EDI 856: What It Is and How It Works

What an EDI 856 is

EDI means Electronic Data Interchange. It is how businesses send orders, invoices, and shipping notices to each other as structured computer files, instead of email or paper.

An 856 is the Advance Ship Notice, often shortened to ASN. It is the file a seller sends to a buyer before a shipment arrives. It says, in structured form: this order is shipping, here is what is in it, and here is how it is packed and sent.

The point of sending it in advance is that the buyer can prepare before the goods arrive. The buyer can plan receiving, check the shipment against the order, and update stock, all from the 856, rather than waiting to open boxes and count items by hand.![]
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What an 856 contains

An 856 usually includes:

• The order it relates to, so the buyer can match the shipment to the right purchase order.

• What is shipping, by item and quantity.

• How it is packed: cartons, pallets, or other shipping units, and what is in each one.

• The carrier and tracking details, so the buyer can follow the shipment.

• The ship date and expected delivery details.

The packing detail is what sets an 856 apart from a simple shipping notice. A simple notice says a shipment is on its way. An 856 says what is in each carton or pallet, so the buyer can receive it carton by carton and spot a missing or wrong item without unpacking everything first.

How it fits in a normal EDI exchange

A typical exchange looks like this:

A buyer sends a purchase order, an EDI 850.

The seller sends back a 997, the Functional Acknowledgement, confirming the order arrived and passed checks.

When the order ships, the seller sends an 856, the Advance Ship Notice.

The buyer sends back a 997 for the 856.

Later, the seller sends an invoice, an EDI 810.

Each document has a job. The 850 places the order. The 856 says what is actually shipping. The 810 asks for payment. Mixing those jobs up is a common source of errors, for example invoicing for what was ordered rather than what was shipped.

What goes wrong with 856s

The most common problems are:

• The 856 arrives late, or not at all. If it arrives after the goods, the buyer cannot prepare receiving, and much of its value is lost.

• The contents do not match the shipment. If the 856 says one thing and the boxes say another, receiving slows down while the difference is checked.

• The packing detail is missing. Without carton or pallet detail, the buyer has to unpack and count by hand, which is what the 856 was meant to avoid.

• The order reference is wrong or missing. Without a clear link to the purchase order, the buyer cannot match the shipment to the order it belongs to.

When an 856 fails, the fix is usually in how the shipment data is gathered, not in the sending step. The data has to come from the warehouse or shipping system at the time of packing, in the same structure the buyer expects.

What we do here

We build EDI connections and run them. That means we set up the document types a partner requires, including the 856, and we monitor the exchange after launch so a late, missing, or rejected document is caught early.

For teams that want to build these connections themselves, Cirra lets you describe the work in plain language, and it builds the workflow from your connected apps. Cirra connects to 3,400+ apps through one connection layer, so a shipping notice can reach the ordering, warehouse, and accounting tools around it.

Where to start

If you are not sure where EDI would help most, or where shipping documents are failing today, the Integration Health Check looks at your systems and shows where the manual work and the failed exchanges sit.

See also: EDI Explained.