AbleCommerce and EDI

[derekz]

My store may need to accept large orders from retailers and distributors utilizing special pricing, P.O.s and shipping from our factory vs. our distribution center. I’m trying to determine if this can be accomplished with current AC functionality. (I understand this is not what the software was developed to do).

Some questions I have:

1. I don’t believe it can, but can AC accept or generate EDI transactions?

2. If we convert the EDI order transactions into CSV or similar formats, can AC import those?


My thoughts are that I will need to set up specific skus (hidden) for specific retailer pricing and have those skus be associated with a different warehouse (factory) when they need to be shipped from the factory vs. our DC. The only way I see I can enter an order is through the backend process and utilize PO payment methods.

If anyone has ideas on better ways to do this I would appreciate hearing them.

Thanks for the help.
Derek

[mazhar]

It would be better if you provide some more details about the data. For example what information is available in EDI transactions that you want to map in AbleCommerce?

[derekz]

Hi Mazhar,

The EDI data is primarily typical order, order acknowledgement and purchase order data. Primarily things like bill to, ship to, skus, quantity, tax, totals, p.o. numbers, etc.

Any ideas on how to best enter orders from larger customers who have special pricing? Do you see a better way than through the administrative "manage order" function? I appreciate the input.

[AbleMods]

The EDI data is primarily typical order, order acknowledgement and purchase order data. Primarily things like bill to, ship to, skus, quantity, tax, totals, p.o. numbers, etc.

I wrote a web service interface for SBC Fulfillment that sounds similar to your need. As a fulfillment house, SBC needed a way to automate the exchange of order and shipment data between their systems and their client AC7 website.

The result was a fully automatic solution. SBC contacts my web service and requests any untransmitted orders via HTTP SOAP requests. My service transmits whatever orders necessary in a format custom to SBC but easily changed then marks the order as transmitted via the order status.

I also fully automated the reverse. When SBC ships product on behalf of their customer, the SBC systems sends all the shipment details to my web service. My service parses through all the line items, marks the appropriate shipments as shipped and even posts the tracking numbers. Then it fires the appropriate email triggers to the client website notifies the online customer their order has shipped. Full support for partial shipments and backorders are also handled seemlessly.

Finally, the AC7 site needed automated stock updates from SBC since it's SBC that's handling inventory. I automated that as well - SBC just posts stock updates to my web service as needed and my code does the rest. Even supports variants although I think I'll be seeing variants in my sleep for a while

The final result was a fully automated exchange of order and shipment data between two dissimilar systems via the internet with practically no user intervention at all. Only when someone messes up a SKU or fails to notify SBC of a new product does something go awry.

So in a nut shell, exchanging data in any format is certainly possible but it will always require some sort of customization. In almost every case, the format of the EDI data layout is what directly dictates the cost. Something that's huge (like the automotive industry EDI format) is a major pain to implement. However something custom like my SBC web service was reasonable in both time and cost.

Any ideas on how to best enter orders from larger customers who have special pricing? Do you see a better way than through the administrative "manage order" function? I appreciate the input.

Differential pricing can be automatically accomplished by using User Groups in AC7 and assigning volume prices to that particular group. The catch is your volume-pricing customers must use the same login (email address) every time since that's how AC7 associates user accounts. This doesn't always work in B2B situations since different purchasing agents might place those orders over time. The better solution is for you to "assign" your B2B customer a specific login name for all their employees to use. This streamlines both their login information across multiple employees as well as reduces your user-account management on the site admin side of the equation.

Hope that helps.

[mazhar]

Also have a look at DataPort Utility. It does support order CSV and XML import. The CSV version of import contains certain fields only while XML can import all information about order. If this import coverts every thing you needed then you can simply produce CSV/XML files in DataPort format and it will import those orders into system.
http://wiki.ablecommerce.com/index.php/ ... rt_Utility

[jim-wilson]

thanks for sharing the info