SPS Commerce

SPS Commerce offers, among other things, a leading solution for business-to-business data exchange, taking much of the pain out of setting up and maintaining your EDI connections.

ShipStream's SPS Commerce integration makes a direct connection to your SPS Commerce account and simplifies the setup of your trading partners to get you launched quickly and with minimal effort.

Overview

In a nutshell, there are two components to setting up EDI via SPS Commerce:

1. Setup the Global Integration to connect to your SPS Commerce account (only performed once)
2. Add a Merchant Integration to map your Trading Partners to the correct ShipStream Merchants and Brands by Vendor ID and Trading Partner ID (performed once per merchant)

The Global Integration establishes the connection to SPS Commerce and acts as a communication channel for the SPS Commerce Merchant Integration, of which you may setup any number of subscriptions. This allows the configuration to be managed per-Merchant, giving your merchants maximum flexibility and visibility while keeping the EDI data and connection management siloed appropriately.

• When an EDI file is received from SPS Commerce, ShipStream will parse the file and attempt to match it to a Merchant Integration subscription based on the Vendor ID and Use Test Directories options.
• Merchants will be able to see Integation Errors that are logged for troubleshooting so long as the incoming EDI files matched the Merchant's SPS Commerce integration subscription using the Vendor ID.
• If a Merchant cannot be matched to the incoming file's Vendor ID, the EDI Transaction will be left in "Merchant Not Found" status and will not be visible to any merchants. After you add a new Merchant Integration or update the Vendor ID and Use Test Directories options of an existing one you may click "Retry" on the EDI Document page to resume the processing.
• All sent and received documents can be seen at System > Integrations > EDI Documents for organization users. Client users also have this page, but will only be able to see the EDI Documents that were matched to them based on the Vendor ID.

Supported Fulfillment Models

ShipStream currently supports the Drop Ship (B2C) and Bulk Import (B2B) fulfillment models. Please let us know if you are interested in supporting other fulfillment models.

The following document types are utilized:

• Orders - Receive orders for goods fulfillment
  • 850, 875, 940, ORDERS, PurchaseOrders
  • Will be read from /out/* or /testout/* paths by default. Override with Order File Paths configuration.
• OrderAcks - Acknowledge receipt of or reject Orders
  • 855, ORDRSP, PurchaseOrderAcks
  • Will be written to /in/PR* or /testin/PR* paths
• Shipments - Notify of shipped goods including tracking details
  • 856, 943, 945, AdvanceShipNotices, DESADV
  • Will be written to /in/SH* or /testin/SH* paths
• Inventory Advice - Notify of inventory levels
  • 846, INVRPT
  • Will be written to /in/IB* or /testin/IB* paths

Setup Global Integration

Before you can start, you will need an account with SPS Commerce. If you don't have one, let us know and we'll get you introduced!

Once you have your SPS Commerce account, head over to your ShipStream instance and follow these instructions.

1. Login and click System > Integrations > Global Integrations (if you don't see this you may need to add or update your User Roles).
2. Below "Setup new Global Integration" click "SPS Commerce".

   

3. If you have specific needs for Location IDs, add them to the Location ID Map. By default, the ShipStream Warehouse IDs (see System > Enumerations > System > Warehouses) will be used as the Location IDs which works for most situations.
4. Click Save and Continue Edit.

   

5. Click the Authorize button and complete the authorization with your SPS Commerce account.

   

6. When you are returned to the ShipStream page for the SPS Commerce integration you should see your company name as designated by SPS Commerce listed in the Connection Status after "Organization".

The connection setup is now complete and ShipStream can now pull and push data files to and from your SPS commerce account!

You are now ready to proceed to Setup Merchant Integration below.

Additional Configuration

There are some additional configuration options that are not typically required but may be necessary in some cases.

Order File Paths

By default, ShipStream will read order files from the out/ and testout/ directories of the SPS Commerce server. Subdirectories are ignored by default, so if you need to read files from a different directory or only with specific prefixes, these must be specified here. For example, a configuration of PO/PO,testout/MyOrders/ would cause ShipStream to only read files matching these paths and ignore all others:

• out/PO/PO*
• testout/PO/PO*
• testout/MyOrders/*

Setup Merchant Integration

Once your Global Integration is set up you still need to set up a Merchant Integration subscription for each merchant that will use SPS Commerce. Incoming documents are mapped to these Merchant Integrations based on the Trading Partner ID. If different Trading Partners require different settings you can set up multiple Merchant Integrations, but you can also receive multiple Trading Partners to the same Merchant Integration.

1. Log in and click System > Integrations > Merchant Integrations (if you don't see this you may need to add or update your User Roles).
2. Click Add New Subscription.
3. Select the appropriate Merchant and click SPS Commerce in the list of integrations.
4. Configure the integration as appropriate (details below) and click Save Subscription.

Subscription Configuration

On the subscription page, expand the Subscription Configuration section to configure it to the merchant's specific needs.

Use Test Directories

Selecting "Yes" will cause incoming files to be matched to this integration only if they come from the testout/ directory, and file uploads will be placed in the testin/ directory. Otherwise, incoming files from the out/ directory will be potentially matched and file uploads will be placed in the in/ directory.

Trading Partner ID Map

Add a row for each Trading Partner ID for which you will be receiving orders and select the appropriate Brand for each.

Shipping Method Translation

As every order must have a Shipping Method assigned, the integration will make it's best effort to map the incoming CarrierAlphaCode and ServiceLevelCode fields to the closest matching Shipping Method. But, you may override this and specify a Shipping Method Translation to map the CarrierAlphaCode, CarrierRouting and ServiceLevelCode values coming from SPS Commerce to the ShipStream Shipping Method of your choice.

The CarrierRouting value is a free-form field so will vary by Trading Partner. The ServiceLevelCode should be somewhat standardized and the expected values are listed in Default Shipping Method Translation.

Example 1

To map any value for CarrierAlphaCode and any value for CarrierRouting and the ServiceLevelCode for "Standard Ground" service (SG) to a Virtual Shipping Method which performs Rate Shopping.

Example 2

To map CarrierAlphaCode "UPSN" with CarrierRouting values "NS" or "SG" and ServiceLevelCode "NS" to UPS Next Day Air you could use the following:

Send Order Acknowledgement

Choose Yes if your trading partners require an Order Ack document for each Order document received.

Send Shipment ASN

Choose Yes if your trading partners require an ASN document for each Shipment when the shipment is packed. These documents will either be sent after the manifest is sealed or at 8am or 8pm warehouse time, whichever comes first.

SSCC Label Format

If the trading partner requires unique SSCC codes to be generated and applied to each package, specify the mapping of each Vendor ID to the Label Format desired. The vendor-specific labels will be requested from the SPS Commerce API whenever you click "Print SSCC". See Outbound SSCC Barcodes for more information on this feature.

Inventory Advice

To report your inventory levels to your trading partners you will simply need to add an Inventory Advice configuration for each Trading Partner which is entered in the first field, and the time interval selected for that Trading Partner in the second field.

Once saved, you can also force an upload to occur immediately by clicking "Upload Inventory Advice" in the Actions section.

Order Transform Script

You can provide some basic Javascript code to transform the order data based on the entire SPS Commerce document which is present as a Javscript object in the variable spsCommerceOrder. This script can modify the order object before it is submitted.

Example 1 - mapping order options

This example script maps Signature Required and Saturday Delivery values for Target.com orders to the relevant ShipStream order options.

let carrierInformation = spsCommerceOrder.Header.CarrierInformation[0] || {};
switch (carrierInformation.CarrierRouting) {
    case 'SG':   // Signature Required (UPS/FedEx)
    case 'NDSS': // Next Day Air with Signature Required (FedEx)
    case 'HDS':  // Home Delivery with Signature Required (FedEx)
    case 'PONS': // Priority Overnight with Signature Required (FedEx)
    case 'NDSS': // Next Day Standard with Signature Required (FedEx)
    case 'ESS':  // Express Saver with Signature Required (FedEx)
    case 'HDS':  // Home Delivery with Signature Required (FedEx)
    case 'IS':   // Through the Door with Signature Required (LTL)
    case 'RS':   // Room of Choice with Signature Required (LTL)
    case 'WS':   // White Glove with Signature Required (LTL)
    case 'AS':   // White Glove Assembly with Signature Required (LTL)
        order.options.signature_required = 'any'
        break
}

let serviceLevelCodes = carrierInformation.ServiceLevelCodes.map(v => v.ServiceLevelCode)
let saturdayDelivery = serviceLevelCodes.some((v) => {
    switch (v) {
        case 'NS': // Next Day Saturday
        case 'SS': // 2 Day Saturday
            return true;
        default:
            return false;
    }
})
if (saturdayDelivery) {
    order.options.saturday_delivery = true
}

Example 2 - mapping order item SKUs

This example overrides the default behavior of using the VendorPartNumber for the item SKU with using the BuyerPartNumber.

order.items.forEach(item => {
  spsCommerceOrder.LineItem.forEach(spsItem => {
    if (spsItem.OrderLine.VendorPartNumber === item.sku && spsItem.OrderLine.BuyerPartNumber) {
      item.sku = spsItem.OrderLine.BuyerPartNumber
    }
  })
})

Example 3 - using arbitrary references

Since the EDI file header References data is an array and allows arbitrary values for ReferenceQual and ReferenceID, you can "stuff" just about any information into these fields as needed to pass non-standard data from SPS Commerce to ShipStream.

// Enable Item-level SSCC generation for ABC/123 orders
if (spsCommerceOrder.Header.References.some((ref) => ref.ReferenceQual == 'ABC' && ref.ReferenceID == '123')) {
     order.options.generate_sscc = ['item']
}

// Override the shipping method with a "Custom Shipping Method" ref
const shippingMethodRef = spsCommerceOrder.Header.References.find((ref) => ref.ReferenceQual == 'CSM')
if (ref) {
     order.options.shipping_method = ref.ReferenceID
}

Shipment Transform Script

The Reference Qualifiers and Order Line Item properties will be copied from the original Order document when generating the Shipment document and we make a best effort to map our shipping methods to the "Carrier Routing" value as well. However, sometimes these may not meet specific requirement of your Trading Partners so we provide the Shipment Transform Script which allows you to customize the generated document before it is transmitted to SPS Commerce.

This script has in it's scope the following variables:

• eventData - data from the shipment:packed, shipment:shipped or manifest:sealed event
• shipment - the ShipStream shipment being evaluated
• order - the ShipStream order associated with the shipment
• spsCommerceShipment - the object which will be used to generated the SPS Commerce Shipment document
• spsCommerceOrder - an object representing the original SPS Commerce Order document received

For example, if you need to hard-code the CarrierRouting value to be "XYZ", the script to do so would be:

spsCommerceShipment.Header.CarrierInformation[0].CarrierRouting = 'XYZ'

Order Interpretation

When receiving an order from SPS Commerce, ShipStream makes an effort to interpret the data as it is intended. These behaviors should handle most cases properly but can be overridden with scripts if needed.

SKUs and Barcodes

The VendorPartNumber in the EDI file will be used to match products in ShipStream with either the same SKU or Vendor SKU. Additionally, the ConsumerPackageCode in the EDI file will be used to match products in ShipStream with the same Barcode in case a SKU match is not found.

Inner and Outer Packs

Currently the only OrderQtyUOM supported is EA. However, when an order item contains the PackQualifier fields with outer_qty and inner_qty, these will be used to convert the order item to the appropriate number of units of the related BOM product. For example, if a product exists as both singles with a SKU matching the order item and in cases of 20 with a different SKU, and 40 units of the singles SKU are ordered with inner_qty=1 and outer_qty=20, the order item will be converted to 2 units of the 20-pack case SKU instead of 40 units of the single SKU.

Service Level Codes

These are common qualifiers and definitions for the ServiceLevelCode field.

Default Shipping Option Translation

ShipStream automatically sets the following service level options based on the CarrierAlphaCode and ServiceLevelCode. This can be overridden by the Order Transform Script.

Default Shipping Method Translation

ShipStream automatically sets the following shipping methods based on the CarrierAlphaCode and ServiceLevelCode. This can be overridden by either the Shipping Method Translation or the Order Transform Script.

Carrier Routing

The CarrierRouting field in particular lacks standardization so it may be common that you need to override this field using a Shipment Transform Script to meet the needs of your trading partners.

Example 1 - Service Description:

spsCommerceShipment.header.carrierInformation[0].carrierRouting = data.service_description

Example 2 - Carrier Code

spsCommerceShipment.header.carrierInformation[0].carrierRouting = shipment.carrier_code.toUpperCase()

Default Value

The value ShipStream generates out of the box for this field is based on the following table:

Error Handling

Errors generated by this integration are handled similarly to other errors as described in Integrations Overview. However, here are some additional notes:

• The Retry and Resolve buttons on an EDI document page behave the same as the buttons on the corresponding Error page.
• If a duplicate file is detected (same name and contents as another file that was previously imported), this will throw an error. Clicking "Retry" on the error will force the duplicate file to be processed. Clicking "Resolved" on the error will have no effect and a new error will be generated as long as the duplicate file still exists on the server.