Sales Orders (SO)

This contains general and hopefully useful information about how the system processes sales order / despatch of stock files.

 To ask general questions on any of the EDI formats, then please send an email to editest@visionsuite.co.uk 
We aim to respond to your request within 3 working days once we have contacted our Vision EDI customer.

XML – a file structure which takes into account all the functionality and field within the warehousing system. We use a very basic form of XML which allows nearly anybody to create the file from many systems.

Each warehouse determine their own cut-off times for transmission of orders, but as Vision EDI is fully automated we prefer if customers are constantly sending sales orders throughout the day, not only does it keep orders flowing to the warehouse but it also stops delays at cut-off times when everybody tries to send.  The other additional benefit is that should you have a system problem at the cut-off the effect is minimised.

We would therefore strongly encourage customers to transmit files on a regular or real time basis.
The Vision EDI service normally operates 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Your sale order file names should be of a standard format which will allow us to identify any file uniquely for a particular customer code, each Sales Order file would begin "SO....."

SO(YY)YYMMDD_hhmmssttt.<customer code>       e.g. SO051214_123204000.ABCD1234   OR

SO(YY)YYMMDD_<orderNo>.<customer code>       e.g. SO051214_SO0123456.ABCD1234  OR

SO(YY)YYMMDD_hhmmss_<orderNo>.<customer code>       e.g. SO051214_123204000_0123456.ABCD1234

Key
YY = year        can be 2 or 4 digit year                
hh = hour                    
ttt = milliseconds
MM = month of the year
mm = Minutes past the hour
DD = day of month
ss = seconds 

The customer code for the filename would normally be the same code as used in the customer code field of the order file, although we can accept a file which contains orders for multiple customer accounts.

Please try to avoid exceeding 32 characters in the file name.

We use this convention to identify the filetype, it allows us to pre-process the file before we parse the XML as we perform various checks on the filename existance for duplication purposes.  It also allows us to identify which XML model we will be using for the filetype and allows us to process faster, it also allows us to check whether your customer code has permissions for the filetype without us having to load the file to see what is in it and finally it allows us to acknowledge we have the file back to you without having to open and read the contents.

We also do not allow multiple different file types in the same file, so a sales order file can only contain sales orders, and this then negates the need to use XML namespaces.

See section below

See section below

It is your responsibility to not duplicate the files you send to the warehouse, if you choose to resend please be sure that you are not going to duplicate orders.

However, if you resend the same file within a short period of time we have a mechanism in place that it will not be processed.

Instead we will fail the file and remove it from the upload queue. The period is usually within the same working day.

Most customers using Vision will not have this check switched on.  When this is on then we will check for the same number appearing again on another file, if that is the case we reject the order.

If this is switched off, then customers could use this to provide an add-on order, although it will not be combined with the original the references you send are all the same and we would create another unique order, so it is important if you send the same order that you ONLY send additional lines in the new order, you can not amend, adjust, delete or edit the original order.

The Vision EDI service has a facility to acknowledge files received.
This facility is only enables for customer who have tested their files using the file testing service and from 31 December 2015 this will not be available to those customers sending CSV files.

If you have tested and you wish to receive a receipt confirmation email then your nominated email address will be sent an email containing information about the file received, the number of orders, number of lines and time of receipt.
This email can only be sent to one email address which is defined in the Vision EDI service.
It should be used to provide only an acknowledgement that the warehouse has received a file and not that the file has been processed.

The Vision EDI service has a facility to confirm orders processed on the system, it can be schedule to be send on an hourly, daily, weekly basis.
This email can be sent as a pdf/csv/xml file and it can be scheduled to goto multiple recipients. 
You can configure this within the Vision CIS admin control panel. 
This contains orders which have been entered onto the system. 

We archive files for 30 days after they have been sent. When its a HMRC warehouse this is usually 90 days. However our Vision EDI customers may choose to extend this

File errors where files can not be processed

If there is a data irregularity then we will reject the file.  In this instance customers need to be able to fix the data and resubmit the orders back to the Vision EDI system.
We offer limited support to Vision EDI customers to assist with this type of failure, we the creation of the file is outside of our control sometimes we are unable to assist. 

If your file fails and we can identify your customer code (it should be the file extension) then we will email you to tell you.

Where no issues are found

We upload and process the order which will go directly to the warehouse despatch, ready for picking.  No user intervention is required and normally the first person to see this order is the warehouse picking manager.

You can request a hourly orders processed report which will confirm the orders processed.

Missing or Inaccurate Data

When orders are received and found to contain missing information then the order will be placed on hold, and we will send you an email informing you that this is has occurred.

Generally Orders are held for :

• invalid or inaccurate delivery addresses

• insufficient stocks

• inaccurate information in the order especially rotation numbers.

We will only send you an email with the issues if we can identify your customer code (it should be the file extension).

Due to the complexities with picking operations, its impossible to achieve accurate stock shortages when the same product is specified multiple times on the same order.  If you need to do this then you have to specify the rotation number for each time the product appear, if the rotation has rotation line numbers then these should also be specified.

We generally set this to 50 lines per file and is dependant on whether the warehouse server can handle orders above this and whether the warehouse want orders with more than 50 lines.

It is a generic figure, some Vision customers have a much higher limit, some have a lower limit.

If your order exceeds the limit, all we do is automatically split the order into two orders, each processed separately, there is no duplication of lines nor is there any manual work involved in doing this. 

Customer can order by

• Product code

• Rotation number

• Batch number

• Product code / rotation number

 Note : You can supply a rotation number with or without a rotation line number, it is only required to state the line number when you have stocks owned by customer reserves.