“An Advance Ship Notice—commonly encoded as EDI 856—is an electronic document sent before a shipment arrives, providing detailed information about the contents, packaging, logistics units, and structure of the shipment. ASNs give retailers, distributors, and receiving facilities visibility into what is coming, how it is packed, and when it will arrive, allowing for faster, error‑free receiving and better inventory planning. In retail supply chains, ASNs are one of the most critical EDI documents.”

“XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a text‑based, structured data format used to store, organize, and transport information in a way that is both human‑readable and machine‑readable. XML uses tags to describe data and its hierarchy, making it flexible for representing complex or nested information. XML is widely used in systems integration, EDI alternatives, APIs, configuration files, enterprise applications, data interchange between organizations, and legacy supply‑chain systems.”

“Global Location Numbers (GLNs) are a unique identifier assigned to physical or digital locations within the global supply chain, created and standardized by GS1. A GLN can identify companies, warehouses, stores, distribution centers, manufacturing sites, e‑commerce locations, departments, docks, or even specific functional entities within an organization. GLNs allow trading partners to exchange precise, standardized location information in systems like EDI, procurement, shipping, receiving, and inventory management with no ambiguity.”