EDI 855/856 Acknowledgment & ASN Builder
Build accepted-order acknowledgments (855) and advance ship notices (856) per each trading partner's spec, let a coordinator approve the content, then output a clean file and a log - so partner-required acks and ASNs stop being a scramble.
Pick an order or shipment, build an 855 or 856 draft mapped to that partner's exact spec, have a coordinator review and approve it, then generate the output file and a permanent log entry.
Before you start
- A free Supabase account
- A free Vercel account
- A free Resend account (for notifications)
- A CSV of accepted orders and shipment data, plus each partner's required-segment spec
The problem this kills
Every big retail or distribution trading partner wants their EDI documents their way. The 855 (purchase order acknowledgment) says "yes, we accepted this order, here's what we'll ship." The 856 (advance ship notice, or ASN) tells them exactly what's on the truck, down to the carton and the SSCC barcode label. Get a required segment wrong, miss an SSCC, or send the ASN late, and you eat chargebacks, held shipments, and angry buyer calls.
Today that work usually lives in someone's head and a pile of spreadsheets. A coordinator hand-builds each document, double-checks it against a partner manual, and prays nothing was mistyped. Different partners have different required fields, so the same shipment gets formatted three different ways. It's slow, it's error-prone, and it doesn't scale past a couple of partners.
This plan kills that scramble. You build a tool that takes your accepted orders and shipment data, applies the right partner spec automatically, drafts the 855 or 856, and waits for a human to approve before anything is generated or sent.
What you'll build
A small internal web app where your EDI coordinator and shipping team log in and:
- Pick an accepted order (for an 855) or a packed shipment (for an 856) from a clean list.
- See a draft document built automatically against the chosen trading partner's required segments and field naming.
- Review every line - including carton and SSCC fields for ASNs - and fix anything before it goes out.
- Approve the draft. Only then does the tool generate the output file and write a permanent log entry.
- Export the document as a flat file / CSV in the exact shape the partner (or your EDI translator) expects.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The plan is a single file you paste into an AI coding agent. It opens by interviewing you about your business - your partners, your data, your codes, your volumes, and your edge cases - so the tool is tailored to how you actually ship, not a generic template. The agent reads a short spec back to you, you confirm it, and only then does it start building.
From there it walks you step by step: setting up the database, loading your partner specs, building the order and shipment screens, the draft builder, the approval gate, file output, and email notifications. Every build step ends with a ready-to-copy prompt. No prior coding needed.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
- Login so only your team can use the tool.
- Row-level security so users only ever see their own organization's data.
- A complete audit trail - who built, who approved, what changed, and when.
- A hard human-in-the-loop approval gate - the tool drafts the 855/856, a coordinator reviews and approves, and only then is the file generated. Nothing reaches a partner unreviewed.
- Duplicate guards keyed on PO/shipment + document type, so the same acknowledgment or ASN can't be generated twice.
Who it's for
EDI coordinators and shipping teams who have to produce partner-required 855 acknowledgments and 856 ASNs and are tired of hand-building them in spreadsheets - especially anyone juggling more than one trading partner with different specs.
You've got this. Paste the first prompt and let the interview tailor it to your operation.