What Is an EDI 862 (Shipping Schedule)?

An EDI 862 is the X12 Shipping Schedule, the electronic message in which a customer tells a supplier exactly what to ship and when, on top of the forecast it already sent in an 830.

X12's purpose statement sets the rules for how it is used:

• Sender and receiver: a customer conveys precise shipping schedule requirements to a supplier.
• Supplement, not replacement: the 862 will supersede certain shipping and delivery information sent in a previous planning schedule, but it does not replace the 830.
• No authorizations: the 862 shall not be used to authorize labor, materials or other resources.
• More often: it lets the customer issue precise shipping schedule requirements on a more frequent basis than planning schedules, such as daily shipping schedules versus weekly planning schedules.
• By location: a customer location can issue shipping requirements independent of other customer locations when planning schedules are issued by a consolidated scheduling organization.

X12 lists the 862 among the transaction sets of its Supply Chain subcommittee (X12M).

The two sets work as a pair, and X12 separates their jobs:

• 830 Planning Schedule with Release Capability: transfers forecasting and material release information. X12 says it can be a simple forecast, a forecast with the buyer's authorization for the seller to commit to resources such as labor or material, or a forecast that is also used as an order release mechanism.
• 862 Shipping Schedule: precise shipping schedule requirements, issued more often, that supersede certain shipping and delivery information in the 830 without replacing it.

The clearest line between them is authorization. An 830 can carry the buyer's authorization for the seller to commit to labor or material. An 862 shall not be used to authorize labor, materials or other resources.

A manufacturer's weekly 830 forecasts 1,000 units of one part for next week. During that week, it sends its supplier daily 862 requirements:

• Monday: 200 units
• Tuesday: 200 units
• Wednesday: 250 units
• Thursday: 150 units
• Friday: 200 units

The daily quantities total 200 + 200 + 250 + 150 + 200 = 1,000 units, which in this example happens to match the forecast. The supplier ships to the 862 dates, while the 830 stays in place for planning.

If the supplier sells on Shopify, fulfillment orders represent the work which is intended to be done in relation to an order, and Shopify creates fulfillment orders automatically when an order is created. An integration that turns 862 lines into orders can read two dates and one status on the GraphQL Admin API FulfillmentOrder object to see what is due and when:

• fulfillAt: the date and time at which the fulfillment order will be fulfillable. When it is reached, the scheduled fulfillment order is automatically transitioned to open.
• fulfillBy: the latest date and time by which all items in the fulfillment order need to be fulfilled.
• SCHEDULED status: the fulfillment order is deferred and will be ready for fulfillment after the date and time specified in fulfill_at.

Shopify's own example is a subscription order, whose fulfill_at date might be the 1st of each month. Treating an 862 date as one of these fields is a design choice the integration makes.

Uncap's guide to EDI on Shopify for distributors explains that EDI terminates at the ERP or its integration layer, where the order lands "in the system that already knows how to allocate stock, schedule the warehouse, and cut the invoice."

• EDI 830 (planning schedule)
• Just-in-time inventory
• Material requirements planning (MRP)
• EDI 850 (purchase order)
• EDI 856 (advance ship notice)
• EDI 860 (purchase order change)

• X12 Transaction Sets
• Shopify Dev Docs: FulfillmentOrder
• Shopify Dev Docs: FulfillmentOrderStatus