EDI for greenhouse and nursery growers.

EDI is how big-box retail talks to its suppliers. Purchase orders arrive as an 850, your acknowledgment goes back as an 855, the shipment announces itself as an 856, and a pay-by-scan program settles on 852 scan data. This page is the plain-language map of those documents, and of how Work Suite creates them from the work your dock is already doing.

The paperwork, decoded

Eight documents run the program.

  • EDI 850 · PURCHASE ORDER The retailer’s order: items, quantities, dates, and stores. Everything downstream answers this document. Read the guide
  • EDI 855 · ACKNOWLEDGMENT Your answer to the 850: what you will ship, what you will short, and when. Retail programs expect it back fast. Read the guide
  • EDI 753 · READY TO SHIP The routing request some big-box programs require before a truck can be scheduled. Read the guide
  • EDI 856 · ADVANCE SHIP NOTICE Tells the retailer exactly what is on the truck before it arrives, so receiving is a scan instead of a recount.
  • EDI 810 · INVOICE The bill, sent as data instead of paper, matched against the 850 and the 856 on the retailer’s side. Read the guide
  • EDI 852 · PRODUCT ACTIVITY Store-level scan and sales data. In a pay-by-scan program, this document is where your revenue lives. Read the guide
  • EDI 846 · INVENTORY ADVICE What you have available to promise, sent on a schedule, so buyers stop calling to ask. Read the guide
  • EDI 820 · REMITTANCE How the retailer tells you what it paid and why, deduction by deduction. Read the guide
Where the documents come from

Generated from the dock scan, not re-keyed.

Re-keying orders into a portal is how EDI eats a week. In Work Suite, EDI is native to the order lifecycle: the 850 lands as an order with live availability on every line, and the 855 goes back automatically. At the dock, one scan creates the ship list, the invoice, and the EDI transaction, so the paperwork leaves with the truck. Acknowledgments, advance ship notices, and scan-based reconciliation all live on the same record.

See FULFILL™, the module that runs the dock

Asked about EDI

The questions that come up most.

What EDI documents do big-box retail programs require from growers?
The core set is the 850 purchase order in, the 855 acknowledgment back, the 856 advance ship notice when the truck is loaded, and the 810 invoice. Pay-by-scan programs add the 852 product activity document, and many programs also use the 846 for availability, the 753 for routing, and the 820 for remittance.
Does Work Suite handle EDI natively?
Yes. EDI is part of the order lifecycle, not an add-on. Orders arrive as 850s with live availability on every line, acknowledgments go back automatically, and one scan at the dock creates the ship list, the invoice, and the EDI transaction.
What is pay-by-scan EDI?
In a pay-by-scan program the retailer pays when your product scans at the register, so the 852 product activity document carries your revenue. Reconciling scan data against what you shipped is how you learn what you were actually paid for. Work Suite builds scan-based reconciliation into the order lifecycle.
Do we need an EDI consultant to trade with big-box retailers?
If your system treats EDI as an add-on, usually yes. Work Suite generates the documents from the order record itself, so joining a retail program is configuration, not a consulting project.
Ready when you are

Run the program without drowning in paperwork.