Electronic Data Interchange (otherwise known as EDI) is the ability for companies to exchange standardized files for their purchase orders, advance shipping notifications, invoices (and more) with your trading partners. With Paragon's EDI integration you're able to receive POs (850) from your trading partner and send out ASNs (856) and invoices (810) back to your customers.

With the SPS integration, we have been able to completely standardize the EDI process on the user side. When you exchange a file with the trading partner, Paragon and SPS actually exchange standard files between each other through an FTP server. SPS is then in charge of the compliance and individual requirements of your trading partners.

When you purchase the EDI integration for any trading partner, the connection between SPS  and Paragon will be installed automatically, therefore creating and entering the necessary credentials and IDs for you.

Nonetheless, there is some initial setup that is required in order to use the integration once you've purchased it. This document will cover the setup requirements for the Paragon EDI integration.

Buying the EDI integration

Manufacturing ID and Prefix

As an EDI trading partner and vendor, you will need to have your own manufacturing ID or the MFG number. You must enter that information in your company settings. The required attribute will be created automatically when purchasing the integration.  The same is true for the GS1 Prefix attribute - which must also be added to the company settings page.

EDI to Paragon cross-reference

There are fields that EDI uses to provide or retrieve information that the EDI customer or trading partner will ask for. Given the flexibility of Paragon, each Paragon installation may be setup differently and therefore use different field names or attributes to reference the same information.

Under the EDI add-on option, found in the settings menu, select the trading partner that you'd like to cross-reference, then open the associated tab located on the top right corner of the page.

Some required attributes will automatically be created when you purchase the EDI integration. It is up to you to use these attributes or create and use your own.

Customer to product cross-reference

In your system, you have a particular way of identifying your products, while your trading partner may be using a different method to reference your goods. In order to use EDI, you will need to setup this cross-reference of information. To do so, you must associate your customer and your products together in order to add the buyer's item numbers in Paragon. You will know which attribute to use based on the attribute cross-reference you would have previously done - see above.

For more information how to create associations, click here.

In your customer module, go to the associated tab for your trading partner's account and hit the edit button.

You can now add an association (also known as a cross-reference) between your customer and your products. You must fill the buyer item number on this screen as it is the identifier that your customer uses in their system and on the POs that they send you. Again, when you purchase the integration, the attribute will be created and added to the screen automatically.

The UPC code and the vendor item number are also mandatory and must be filled in, however they can be filled on the Summary tab of your product setup.

Note that during your attribute cross-reference (cf. previous section) you may have cross-referenced those three EDI attributes (buyer item number, vendor item number and UPC code) to your own attributes, which you may have named differently.

Once you've completed the cross-referencing, you can begin to use the EDI integration.