Can I Change an Item on an EDI Order?

Q: Can I change an item on an EDI order? My trading partner placed an order for an obsolete item. Can I change it to the replacement item?

A: The cleanest way to handle this scenario is to ask your trading partner to resend the order with the correct replacement item and cancel the original order.

However, if that is not possible or practical and your trading partner allows you to send the replacement item, there may be certain restrictions. Elliott stores additional order information from your trading partners in Attributes. This information is sent back to your trading partner in outbound EDI documents, such as the ASN (Advanced Shipping Notice) or Invoice. Some of the information received from your trading partner may be required to turn around on the corresponding outbound EDI document.

Since Elliott does not allow you to change the item on an existing order line, the so-called “replacement” process requires you to delete the old line item and add a new line item. Deleting the old line item also deletes its associated Attributes, so you will need to manually add the Attributes that were attached to the original line item.

Ideally, you should recreate all of the Attributes from the original line item exactly on the new line item. However, the most common minimum requirement is that the line-item sequence number in the new line item's Attributes must match the original line-item sequence number.

This document outlines the procedure for adding the line-item sequence number attribute to the replacement line item. If other information is also required, you can follow the same procedure.

First, we need to see what Attributes are attached to the existing line item. This can be performed in Order Entry or Order Inquiry. If you use Order Inquiry, bring up the order and then use the Up and Down arrow keys to highlight the line item you want to change. And then click the Attributes button, indicated by the red arrow.

This will bring up the Attributes window with a list of Attributes attached to the item.

You might need more than one Attribute copied to the new item, but we are going to focus on the _ORDERLINE Attribute for our example. Highlight the Attribute and press Enter.

The line item sequence number is the first field in the Attribute with a value of 00030. Make a note of this and then you can delete the line item in Order Entry.

Now you can add the replacement item. Add the _ORDERLINE Attribute to the line item and populate LineSequenceNumber with 00030. You can populate the other fields, but they may not be used by the EDI map. Consult the EDI technician at Netcellent for any required fields.

MAD