Document Standards: Know What’s Expected from the Start

With hundreds or even thousands of documents transferred daily between retailers and suppliers, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what’s expected from both parties. Logicbroker’s Document Standards feature creates a series of clear, concise guidelines for vendors to follow when submitting documents with each of their retail partners. 

Retailers have the ability to set guidelines as it pertains to order, acknowledgment, shipment, invoice, return, and inventory documentation. These guidelines—known as Validation Rules—help define the information retailers require from their vendors when submitting a document and help both parties quickly identify any issues that come up. 

For example: Supplier XYZ is sending a shipment and is unsure how the shipment number is used and if it is required by the retailer. After pulling up the validation rules for their partner, the supplier can see that the ShipmentNumber field (1) is required because of the red checkmark (2). The information also tells the supplier that the ShipmentNumber is used by the retailer (through the use of a custom validation rule) to identify shipments and prevent sending duplicate shipments (3). 

Understanding Validation Rules

Logicbroker’s detailed Document Standards would not be possible without our fully customizable Validation Rules. During the onboarding phase, retailers work closely with the Logicbroker team to implement and test any and all rules they would like to set up before a document can make its way through our portal. Retailers are able to alter these rules at any time they require and are even able to view the rules in the portal to see what their vendors see. If something new needs to be added or an existing rule needs to be edited, Logicbroker is here to help. These requirements should be as detailed as possible to ensure that once showcased, suppliers have all the necessary information needed to send successful documents.

Suppliers can review a retailer’s document standards when connecting with them before submitting orders, acknowledgments, shipments, invoices, returns, or inventory. To explore each individual retailer’s Document Standards, navigate to the left-hand side toolbar in our portal, and select Retailers. Select Document Standards from the dropdown that appears. 

You will then see a section called Company which includes a dropdown with all of your retail partners. Once a retail partner has been selected, suppliers are then able to view the validation rules for the document of their choice. These additional rules provide a second layer of validation to help prevent failed documents and complete the order cycle quickly.

The Document Standards feature is just one of the reasons companies trust Logicbroker to automate what’s happening behind the scenes of their drop ship and marketplace programs.