Jayne, >From what you wrote, I think most suppliers will be able to comply.
I suggest you eschew any special characters. Capital alphas and numerics are the most trouble-free, and if necessary, can be re-keyed without difficulty (for a query?) Whenever you begin adding special characters, you risk conversion problems, keying problems, etc., and some TPs simply can't handle special characters in their legacy systems. For ease of identification for your customer service reps, you may wish to consider a PO number that has some format that will clue them to the fact it is VMI. A former employer who was a VMI supplier used three Alpha to identify the supplier, 2 char alphanumeric to ID the ship-to site, 3 numeric (it should have been 4) for sequence number, by ship-to-site. You can add a suffix if you need to. (As a wanna-be purist, I usually don't like sequence numbers that carry intelligence, but a PO number is not only machine-processed, so I bow to pressure from the users on this element.) Finally, check with some of your key suppliers, and ask them this question. If they already are doing VMI with other customers, they may have a preferred PO format. You can decide to adopt one of those, if you wish. Good luck, Art Douglas Chief Consultant Blackwater Network 877-464-8915 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jayne Gillette Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 10:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [EDI-L] VMI PO Numbers Dear Group - With the implementation of a new merchandising system next year, we (retailer) are going to begin allowing our VMI suppliers to generate PO numbers for the VMI POs they send us via the 855 transaction, instead of us providing them a list of valid PO numbers ahead of time, which is what we do today under the current system. The "PO number" I am referring to appears in BAK03 of the 855. In the new system, when we process the 855 and create the corresponding order in our system, we will assign one of our internal PO numbers to the order for internal purposes, and save the BAK03 supplier-generated PO number in a reference field for use with other EDI documents exchanged with the supplier (invoices, ASNs, etc.). My question relates to the format of the PO numbers our suppliers might send us on the 855s. In your experience, will it be easy for them to comply with the following requirements for a BAK03 PO number? 1. Must not exceed 15 digits. 2. Can use either alpha or numeric characters. (Note: the use of special characters such as hyphens, slashes, spaces, etc. is still under discussion, but the list of "allowed" special characters, if there are any at all, will probably be a pretty short list...) 3. PO number must remain unique for at least one year. Or, if we didn't put any restrictions at all on the PO number they send on the 855 and instead told them to just send us their internal order number, do you have examples of PO numbers (i.e., internal order numbers) we might get? Do "internal order numbers" from various systems automatically meet the above requirements anyway? As always, thank you for your valuable input and guidance! Jayne ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix. Yahoo! Groups Links ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
