Embedded EDI
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- Making EDI Easier with Luminous
- What is EDI?
- How Luminous Integrates EDI
- A Typical EDI Flow
- How Luminous Simplifies This Flow
- Handling Dropship and Wholesale EDI
- Other Key Features
- Experience the Luminous Difference
Making EDI Easier with Luminous
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is often viewed as a complicated and outdated system, especially for brands dealing with big-box retailers. If you’ve struggled with terms like 850s, 810s, and 940s, you’re not alone. At Luminous, we aim to simplify EDI, turning it into a seamless part of your inventory management system. Let’s break down how our approach can help you manage EDI more effectively, especially if you’re using a platform like SPS Commerce.
What is EDI?
EDI is the process of electronically exchanging documents such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices between different systems. For many ecommerce brands, EDI is a requirement when selling to big retailers like Walmart or Target. While it’s essential, it often involves antiquated data formats and manual processes that slow down operations.
How Luminous Integrates EDI
At Luminous, we embed EDI directly into our platform, transforming complex documents into standard sales orders, purchase orders, or invoices that you can manage like any other transaction. Whether it’s an 850 (purchase order), a 940 (shipping order), or an 810 (invoice), we simplify the process by converting them into a format that’s easier to work with.
With Luminous, you can:
- Reduce manual errors and inefficiencies.
- Improve order processing speed.
- Enhance supplier and customer relationships.
- Ensure compliance with EDI standards.
A Typical EDI Flow
Here’s an example of what EDI might look like if you’re using SPS Commerce to sell to a retailer like Walmart:
- 850 (Purchase Order): You receive an 850 document from the retailer through SPS Commerce.
- 940 (Shipping Order): You send the order details to your 3PL or fulfillment partner.
- ASN (Advanced Shipping Notice): Once the order is shipped, you need to send the retailer a notification, often by manually copying details like the tracking number into SPS Commerce.
- 810 (Invoice): You generate an invoice in SPS Commerce and your accounting system manually.
This manual process is tedious, often requiring you to juggle multiple systems.
How Luminous Simplifies This Flow
With Luminous, the 850 document is automatically received as a normal order. We then push it to your 3PL as a 940, or if you’re handling fulfillment in-house, it appears on your sales order page. Once the order ships, Luminous will automatically generate the invoice (810) and send it to both the retailer and your accounting system, such as QuickBooks, without requiring manual input.
Handling Dropship and Wholesale EDI
Luminous also supports both dropship and wholesale EDI flows. The main difference between the two is in the invoicing process. For example, when invoicing multiple sales orders in a dropship scenario, Luminous can group them into a single 810 document, simplifying the invoicing process.
Other Key Features
- Splitting Orders: Luminous can split specific line items from an 850 or 940 to be fulfilled at different locations while keeping the same order number.
- Multiple Sales Channels: You can manage multiple fulfillment channels through the same EDI flow, streamlining your operations across the board.
Experience the Luminous Difference
Luminous takes the hassle out of EDI by embedding it directly into your operations, turning complex documents into manageable transactions. Our system works with your existing tech stack, integrating with your 3PL’s WMS and accounting systems like QuickBooks, making your fulfillment and invoicing processes smoother. Book a demo today!
Video transcript
An operations swear word
I've got an operations swear word for you guys. EDI. "EDI" — that's what most operators say. But here at Luminous, we'll help EDI suck a little bit less. And yes, before we move forward: we can replace SPS Commerce.
EDI deals with the consumption of a bunch of antiquated data forms, like 850s, 810s, 846s, 940s and 945s. It's confusing? Yeah, it's confusing, we know. So Luminous takes this really confusing, antiquated data and embeds it into the system, so it looks like any other purchase order, sales order or invoice.
What your EDI flow probably looks like today
Let's dive into what's probably happening with you right now if you're using SPS Commerce and your brand is selling to big-box retailers. Let's stretch our legs.
This is a flowchart of what you're probably going through right now with EDI. For this example, I have Walmart as the retailer. SPS Commerce is a go-between for your 3PL and their system, and then there's your inventory management system, or whatever system your operations team uses to manage things. I also have an accounting system here, which is very common.
What normally happens is you receive an 850 document. That normally goes into SPS Commerce, and SPS generally provides at least this value. Then it has to go over to the 3PL. Most of the time, 3PLs are able to receive a 940, or at least copy and paste an 850 as a 940. This just gets the order details to the 3PL.
Now this is where we start running into problems. Most of the time, retailers will force you to send an ASN, which is a 945, or an 856 if you're sending it directly to the retailer. This is just a notification once the order has shipped, with details like the tracking number and the contents of the shipment. So what you're probably doing is manually going into your 3PL's system, grabbing the tracking number and manually pasting it into SPS, or even manually sending it over to the retailer.
On top of that, when it's time to invoice and get paid by the retailer, a lot of times you're having to manually generate an invoice in both SPS Commerce and your accounting system, every single time.
The same flow in Luminous
So let's take the same example and see how it looks in Luminous. That 850 document gets received directly into Luminous as a normal order. Then we push it over as a 940 to your 3PL. If you do in-house fulfillment, it will just show up on your sales order page for you to fulfill like normal. Once you're ready to invoice and collect payment, Luminous will automatically generate an 810 and send it directly to QuickBooks and to the retailer.
Drop ship and wholesale EDI flows
Another question we get really often: do we handle drop ship EDI flows and wholesale EDI flows? Yes, we handle both. The main difference between drop ship EDI flows and wholesale EDI flows is really in the invoicing. When you send an 810 document, you need the logic to group multiple sales orders within a specific time frame and send one 810 with those sales orders grouped. Yes, we can do that. Are you with me? Yeah? Which one means yes? Yay.
Less common functionality
Some less common functionality you might want to know about: within a 940 or an 850, Luminous can split off specific line items and send them to be fulfilled from different places, while maintaining the same order number. If all of that went over your head, no worries. If you know, you know.
Luminous' most delightful feature
Overall, users say our embedded EDI is Luminous' most delightful feature. We take the really complex, boring, antiquated EDI forms and translate them into real-life e-commerce lingo that you actually understand. And more importantly, it's interconnected with the tech that matters, like your accounting system, your 3PL's WMS and your retailers.