What is an EDI 856 (ASN)?

An EDI 856 is the Advance Ship Notice, sent by the supplier before a shipment arrives. It describes the shipment hierarchically — shipment, order, pack, item — so the receiving dock knows what is on the truck, which carton holds which SKU, and how each carton maps back to the purchase order. Each carton is identified by the SSCC encoded in its GS1-128 label.

The 856 is the document most often responsible for a chargeback. It has to arrive before the truck, and the carton structure it declares has to match what the receiver scans. A mismatch between the ASN and the physical pallet is treated as a compliance failure even when every unit is present.

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