EDI 945 Warehouse Shipping Advice

What is an EDI 945?

The EDI 945 is the X12 transaction set Warehouse Shipping Advice. The X12 purpose statement says it "can be used by the warehouse to advise the depositor that shipment was made" and that "it is used to reconcile order quantities with shipment quantities." The depositor is the company that owns the stock: a manufacturer or brand that stores its goods at a third-party logistics warehouse (3PL) or at its own outside warehouse. There is no established EDIFACT equivalent.

The 945 answers the 940 Warehouse Shipping Order. The depositor sends the 940 to say what to ship and where; the warehouse sends the 945 once the truck is loaded. Its functional group code in GS01 is SW. It is one of the EDI documents that never reach the retailer, yet a retailer's ship notice depends on it.

Where the 945 sits in the order-to-cash flow

The example order used on our document pages, PO 4500018236, shows the chain. The retailer ordered 24 and 16 units, the supplier confirmed 24 and 12, and a 3PL ships the goods.

Each of these files is answered by a 997 functional acknowledgment, so the 945 adds two transaction sets to the order: the 945 itself and its 997.

The segments of a 945

In X12 004010 the 945 has two mandatory segments after ST: W06 in the heading and the N1 name loop, which repeats up to 10 times. Everything about the goods sits in the detail loop LX, with W12 lines under it, and W03 carries the totals.

W1201 is a code from the X12 list of 102 shipment and order statuses. CC is "Shipment Complete on (Date)", PR is "Partial Shipment", CP is "Partial Shipment on (Date), Considered No Backorder". At least one of W1206 (a 12-character U.P.C. case code) or W1207 (a product ID qualifier with the ID in W1208) has to be present.

A sample 945, with delimiters

This is the 945 the 3PL sends for depositor order SO-77120: one carton with two items, 24 units of item 10482 and 12 of item 10499. Elements are separated by *, segments end with ~.

ST*945*0001~
W06*F*SO-77120*20261003*SH0004821**4500018236~
N1*SF*LAKESIDE LOGISTICS*91*WH02~
N1*ST*HARBOR RETAIL DC 07*92*0007~
N9*BM*BOL7730042~
G62*11*20261003*A*0915*ET~
W27*M*ABCD*TRL5521~
LX*1~
MAN*GM*00006141410000482917~
W12*CC*24*24*0*EA**VN*10482*********PL*000001~
W12*CC*12*12*0*EA**VN*10499*********PL*000002~
W03*36*18.4*LB~
SE*13*0001~

W03 holds 24 plus 12, which is 36 units, at 18.4 pounds. From ST to SE there are 13 segments, so SE01 is 13, and SE02 repeats the control number 0001. In each W12 the item is the supplier's number (W1207 VN), and nine element separators after W1208 skip W1209 to W1216 to reach W1217 PL with the six-digit line number of the 940. W1204 is 0 on both lines, so no reason code is needed.

Every value the 856 needs is here: the shipment ID SH0004821 becomes BSN02, the bill of lading becomes REF*BM, the SCAC goes to TD5, the SSCC to MAN at the pack level and the quantities to SN1. The 856 page carries the same order as an 856 sample.

The envelope around it

ISA*00*          *00*          *ZZ*LAKESIDE3PL    *ZZ*NORTHFIELD     *261003*0920*U*00401*000000731*0*P*>~
GS*SW*LAKESIDE3PL*NORTHFIELD*20261003*0920*731*X*004010~
ST*945*0001~
SE*13*0001~
GE*1*731~
IEA*1*000000731~

The sender is the warehouse and the receiver is the depositor. ISA06 is padded with spaces to 15 characters, the interchange control number 000000731 comes back in IEA02, and the group control number 731 in GE02. GE01 counts 1 transaction set and IEA01 counts 1 group. ISA15 is P for production and T for test. W06 holds one depositor order number, so each order gets its own ST to SE inside the group.

Who asks for the 945, and how the guides differ

The 945 is asked for by the depositor, not by the retailer. Manufacturers publish guides for the warehouses that ship for them. Two public ones, both X12 004010, checked on 3 October 2026:

A warehouse that ships for both writes two maps for the same transaction set. Kroger shows the other direction: its own 940 map (version 5010, modified 3/17/2025) sends orders to consolidation warehouses, with the depositor order number in W0502 and parties by DUNS+4.

What goes wrong and what it costs

The retailer never receives the 945, so no retailer schedule names it. The cost arrives one step later, in the 856 and the 810 that are built from it.

• A late 945. Kroger requires the ASN at least 90 minutes before the truck arrives. A truck that leaves at 10:05 for a 2-hour drive arrives at 12:05, so the 856 is due at 10:35. A warehouse that sends its 945s in an hourly batch at 11:00 makes the 856 25 minutes late before anything is mapped.
• A short line without a reason. Line 2 ships 10 of 12: W1203 is 10, W1204 is 2, and Hershey's guide requires W1219, for example 01. The 856 then reports 34 units and the 810 bills 34, not the 36 confirmed in the 855.
• Another unit of measure. The 940 orders line 1 as 24 eaches. A 945 that returns 24 with W1205 CA instead of EA reads as 24 cases; at 12 per case that is 288 units. Hershey's guide states the rule: the same unit of measure as received on the 940.
• Lots split over lines. Simplot's sample ships its line 1000 from two production codes as two W12 loops of 72 cases. Summed per line that is 144, plus 96 on line 2000, and W03 shows 240. A parser that keeps one W12 per line keeps 72.
• Data in a nonstandard place. Simplot carries the quantity per pallet in N903, which X12 defines as a free-form description. A generic parser drops it.
• A missing separator. In the second W12 of Simplot's own sample the empty W1204 is missing, which moves CA into W1204 and every element after it one place to the left. A file built that way fails validation or is mis-read.
• The same 945 twice. A resend for SO-77120 that is posted again ships the order a second time in the ERP. The pair of W0602 and W0604 identifies the shipment and has to be checked before posting.

Handling the 945 on the ERP side

The 945 becomes the shipment record of the sales order. In NetSuite that is the item fulfillment, created from the sales order with the shipped quantity per line. In Business Central it is a posted sales shipment; the standard API v2.0 reads posted shipments but has no call that posts a shipment alone, because the one bound action on a sales order, shipAndInvoice, ships and invoices together. The NetSuite EDI integration page has the record mapping for NetSuite.

We build the 940 and 945 as part of an EDI integration to your ERP and your warehouse: the 940 goes out with the line numbers the 945 has to return, the 945 is checked against it per line, unit and lot, and the 856 is built from the checked 945 the moment it arrives. A 945 with an unknown order, a quantity above the order or a unit that does not match is held and shown in the dashboard with the reason, before a ship notice is built from it. Tell us which warehouse and partners you work with.