Troubleshooting

The buyer rejects your advance shipping notice

A ShipNoticeRequest is rejected, or it is accepted and the goods receipt still does not reconcile against it.

Short answer

An ASN is only useful if it reconciles to the order, so the same reference discipline as the invoice applies — and one thing specific to shipping: the ASN has to arrive before the goods do. Sent after receipt, it is frequently rejected outright, because the receiving step it was meant to inform has already closed.

Causes, most likely first

Ordered by how often each one turns out to be the culprit, not by how interesting it is. Work down the list.

  1. The ASN was sent after the delivery arrived

    How to confirm: Compare your transmission time against the goods receipt time. A nightly batch guarantees this for anything shipped same-day or overnight.

    Fix: Send the ASN when the shipment leaves, not when the batch runs. The notice is advance by definition and a retrospective one has no function.

  2. Line references do not match the order

    How to confirm: The same failure mode as the invoice: renumbered lines, or part identifiers that differ from the ones on the purchase order.

    Fix: Reference the buyer’s order line numbers and the part identifiers the order carried.

  3. The quantity exceeds what is open on the order

    How to confirm: An earlier partial shipment already consumed part of the line, and this notice is written against the original quantity rather than the remainder.

    Fix: Track the open quantity per line across shipments and notify against the remainder.

  4. The shipment identifier is missing or reused

    How to confirm: The ShipNoticeHeader has no shipment identifier, or the same one appears across several shipments. Buyers key their receiving records on it.

    Fix: Issue one unique identifier per physical shipment, and send one notice per shipment rather than one per order.

  5. Packaging or serial detail the buyer requires is absent

    How to confirm: Their configuration requires packaging hierarchy, batch numbers or serial numbers — common in regulated categories and in anything received by barcode scan.

    Fix: Ask what their receiving process scans. If it scans a label, the data behind that label has to be in the notice.

If it is not on your side

Ask the buyer whether the rejection came from their receiving system or their integration layer. A structural rejection and a receiving rejection read almost identically in a portal and point at completely different causes.

Check the document itself

Paste your cXML or OCI payload into our free tester. It runs entirely in your browser and reports the structural problems buyers reject on.

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Related questions

How far in advance should an ASN be sent?

At dispatch, as a rule. The useful test is whether the notice reaches their receiving team before the lorry does — for overnight delivery that rules out any batch that runs after the shipment leaves.

One ASN per order or per shipment?

Per shipment. An order split across three deliveries is three notices, each with its own identifier and each covering only what is on that vehicle.

Other failures

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