How the Advance Shipping Notice supports retail operations

An Advance Shipping Notice (ASN), also called an advance shipment notice or advance shipment notification, is an EDI message a supplier sends as soon as goods leave the warehouse. It tells the retailer what is in the delivery, how it is packed and when it will arrive, so the distribution centre can plan the goods in before the lorry does.

What is an ASN in retail?

In UK retail, the ASN bridges the gap between an order being placed and the goods physically arriving at a store or distribution centre. It sits within the wider set of messages exchanged over a retailer's required EDI connection, alongside the purchase order and the invoice. If the term EDI itself is new to you, it is worth reading a primer on what EDI is before going further, since the ASN only works as part of that wider message exchange.

Supermarkets, health and beauty retailers and general merchandise chains increasingly make the ASN mandatory for every supplier, not just the largest ones. It matters most for fresh food and FMCG lines, where shelf life, batch tracking and delivery windows are tightly controlled. Suppliers who cannot produce an accurate ASN on time risk delays at goods-in, and in some cases a rejected delivery.

What data does an ASN contain?

An ASN carries far more than a delivery date. It gives the receiving distribution centre everything it needs to check a delivery against the order without opening a single box or case. The core fields, sent as structured data rather than free text, typically include:

The ASN by EDI standard: EDIFACT, X12 and TRADACOMS

The ASN goes by a different name depending on which EDI standard a trading partner uses, though the underlying job is identical in every case: telling the receiving party what is coming before it arrives.

• EDIFACT: the message is called DESADV, short for despatch advice, and is the standard most widely used by UK and European retailers
• ANSI X12: the message is transaction set 856, commonly known simply as 'the 856', used by many US headquartered retailers and online marketplaces
• TRADACOMS: the older UK grocery standard still used by some retail trading partners, where the same message is called the delivery notification

Whichever standard a retailer specifies, the ASN sits within their required EDI transaction set, alongside the purchase order and the invoice. For more on how the standards themselves differ, see our guide to EDI standards.

Where the ASN sits in the order to invoice cycle

The ASN sits in the middle of the trading cycle, not at either end of it. The retailer raises a purchase order, the supplier confirms it, then picks and packs the goods against that confirmed order. The ASN is generated and sent as the delivery leaves the warehouse, describing exactly what has been packed rather than what was originally requested.

Only once the goods are physically received and checked against the ASN does the supplier raise the invoice. Because the invoice is expected to match the ASN, and the ASN is expected to match what was actually delivered, an accurate ASN is the foundation that the rest of the cycle depends on.

SSCC labels and the pallet to case hierarchy

Each pallet or roll cage in a shipment carries a Serial Shipping Container Code, or SSCC, a unique 18 digit number issued under GS1 standards and printed as a barcode on the logistics label. The ASN lists every SSCC included in the delivery and maps each one down through the case and unit hierarchy packed beneath it.

When the vehicle arrives, warehouse staff scan the SSCC on each pallet rather than checking its contents by hand. The system matches the scanned code against the ASN, confirms the case count and product lines it should contain, and books the pallet straight into stock. This single scan replaces what would otherwise be a manual, line by line count.

When to send an ASN

An ASN should be sent as the goods leave the supplier, not when the order is placed and not after the vehicle arrives. Most retailers set a required window, commonly a few hours ahead of the delivery reaching the distribution centre, so the goods-in team has time to plan labour, equipment and dock space.

Sending the ASN too early is as much of a problem as sending it late. If the pallet count or product lines change after the message is sent, perhaps because a case is short-picked at the last minute, the ASN no longer matches the physical delivery and the discrepancy has to be resolved manually on arrival.

How UK retailers and distribution centres use the ASN

UK retailers and their distribution centres put the ASN to work in three main ways.

• Booking in: the ASN lets the goods-in team schedule a delivery slot in advance and allocate the right dock door and headcount before the vehicle turns up
• Cross-docking: where stock moves straight from an inbound vehicle to an outbound one, for example flowing on to a store rather than into fixed storage, the ASN tells the distribution centre exactly what is on each pallet so it can be routed on without unpacking or a manual check
• Stock accuracy: matching the ASN against what is physically scanned in updates the warehouse management system close to real time, rather than waiting for a manual stock count later in the day

This matters most at peak trading periods, when distribution centres are handling far higher delivery volumes and have less room to absorb error. Our article on how better supplier connectivity reduces stockouts during peak season looks at this in more depth.

What goes wrong with a late or inaccurate ASN

When an ASN is late, missing or does not match the load, the consequences land squarely on the supplier. Many retailers will not book in a delivery that has no ASN waiting for it in their system, and some will turn a vehicle away rather than receive goods against a purchase order alone.

Where the ASN does not match what is physically on the pallet, whether that is a quantity discrepancy, a missing SSCC or the wrong product line, retailers typically apply some form of compliance charge under their supplier trading terms. Downstream, the same mismatch causes invoice queries, because the invoice cannot be matched cleanly against what the retailer's systems recorded as received.

These problems tend to compound when EDI is managed in house without dedicated support. Our article on what happens when in-house EDI breaks down under retailer compliance rules looks at how quickly this can escalate.

ASN vs delivery note vs invoice

These three documents are often confused, but each does a distinct job at a different point in the delivery, and retailers expect all three to agree with each other.

How to send ASNs without manual work

Building an ASN by hand, keying in SSCC numbers or copying data across from a despatch note, is slow and error-prone at exactly the point where accuracy matters most. There are three practical ways to generate ASNs automatically once goods are picked and packed, and a supplier does not need to choose only one.

1. Directly from the order: the ASN is generated from the same order data already held in the trading connection, so a supplier confirms quantities and despatch details rather than typing a new message from scratch
2. Integrated into your ERP or warehouse management system: picking and packing confirmations trigger the ASN automatically, with SSCC labels generated and applied to pallets as part of the same process
3. A browser based service with no integration: for suppliers who are not ready to connect their own systems, an ASN can be completed and sent through a web form, still using the retailer's required message format

Transalis OpenEDI™ supports all three of these routes on the same connection, so a supplier can start with a browser based service and move to full ERP integration later without changing trading partner or losing message history. We add ASN capability to a supplier's EDI setup to meet retailer mandates, including for suppliers to Waitrose and Morrisons.