Advance shipping notice (ASN) considerations

The ASN completes the order cycle at the eXchange. It lets us know what you're intending to supply and how you're intending to supply it.

This is probably the most complex filetype to develop as there are some business rules that you must follow in order for the ASN to correctly match the original order and to provide the correct information to Foodstuffs.

Product matching

The most frequent cause for ASN failure is product mismatch. If the ASN SUPPLIER_PRODUCT tag for a particular product does not match the same tag in the Purchase Order, then the ASN will fail. To prevent this, please make sure that your translation data is consistent between your internal systems and the eXchange. When managing changes to your product catalogue, please make every effort to do so after you've processed your orders through to picking. If you do get an ASN failure report (A110) then you need to confirm the order on the eXchange website before the goods are due to be delivered.

Multiple deliveries

Foodstuffs does not use a back-order system. This means that if you cannot completely fulfill an order, please do not schedule another delivery for a later date. We'll re-order the outstanding products.

You may split large orders that will be delivered by multiple trucks on the same day. 

Where you intend to split an order over multiple deliveries, then you'll need to pay attention to how the ORDER_COMPLETE and DELIVER_NUM tags are populated. As you create ASNs for each delivery, make sure that if there is to be a subsequent delivery, then the ORDER_COMPLETE tag must be populated as false. This will advance the order status to "Split".

Only the last ASN in the sequence will have ORDER_COMPLETE as true. This will advance the order status to "Confirmed". At Foodstuffs' end, this will then trigger the ASN data to accumulate against the order and push through to the relevant systems for processing.

The DELIVER_NUM tag allows you to define a delivery sequence. While it's an optional tag, we'll expect you to populate it if there are multiple deliveries. If the eXchange receives several ASNs at the same time for the same PO, it'll attempt to process them in sequence. However, if you send the ASNs out of sequence with a lag between them, the eXchange will process them as it receives them. If you send the final ASN before the others have processed, then it'll close the order and the subsequent ASNs will fail. So please send the ASNs in sequence.

Under and Oversupply

You may undersupply an order. 

You may not oversupply an order. The exception to this rule is for random weight items where the nominal weight might differ slightly from the actual weight being supplied. For example, we might order a side of beef, which will be breed and season dependent, so the weight could vary quite considerably from the expected nominal weight. See Handling random weight items in the Purchase order considerations page.