Incoming EDI (810, 855, 856) for Multiple Vendors utilizing the same EDI Connection

Wade,

We also use GHX. Our vendors are set up with basically a shell on AP10. The vendor name, search and legal, and the FEIN are stored there. Nothing else goes on that form. Then, the specific addressing, division, etc remit to and purchase froms are setup based on the account number. This allows us to build the EDI tables based on the pfrom the PO is coded with which in turn equals an account. For J&J for instance, we have different ones set up for each division as well as our own internal companies that have different account numbers with those divisions.

It does create its own problems - just recently we've had to break Ortho Clinical out as it's own company since they diverged from J&J. Everything is driven by the FEIN. If multiple divisions have the same one - they are the same vendor. If they have different ones (all the CareFusions come to mind), they are different vendors.

Hope this helps.

Michelle

We also use the PFroms for vendor divisions.  I believe this is best practice. However many vendor's systems can process EDI orders without the need for us to separate POs by division. 

We don't separate Cardinal Health from Cardinal Cordis.  Granted we don't buy much from Cardinal Health as they are not our primary medical supplier.  Now for J&J, all the divisions that fall under J&J Healthcare are under one PFrom and each division is identified on the 850 in PO1^07 using ED40. The manufacturer code and division combination converts to J&J's division code. J&J Ethicon (Mfg Code = JJ, Division = ETHI), for example, the ED40 record looks like this

List Name   LJ_O_JJDIV
Lawson Value   JJETHI
External Value   ET

PO1 looks like this

PO1>18>15>EA>245.86>>MF>ET>VC>123456>IN>98765~

 

So, you should check with EDI support for those vendors that you're having problems with to see if you can send all divisions on one PO. 

I agree that the practice of setting up one AP10 per FEIN is best practice, especially from the perspective of minimizing the risk of duplicate payments for the same invoice. 

 

There is however one additional "con" of this setup that has not been mentioned: For non-EDI suppliers, you will have to figure out a method for ensuring your supplier knows which ship to account to use. Options include (1) the supplier will have to look up your account number (which many orgs find to be acceptable), (2) you could setup multiple purchase froms for non-EDI supplier divisions (one purch from for each IC02) or you could customize you PO Print program (Lawson, MHC, etc) to obtain the account number from wherever you store it.

Option 2 is how we've been operating since implementation. This was the supply chain consultant's direction as best practice. So if a vendor has accounts for each medical center we'll build 4 PFroms and populate the account number in that AP10.2 record.

We operate on Option 2 also. At go live we had pfroms build for each of our internal companies to make it easier for the buyers to know which one to use. I'm in the process of converting from that to a leaner build where we only have a pfrom if the account number and/or division is different. We have 28 companies....maintenance was a nightmare and the conversion is horrendous but it will eventually be better.

If a vendor is setup EDI, what consists of a non-EDI order?

The EDI nightmare vendor for me is Medtronic. There are 3 main EDI hubs for the 2 AP10 records with 12 AP10.2 records. But once they are set, the only thing that is NOT EDI are bill only and the capital orders - that the buyers are emailing to the reps and aren't having an issue with account numbers.

I've never had to deal with the "You will have to figure out a method for ensuring your supplier knows which ship to account to use for your non-EDI purchase orders." issue. I'm wondering why now!

 

As for Cardinal/Cordis - Cardinal is our med-surg distributor they gave us the part numbers to convert, but they transmit with the same orders as the rest - no separate setup.

So now everyone has piqued my curiosity...
Everything stated above makes sense for EDI. In fact, we tend to use the generic Purchase From 'ED1', 'ED2', etc., to break out divisional requirements within a vendor. The specific Ship To account information can 'easily' be resolved within the EDI Substitution Table (ED40). I get it and I wish ALL of the account assignment processes worked this way.

But how do you resolve Ship To accounts when transmitting via Do Not Print, Paper, Fax, or E-Mail. The PO120 looks back to the Vendor Account field in the AP10/AP10.2. We have 22 hospitals, hundreds of medical offices and a dozen or so ASCs. Not to mention some of these being LUM/JIT/desktop delivery. So how does everyone manage the Purchase Froms for their non-EDI vendors? We have two methods, none of which are ideal: 1) create a Purchase From for every Ship To account, or 2) one Purchase From that faxes to the Purchasing Department (who then attributes the document with the correct Ship To account and retransmits the PO).

Sorry, I realize this is a bit of a tangent from the main thread,
Red

I know that in the past there have been some divisions that were not EDI capable. I believe Ortho Clinical was not when we first went live with Lawson in 2004. And we have some vendors with a separate parts and service department that would be non-EDI. Again, PFroms is the solution for us.

Kat - I edited my text to be more precise in my language. When I was referring to non-EDI POs I was really talking about non-EDI suppliers (not EDI suppliers). Here is what I meant to say (I also edited the above post to match the below text).

*******
There is however one additional "con" of this setup that has not been mentioned: For non-EDI suppliers, you will have to figure out a method for ensuring your supplier knows which ship to account to use. Options include (1) the supplier will have to look up your account number (which many orgs find to be acceptable), (2) you could setup multiple purchase froms for non-EDI supplier divisions (one purch from for each IC02) or you could customize you PO Print program (Lawson, MHC, etc) to obtain the account number from wherever you store it.

Hi Red - I think you missed a couple of posts...check out posts from me, Michelle and JonA above.

Thanks Mike - my mistake. Then we choose Option 1 and when we encounter a vendor that doesn't allow address we change them to GHX - either EDI or MetaTrade and store the account numbers in ED40.

We just closed our Fiscal Year - 80% of all POs went EDI, the bulk of the remaining 20% are Bill Only and Capital Projects.

Thanks, Mike. I guess I was reading it that the non-EDI aspect was being handled by a few Purchase Froms, not many.
Red

Kat- those are some awesome stats. I'm guessing many of your vendors are receiving fax POs from GHX using MetaTrade? We don't use GHX so I haven't been able to get much higher than 35% EDI. Probably 40% are fax. Do you even use LFI at all?

Much of the credit is to our VAT ability to consolidate - I've got 121 Integrated EDI vendors, 125 MetaTrade, 358 Auto Fax, 479 Auto Email. It's just that the bulk of our PO lines go to the EDI and MetaTrade vendors. So technically you're in better shape than we are!

MetaTrade is either fax or email - most are going to the email more and more.

No LFI - we have a custom PO format for our paper fax and email through MHC - it goes out through Right Fax. I believe we already owned and had Right Fax up and running so we didn't go with LFI - but that predates me here.

Wade, I had a thought. Can GHX set up a different ISA/GS ID based on the vendor division for just you?

No - GHX has a primary id - that determines how a vendor transmits. For example - all GHX users transmit to Abbott Nutritional with Partner GS ID as 004283115. The ISA is always GHX. (My ED10s look the same for all vendors except for: EDI Number, Tpid, and Partners GSID - all other fields are constant)

I thought it was a long shot.

Wade- I think your only option is consolidate the vendor divisions into one vendor and use PFroms to differentiate between divisions. With two vendors and basically a single trading partner for both, there's just no way for Lawson to know which vendor to assign in the MA540CSV file when the 810 has the same ISA/GS id and account number for all divisions. It will be either one or the other in your current set up.

That's what I was afraid of. We're putting other automation in place based on data from our GPO that basically requires the vendors to be separated. It looks like, at this point, the option is to build out different accounts for the same facility at each "vendor". 

 

My other thinking is to create a script that will look at the PO number coming back on the invoice and pull the vendor number from that PO within Lawson basically bypassing the _I_Vendor translation and just using whatever we have on the PO. Has anyone explored that possibility?

You would need to build an ED40 to bring it in as an inactive vendor or some such - then you could manipulate it on MA54. Otherwise, the ED jobs will just skip the row entirely and leave it in the error queue.