What is an advance ship notice (ASN)?

What an advance ship notice is

An advance ship notice (ASN) is the supplier's electronic description of a shipment, sent when the goods leave and read by the buyer before they arrive. It answers three questions the receiving dock has: what is coming, when, and how it is packed. X12 defines its 856 for exactly that use, "to list the contents of a shipment of goods as well as additional information relating to the shipment, such as order information, product description, physical characteristics, type of packaging, marking, carrier information".

The mechanism that makes it worth sending is the label. Every carton or pallet carries an 18-digit SSCC in a GS1-128 barcode, and the ASN lists the same number with its contents. The dock scans one barcode, finds the matching unit in the ASN and books its contents into stock. When the ASN and the label disagree, or the ASN arrives after the truck, the dock counts by hand and the buyer records the failure. The number itself is explained on the SSCC label.

What an ASN carries, and where each part comes from

The fields are the same in every format. What makes an ASN hard to produce is that they come from three different records, written at three different moments. The example below is the shared order used across these pages: PO 4500018236, 24 and 16 units ordered, 24 and 12 confirmed and shipped.

The last two rows often live outside the ERP, in a warehouse system or a shipping tool. The order knows 40 units were ordered and the 855 acknowledgment promised 36. Only the pack record knows that 36 went into carton 006141410000482917. An ASN built from the order would report 40, and the receiver would find 4 missing on the first scan.

The same notice in X12, EANCOM and Peppol

Three standards carry an ASN, with different names and a different place for the SSCC. Which one applies is set by the buyer: X12 856 in North American retail, EANCOM DESADV in European retail, Peppol Despatch Advice where a buyer runs its purchasing over the Peppol network.

The carton from the example, with its 24 units of the first item, written three ways:

X12:     MAN*GM*00006141410000482917~  ...  SN1**24*EA~
EANCOM:  GIN+BJ+006141410000482917'    ...  QTY+12:24'
Peppol:  <cbc:DeliveredQuantity unitCode="EA">24</cbc:DeliveredQuantity>
         <cac:TransportHandlingUnit><cbc:ID>006141410000482917</cbc:ID>

The direction of the tree differs. In X12 and EANCOM the carton is a level and the items hang under it. In Peppol each despatch line carries its own quantity and names the handling unit, and a carton with two items appears on two lines with the same SSCC. Peppol also has OutstandingQuantity on the line, so the 4 units not shipped on the second item can be stated in the notice itself. A supplier with buyers on both sides of the Atlantic maps one shipment into two structures; the differences between the two EDI standards are on X12 vs EDIFACT.

Timing: the notice arrives before the truck

An ASN has a deadline counted back from the arrival, not forward from the order. Kroger states it in its vendor requirements: the ASN "is consistently sent at least 90 minutes before the truck arrives". GS1's EANCOM guide for the DESADV says the same without a number: the message should always be sent before the goods are physically delivered.

Worked through for the example shipment:

• The carton is closed at 09:10 and the truck leaves at 09:15.
• The drive to DC 07 takes 2 hours 30 minutes, so the truck arrives at 11:45.
• 11:45 minus 90 minutes puts the deadline at 10:15.
• An integration that builds ASNs in an hourly batch picks the shipment up at 10:00. The notice arrives 105 minutes before the truck, 15 minutes inside the deadline.
• A batch every four hours runs at 12:00. The notice goes out 15 minutes after the truck has arrived, and the shipment is received without it.

A shorter drive moves the deadline closer. With a 1 hour 45 minute drive the truck arrives at 11:00 and the deadline is 09:30, which an hourly batch misses as well: the next run after 09:10 is 10:00. For short lanes the ASN has to be triggered by the shipment event itself, the moment the carton is closed or the shipment is confirmed, rather than by a schedule. The trade-off between the two is set out in real time vs batch.

Receiving ASNs from your own suppliers

The same document runs the other way when you buy. A supplier's ASN tells your warehouse what to expect, and your ERP turns it into an expected receipt that the dock books against. NetSuite shows the shape. Its Inbound Shipment Management feature creates an inbound shipment record from one or more purchase orders, and Oracle's documentation states that the record "can be updated to reflect information received from the advanced shipping notice". The fields an incoming ASN fills:

Items can only be received when the status is In Transit or Partially Received, and an ordered quantity can be split across several inbound shipments. A supplier that ships 36 of 40 units in a first truck leaves 4 open on the purchase order, which a second inbound shipment picks up. The ASN itself still has to be read and translated outside NetSuite: Oracle's own EDI documentation for outbound ASNs refers to a "NetSuite EDI partner", as described on NetSuite EDI integration.

How a buyer checks an ASN

A buyer validates an ASN twice. The 997 functional acknowledgment confirms that the file arrived and passed the syntax checks. The content check comes later, from the receiving system, and in X12 it often comes back as an 824 application advice. Kroger's requirements show the full sequence a supplier goes through before ASNs count in production:

Kroger also tells the vendor to call its EDI coordinator when no 997 or 824 has come back within 12 hours of sending. That makes a missing acknowledgment a failure the supplier has to detect, not one the buyer reports. Retailers that score ASNs measure the same fields on every shipment after go-live; how those scores turn into charges is covered under EDI compliance.

What this means for your integration

An ASN is as accurate as the pack data it is built from and as timely as the trigger that sends it. In practice that means reading the pack record, not the order; taking the SSCC from the label that was printed; mapping into the structure each buyer's guide asks for; and sending on the shipment event, early enough for the shortest lane.

We build that as an EDI integration to your ERP and warehouse: the ASN is assembled per trading partner, counts and SSCCs are checked before it leaves, and each 997 and 824 is matched to the notice it answers. A notice that fails a check is held and shown in the dashboard with the reason, and a missing acknowledgment raises an alert instead of waiting for a call. Tell us which buyers ask you for ASNs.