What Is an EDI 856 (Ship Notice/Manifest)?

X12 calls the 856 a critical transaction that ties the order to the delivery process. It sits between the order and the invoice in the basic supply chain flow: 850 purchase order, 855 acknowledgment, 856 ship notice, 810 invoice.

• Built while packing. As the supplier builds the outbound shipment, it captures item identification, quantity, lot and batch or serial numbers and item dates. That data is used to build the 856.
• Layered detail. The 856 can describe a shipment's contents and configuration in various levels of detail, down to how goods sit in the transportation equipment.
• Case and pallet markings. Many suppliers give each case or pallet a unique identifier. The MAN segment (Marks and Numbers) is matched to inbound containers by barcode or RFID capture.
• Receiving shortcut. When the shipment and the 856 are known to match from past deliveries, the order can be marked complete and the stock put away without further handling. When a supplier is new to the 856, the receiver checks most, if not every, container or item against the order first.

Some trading partners use the 857 Shipment and Billing Notice instead, which combines the ship notice and invoice so no separate invoice is sent.

Beyond items, packaging, markings and carrier, X12 notes that recent enhancements let the 856 carry insurance value, declared value, shipment value, pay-on-delivery and landed cost value, for the shipment or for individual orders in it.

The data travels in segments. A 1998 NIST guideline, which sets out the federal government's interpretation of the 856 under X12 version 003050, gives the purpose of each segment. Among them:

• ST and SE. Mark the start and end of the transaction set. ST assigns a control number, and SE gives the count of segments transmitted.
• BSN (Beginning Segment for Ship Notice). Identifying numbers, dates and other basic data for the transaction set.
• HL (Hierarchical Level). Identifies dependencies among, and the content of, hierarchically related groups of data segments.
• LIN (Item Identification). Basic item identification data.
• SN1 (Item Detail, Shipment). Line item detail relative to the shipment.
• PRF (Purchase Order Reference). A reference to a specific purchase order.
• TD1 and TD5 (Carrier Details). Transportation details on commodity, weight and quantity, and the carrier, routing sequence and transit time.
• REF and DTM. Identifying numbers, and pertinent dates and times.
• N1 (Name). Identifies a party by type of organization, name and code.
• MAN (Marks and Numbers). Identifying marks and numbers for shipping containers. X12's own supply chain overview names this segment too.

A supplier ships one purchase order on 2 pallets, each with 20 cases of 12 units: 2 x 20 x 12 = 480 units. Its 856 lists the shipment, both pallets, the 40 cases and the item line, along with each case and pallet marking. At the dock, the buyer's team scans the pallet labels, matches them to the open order for 480 units, and receives the stock.

Shopify records tracking information for each fulfillment: the tracking company, the tracking number and the URLs to track it. X12 lists carrier information among an 856's contents, along with packaging and marking, such as the unique identifiers many suppliers assign to cases and pallets.

Uncap's Shopify EDI integration guide flags the common gap: a connector that only handles inbound 850s and outbound 810s leaves acknowledgment and ASN generation as manual steps, which is where chargeback exposure accumulates.

• EDI (electronic data interchange)
• EDI 850
• Purchase order
• cXML
• Order to cash

• X12 Transaction Sets
• X12 Supply Chain Transaction Flow
• NIST SP 881-66: ASC X12 856 Ship Notice/Manifest Implementation Convention