Support for outbound EDI 846

[waifurchin]

Root question: What solutions exist for outbound EDI 846 (inventory advice) documents in JDE E1 v9.1?

Please assume for this question that support is required and the output must be a valid EDI document. Also assume the inventory quantity being reported is strict on-hand and JDE has not been hammered by custom coding (default tables/fields).

Background: We are a manufacturer looking to support direct to consumer dropship programs (direct from OEM e-com) for a handful of customers, all of which request inventory advice.

I am researching options for the support of outbound EDI 846 documents (inventory reporting) in JDE v9.1. It does not appear that JDE natively supports this document. I am, therefore, open to third-party applications, provided they offer tight integration (full automation).

Our system is AS/400 based running JDE E1 v9.1. We process EDI through INOVIS. As a newb to JDE, I am not sure what other information might prove relevant to this question, but will gladly provide what I can upon request.

Thanks in advance.

 

[JMast]

waifurchin,

Welcome to the List. We are also a manufacturer providing inventory advice to customers.

You are correct that there is no process setup for 846 in JDE. However, it boils down to being fairly simple report output.

Currently, our customers prefer FTP files, so I have a SQL Server script that runs nightly against the JDE database creating a file and we have scripted dropping the file onto their sites.

However, I expect to soon send to other customers through EDI which is what we would prefer. We use TrueCommerce and their system will accept csv files. So, when we get to that point, I am going to create a JDE job to output a csv file with the inventory data.

So, the first question I would ask is what does INOVIS require and see if you can build a JDE job for that purpose.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have questions.

Jer

 

[waifurchin]

Thank you for the quick response.

The flat-file approach could work... I would need to format the output to mirror the ANSI X12 846 spec (not terribly difficult), and there is a maintenance concern having one document for one customer drifting around outside the normal process.

Still, barring other options it will do the trick, and it is a good lead.

Thanks.

 

[JMast]

waifurchin,

I hear you on the maintenance of flat files. There are a wide variety of options for handling that.

Does INOVIS pull your outgoing documents directly from the JDE tables? If so, can you do the same for the 846 by creating a custom table in JDE with the correct layout, populate it with JDE jobs and configure INOVIS to read it?

You can follow the JDE EDI pattern and use a Successfully Processed flag and/or unique document numbers if needed.

Jer

 

[waifurchin]

To round this out - we started with the flat-file, but ended up building a small table of cross-referenced data from F41021 and a few others. Our translator now pulls from the table on schedule, maps to 846, clears the table, and done.

We also looked at repurposing the 852 doc, but our 852 is driven from F4111, not the best solution in our case, but for others it may make sense.

 

[brandonkirsch]

Thanks for the update!