How can I get an order from a supplier to a store?

This document describes how a supplier can deliver an order that was initiated by the supplier themselves, to the purchasing order administration of a store.

Sending an order created by the supplier (for example, in a showroom, trade fair, or store visit) can be done from the supplier's logistics environment to a store through an EDI message.

This is done using an Order Response message, a type 'ORDRSP' message. This message is used both to confirm a purchase order from a store, as well as to create a new purchase order in the store. An example of this message can be found in the attachment of this QA.

If the message contains an RFF+VN line, that is the order number / order reference of the supplier. The agreement with OrdRsp messages is that when that field exists, the message is an initial message indicating that a supplier has created an order for the store. That field will appear in the 'Confirmation' tab of the purchase order under the 'Supplier order number' field. The value from the RFF+VN field is used to check if there is already an open purchase order from this supplier with the value of this data in the 'Supplier purchase order number' field. If that is the case, that found purchase order will be updated. In essence, the message is treated as an order confirmation.

If the supplier order number cannot be found in an open purchase order, a new purchase order of the type 'Order by supplier' will be created. This order is immediately final in terms of status and already has an export date.

This prevents the product from being accidentally resubmitted as a new order to the supplier in a later process.

By the way, a change request has been made to GS1 to make the functionality regarding an initial order or a confirmation on an existing purchase order more explicit. The complete EDI specifications of the order response message can be found in QA369.