You will be able to use the warehouse xml service (commonly known as EDI - Electronic Data Interchange) if your warehouse supports this, some warehouses only offer partial support for some of the information which can be sent or received.
| Table of Contents |
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What can be sent and received
Vision Commerce → Warehouse
Products |
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Purchase Orders (Pre-advices) |
Sales Orders |
Tasting Notes |
Warehouse → Vision Commerce
Goods Received |
Orders Pick Confirmation |
Stock Snapshot |
How is this sent to the warehouse
We use a direct method of communication which is commonly known as an API (application programming interface), this involves the two systems talking directly to each other.
We securely connect to the WMS and once authenticated we can send information in XML format or request a reply in XML format.
The XML formats are industry standard formats where we know what each field is and what we should receive in the field. ( XML - extensible markup language - commonly used in digital documents)
How is this controlled
You have full control over this within the warehouse group settings, there are two boxes on the page
PUSH | Send information to the warehouse |
PULL | Request the information from the warehouse |
You will find the options within the EDI tab on the warehouse group maintenance.
Vision Commerce can be integrated with your Warehouses (if this is supported by your Warehouses)
Sales Orders, Purchase Orders and Product Information files can be sent directly to your Warehouse real-time via email (when you choose to send them).
Confirmation of despatch of goods, confirmation of receipt of goods and Stock Snapshots received real-time via email (as soon as your Warehouse chooses to send them) so that you can ensure Vision Commerce stays synchronised with your Warehouse.
This is major process that ensures automated, rapid and accurate cross communication of business critical information in real-time between your staff and your Warehouse.
Your Warehouse would normally send out the files at a set time each day, but often can be requested to send files every year, month, day or hour depending on how quickly you need to see that your Orders and Purchase Orders have been processed.
Incoming Files:
Vision Commerce monitors incoming email, extracting the attached files, importing them (if they pass the stringent validation process) and updating the relevant Sales and Purchase Orders (providing they haven't already been updated).
Commerce checks for duplicated information (at file, order and order line level) and will not update a line or order twice.
The file will contain all the Goods Received since the last time your Warehouse generated this kind of file.
If you have had to manually mark goods as Received prior to the file imported, Commerce will not try and receipt them again.
Outgoing Files:
This avoids Orders being sent too early and gives you time to make adjustments.
You can choose whether to send a file straight away or wait until later in the day.
You can choose to send one Order per file or send many orders on a single file.
The following is a section of an example Outgoing Sales Order file:
Although this is just a section of the file, all the details of all the Orders are included with a file that is then sent through to your Warehouse quickly and most importantly accurately.
Monitoring Outgoing Files:
You can monitor all outgoing files from the Warehouse - Submissions screen.
Results are filtered by the Warehouse Group you wish to view.
You can look at Sales Orders, Pre-Advices and Product Codes separately.
You can see Order that are awaiting Submission or those that have already been submitted.
Although it is rarely needed, there is also an option to regenerate a file and submit it again.
Managing Incoming Files:
You can manage your incoming files using the Document Management screen.
Results are filtered by the Warehouse you wish to view.
You can check for all incoming files that have not yet been processed.
You can check whether files have been received for Purchase Orders, Sales Orders and Stock Snapshots individually.
You can view the files received converted from XML into easy to read .pdf formats
There is a Configuration tab so you can choose how often Vision Commerce checks for and uploads new files and how long to keep old files for.
Further information on these fields can be found here System Menu | EDI Settings within the warehouse group settings page.
Recommended Settings
We recommend a realtime setting where possible, however product codes are not normally required and purchase orders can just be sent when the next sales order is sent to the warehouse.
Pull Information
Document Type | What does this do |
|---|---|
Goods Received Schedule | this will try to match a purchase order line by line and receipt the stock, this increases the stock |
Orders Picked Schedule | this will match sales order lines and confirm the quantity despatched, this reduces stock in warehouse (it is no longer allocated) and makes the order line available for invoice. |
Stock Reconciliation Schedule | this is performed daily to balance the systems book to book and as long as commerce has processed the goods received and orders picked then this should balance, we only recommend to run this once daily. |
| Note |
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Do not switch on auto balance or create products unless you are told this is the method you will operate as this will automatically adjust your stocks to the warehouse every time it loads and should only be used by those customers who are just using the system for entering orders and where values do not matter. |
Email summary - we suggest you have this with an address, you will then receive an email confirming the processing and any issues, if you do not want this and only want to know about problems then tick the “exceptions only” option.
How do you monitor this is working
Use the warehouse documents - further reading is located here Warehouse Documents - Vision Commerce - Confluence (atlassian.net)