Flowchart for process of 860 file or What is 860 file?

Question

The 860 is a Purchase Order Change. It is basically just that: an amendment or change to a Purchase Order. You didn't specify inbound or outbound, so I will try to keep it generic.

When the 850 is sent, the purchaser might go back and realize the PO needs to be changed. Perhaps a line item needs a quantity adjustment (20 EA instead of 10 EA). Perhaps a line item was omitted. The 860 could be used as a Cancellation, Add, Delete, Change, Replace, or Duplicate. The partner's implementation guide should give you a clue as to how it is used.

You would parse it just like any other EDI document, except you need to look at the different segments and elements. The BCH01 will tell you what kind of Change it is. In some cases, I've seen it where it replaces the PO exclusively, and you are able to drop the original PO and put this in the place (the structure is very similar to the 850, with some segment changes). In other cases, I would just print the 860 off to a human readable format (HTML), and give it to the business unit, because I didn't want to change open orders.

In some scenarios, the life cycle might look like this:

send 850

receive 997

receive 855 (PO Ack)

send 997

send 860 (need to change the PO)

receive 997

receive 865 (PO Change Acknowledgement)

send 997

And then:

receive 856 (Advance Ship Notice)

send 997

receive 810 (Invoice)

send 997