Which order model are you trading under? Department stores, Amazon and the documents each one needs
The first question I ask a supplier is not which documents the retailer wants. It is how the retailer buys. The documents follow from that. A department store, a hardware chain, a grocer and Amazon can all send a purchase order and want an ASN and an invoice back, and still need completely different things from your system, because the order model behind the documents is different. Most suppliers run two or three models at once, one per major customer, and the trouble starts when the second model is forced through a set-up built for the first.
The models
DC replenishment. The retailer's distribution centre orders in bulk; you ship pallets and cartons to the DC. The ASN carries pallet, carton and item levels with an SSCC on every pallet, and the invoice is per shipment. This is the grocers' and the department stores' main model, and the one with the most label rules.
Direct to store. Each store, or head office on its behalf, orders; you deliver to the store. A purchase order per store, an ASN per delivery, and a ship-to location number and customer record for every store. Hundreds of ship-tos is the normal case.
Cross-dock, packed by store. One order to the DC with store allocations; you pack by store, label by store, and the DC sorts without opening cartons. The ASN has store-level cartons, and the warehouse has to pick by store.
Drop ship. The retailer's web store takes the consumer order; you ship each parcel direct. A purchase order per consumer order, a stock availability feed, an ASN per parcel with carrier tracking, an invoice per order, and a returns process. The volumes are high and the orders are small, which changes the economics of anything priced per document.
Consignment and scan-based trading. Stock sits in the retailer's store or DC and stays yours until sold. Sales and stock reports come in, the invoice is raised on reported sales, and reconciling what they say sold against what you think is there is the whole job.
Vendor-managed inventory. You decide replenishment from the retailer's sales and stock data and raise the orders yourself, then ship and invoice as usual.
3PL-fulfilled. Your system holds the order; a third-party warehouse picks, packs and ships. The ASN is built from the warehouse's confirmation, so the warehouse has to be able to say what is on each pallet, and the ASN has to leave before the truck does.
Group and multi-distributor. A head office orders for member stores, or your distributors fulfil orders placed centrally. Bill-to and ship-to come apart.
Web, marketplace and emailed orders. Orders that arrive outside EDI and should go through the same acknowledgement, dispatch and invoice discipline rather than a separate manual path.
Department stores run several at once
A supplier to a department store such as Myer or David Jones will usually be on at least two of these. Bulk lines go into the DC on replenishment orders, with scan-packed cartons, SSCC labels and the ASN received before the goods. Myer's published standards go a step further: payment is calculated from the ASN quantity at the purchase-order price, with no invoice at all, so under that model the ASN is also the invoice. Department stores also run concessions and consignment ranges in some categories, where the sales report is the trigger for the invoice and the reconciliation is monthly. And the same supplier's online range is often drop-shipped from its own warehouse, one parcel per consumer order, with tracking on the ASN and a returns advice coming back. Three models, three ASN structures, three invoicing rules, one supplier. If the system was set up for the DC model, the drop-ship orders either get keyed by hand or go out with the wrong structure.
Amazon runs two programmes
Amazon is the model most Australian suppliers ask about now, and it is two different things. Selling to Amazon as a vendor is a DC-replenishment relationship with a strict compliance layer: purchase orders, order responses, routing requests and routing instructions for inbound freight, ASNs and invoices, with chargebacks for ASN accuracy, label compliance and timing. The American threads are full of it. One vendor's EDI lead described weekly chargebacks for months with every ticket answered by a pointer to the routing document page. A consultant who works with vendors summarised the most common root cause as the ASN being fired from the order quantity rather than the confirmed pick. Amazon's direct-fulfilment programme is drop ship by another name: a purchase order per consumer order, an ASN per parcel, an invoice per order, with the shipping label supplied through Amazon's own tools. Suppliers who treat the two programmes as one EDI set-up find that their ASN structure is right for one and wrong for the other. Selling through Amazon's marketplace as a third party is not EDI at all; it is an API and a different conversation.
What breaks between models
Split shipments. Australian grocers and pharmacies are explicit: one truck is one ASN and one invoice, and a split delivery means separate ASNs and separate invoices. Systems that raise one invoice per sales order break here, and drop-shippers whose orders split across two warehouses find the ASN goes out for half the order.
Pack hierarchy. The DC model wants pallet, carton and item; drop ship wants parcel and item; cross-dock wants store, carton and item. The warehouse has to capture whichever level the model needs, and a 3PL that cannot export pack-level data leaves someone re-keying pallets into a portal.
Where the invoice is triggered. On shipment for DC and direct-to-store, on the consumer order for drop ship, on the sales report for consignment, never at all under evaluated receipts settlement. Each is a different rule in the same system.
Whatever the model, the back-order and partial-shipment policy is agreed with the retailer and configured once: what the order response says about accepted, changed and rejected lines, what ships, and when the invoice is raised. Establish the model in the first ten minutes and the documents stop being a mystery.