access and lighter approval friction, plus the public marketplace where individual grants apply.

Practical setup

To set up a TradeCircle and grant access to its members:

1. Create a TradeCircle — see Creating a TradeCircle.
2. Add or invite the businesses you want in it.
3. On a listing, set visibility to TRADECIRCLE and link the circle. Or keep visibility public but pre-grant document access to the circle.

You can adjust circle membership at any time without re-issuing per-document approvals — that's the whole point.