Amazon EDI: What Suppliers Need to Know

Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world and the second largest employer in the United States.It is one of the most trusted and popular retailers where vendors want their products to be listed.Amazon has made it really convenient for everyone to do business with them. Through its Vendor Central, sellers sell their products in bulk directly to Amazon and in turn, Amazon sells these under its own brand name to the customers. This platform provides the ability to integrate with the seller's business software system via EDI. It integrates seller's transactions and day-to-day orders received from Amazon store into their business software system in both directions. This would mean extracting relevant data from the seller's system and sending it to the store and at the same time extracting information like sales orders from the store and automatically integrating into the company's internal system.

How EDI Works On Amazon

Electronic Data Interchange is a way of exchanging business documents between a seller and Amazon. Amazon works with a variety of EDI software providers and types. According to the order size, there are three different Amazon EDI interfaces namely:

1. Small suppliers (~ 1 - 999 orders/month)- who send and receive files via Amazon Merchant Transport Utility (ATMU) software and these interface into a directory
2. Mid-sized suppliers (~ 500 - several 1000 orders/month)-who send and receive files via standard AS2 encrypted EDI through the Internet
3. Advanced web services interface for higher volumes of transactions

What are the benefits of EDI integration with Amazon?

✔        Increase capacity to deliver products quickly and on time to consumer
✔        Reduce costs and improve accuracy with automated services
✔        Reduced human errors in data entry
✔        Streamline the flow of communications and enhances business relations with any trading partner

Major EDI documents that Amazon works with:

EDI X12 documents

• EDI 846 - Inventory Status
• EDI810 - Invoice
• EDI 850 - Purchase Order message
• EDI 855 - Purchase Order Acknowledgment
• EDI 856 - Advance Ship Notice
• EDI 860 - Order Change Notification

Edifact (EDI) documents

• Purchase Orders - ORDERS
• Purchase Order Acknowledgements - ORDRSP
• Advance shipment notice - DESADV
• Invoice - INVOICE
• Point of Sale - SLSRPT
• Cost & inventory feed - INVRPT
• AS2 transfer protocol

To learn more about how we implement EDI for Amazon, contact us at +1 888-339-0722 or sales@infoconn.com