AIMS360 connects fashion and apparel brands to Costco Wholesale with built-in EDI for bulk depot shipments and Costco.com e-commerce orders. Automate 850 purchase orders, 855 acknowledgments, depot-ready 856 ASNs, 810 invoices, and GS1-128 / SSCC labeling, with support across Costco U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Connect AIMS360 apparel ERP directly to Costco Wholesale for fully automated bulk depot and Costco.com orders — 850 POs, 855 acknowledgments, depot-ready 856 ASNs, 810 invoices, and GS1-128 / SSCC carton labels, all from one fashion ERP across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Costco EDI is the electronic data interchange Costco Wholesale uses to run orders with its suppliers — purchase orders, shipment notices, and invoices moving as standardized ANSI X12 files instead of email or PDFs. Since 2024 it is not optional: Costco requires full EDI compliance from apparel and consumer-goods vendors before the first shipment leaves your dock.
What trips up brands is how unforgiving Costco's version is. Its depots run as fast-flow cross-docks, so the shipment notice — the 856 ASN — has to land before the truck and mirror the physical pallet down to every SSCC barcode. The ASN follows Costco's Enterprise 856 v4010 hierarchy, every carton and pallet needs a GS1-128 label that matches the file, and the 850, 856, and 810 all have to reconcile under an automated three-way match before Costco pays. Miss any of it and deductions stack up fast — industry guides put unreadable or mislabeled cartons at roughly $5–$10 each, and retail chargebacks as a whole can swallow a meaningful slice of a supplier's margin.
AIMS360 closes that gap by building the EDI into the apparel ERP itself. POs land in your system, inventory allocates, the warehouse prints compliant labels, the ASN fires at scan-and-ship, and the invoice reconciles automatically — bulk depot and Costco.com alike, across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. One platform owns the order from the 850 to the paid 810, which is the difference between passing Costco's checks on the first attempt and chasing chargebacks after the fact.
The core Costco transaction set, what each document does on an order, and when it is due.
| EDI document | Direction | What it does on a Costco order | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 850 Purchase Order | Costco → you | The order — styles, quantities, and ship-to depot or member address | Inbound |
| 855 PO Acknowledgment | You → Costco | Confirms acceptance, substitutions, or backorders | Within 24 hrs of 850 |
| 860 PO Change | Costco → you | Revisions to an existing PO — quantities, dates, or items — before you ship | As needed |
| 856 ASN | You → Costco | Shipment → order → pack → item hierarchy with SSCC-18 barcodes | Before the truck |
| 810 Invoice | You → Costco | Bills the shipment; must match the 850 and 856 exactly | After the ASN |
| 997 Functional Ack | Both ways | Confirms an EDI document was received and structurally valid | Within 24 hrs |
| 812 Credit / Debit | Both ways | Adjusts pricing or quantity disputes and chargebacks | As needed |
| 820 Remittance | Costco → you | Payment detail used to reconcile what Costco actually paid | On payment |
| 846 / 852 | You ↔ Costco | Inventory advice and product-activity (sell-through) data, where used | Per program |
A simplified look at the X12 850 Costco sends — AIMS360 parses every segment into a ready-to-pick order with no manual entry.
ST*850*0001~ BEG*00*SA*4500098765**20260621~ order: PO 4500098765 REF*DP*0042~ department 0042 DTM*002*20260705~ requested delivery N1*ST*COSTCO DEPOT 0123*UL*0078742000000~ ship-to depot PO1*1*240*EA*12.50**UP*012345678905~ 240 ea @ $12.50 CTT*1~ SE*9*0001~
Illustrative only. Costco's published implementation guide defines the exact segments, qualifiers, and the Enterprise 856 v4010 ASN structure — AIMS360 maps to your assigned Costco spec during implementation.
Sell to Costco as a bulk depot vendor, fulfill Costco.com e-commerce orders direct to members, or run both — AIMS360 connects every channel through built-in apparel EDI and a single inventory pool.
Costco depots are fast-flow cross-docks, not warehouses. AIMS360 builds the full 850 → 856 → 810 cycle with the pack and pallet detail Costco receivers expect.
Costco.com member orders route through Rithum (formerly CommerceHub), and AIMS360 connects natively. A PO drops into the OMS, reserves stock, and ships from your DC or 3PL.
Costco needs an accurate number at every node. The AIMS360 OMS + WMS keeps one available-to-sell pool across every fulfillment location.
AIMS360 sits between Costco and your warehouse, turning every EDI document into a warehouse action — and every action back into the exact message Costco's depot and accounts-payable systems expect.
Costco transmits the PO. AIMS360 imports it, validates against your product catalog and Costco-specific business rules, and flags anything off before it hits the floor.
AIMS360 confirms acceptance, substitutions, or backorders inside Costco's required acknowledgment window, keeping your vendor scorecard clean.
Mobile scanning, pallet build, GS1-128 / SSCC labels, Costco packing slips, VICS BOL, and carrier rate-shop — all native to AIMS360.
The depot-ready ASN fires the moment the last carton is scanned, built to Costco's full shipment-pack-item hierarchy and matched to the physical pallet — removing the No. 1 source of Costco chargebacks.
AIMS360 invoices Costco through accounting, reconciled line-by-line to the 850 and 856 so it clears Costco's three-way match. The 997 is acknowledged automatically.
Costco made full EDI compliance mandatory for suppliers in 2024. These are the specs AIMS360 handles on every Costco order — bulk depot and Costco.com — so your team never tracks the spec sheet by hand.
AIMS360 builds every one of these into the order, so you ship to Costco's EDI requirements automatically. For cross-border freight, see the full VICS BOL guide.
Costco Canada issues its own Vendor ID and runs its own EDI testing — including X12 810 invoicing — separate from the U.S. division, and Costco Mexico adds cross-border and currency requirements on top. Brands selling into more than one Costco region often end up running parallel setups in separate systems, which is exactly where data drifts and chargebacks start.
AIMS360 keeps every Costco region on one platform. Your catalog, inventory, and EDI maps live in a single apparel ERP, with multi-currency invoicing for Canadian and Mexican orders and a shared available-to-sell pool across borders. For cross-border LTL and TL freight, AIMS360 generates VICS Bills of Lading automatically — the same standardized BOL detail (SID, CID, SCAC, Pro Number, pallet and carton breakdown) retailers and 3PLs rely on to receive a load without exceptions. The full VICS BOL guide covers how those fields are built.
What apparel and fashion brands ask before going live with Costco Wholesale on AIMS360.
AIMS360 apparel ERP exchanges Costco's full transaction set: 850 purchase order, 855 PO acknowledgment, 856 ASN, 810 invoice, and 997 functional acknowledgment, plus 820 remittance, 852 product activity, and 860 PO change where Costco uses them. It also produces Costco GS1-128 / SSCC labels and VICS BOLs on the ANSI ASC X12 standard. Because EDI is native to the apparel software, you do not run a separate EDI product beside your ERP.
Costco depots are fast-flow cross-docks: product is received, sorted by destination club, and staged for outbound within hours, so the 856 ASN has to arrive before the truck and match the physical pallet exactly, down to every SSCC-18. AIMS360 builds that shipment-pack-item hierarchy automatically as cartons are scanned in the WMS, validates it against the 850, and transmits at scan-and-ship — which removes the most common reason Costco receivers reject or charge back a load.
Every Costco carton and pallet needs a GS1-128 (UCC-128) barcode with a unique SSCC-18, and that data has to match the ASN hierarchy. AIMS360 generates the labels in the built-in WMS at pack time, assigns the SSCC sequence, and writes the same values into the ASN, so the label on the box and the data in the file never drift. Mismatched label and ASN data is a frequent cause of Costco reship requests, and tying both to one source closes that gap.
Most Costco chargebacks come from late or inaccurate ASNs, label mismatches, missed delivery appointments, and invoice errors. AIMS360 stops these at the source: the OMS enforces ship-by dates, the WMS prints compliant labels and packing slips, ASNs fire at scan-and-ship matched to the shipment, and invoices reconcile before they send. For deductions that still land, the built-in chargeback management tools log, route, and dispute claims with documentation attached. Returns and credits for Costco.com orders run in the same ERP.
Yes. Costco runs automated three-way matching, comparing the 850, 856, and 810 line by line, and any quantity, SKU, or price discrepancy can trigger a deduction or payment hold. AIMS360 keeps all three documents on one record, so the invoice is generated from the same order and shipment data the ASN reported. The numbers reconcile by design instead of being re-keyed across separate systems.
Yes. Costco.com e-commerce and member dropship orders typically route through CommerceHub, and AIMS360 connects to that channel natively. Orders flow into the OMS, stock is reserved in real time, the built-in WMS handles pick, pack, and ship from your DC or 3PL, and tracking and invoices return automatically. You can run Costco bulk depot and Costco.com dropship from the same inventory pool.
Yes. AIMS360 supports Costco Wholesale across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico from one platform, including cross-border compliance and multi-currency invoicing. Master data, inventory, and EDI mapping live in a single apparel ERP, so adding a Costco region does not mean a second system or a re-keyed catalog.
Costco requires suppliers to certify and transmit through its designated EDI network — currently SPS Commerce — over secure protocols like AS2, SFTP, or HTTPS. AIMS360 builds and processes the EDI in-house and connects through the network Costco mandates, so you are not bolting a separate, standalone EDI product onto your ERP. AIMS360 also charges no per-document, per-kilocharacter, or VAN fees of its own, which keeps EDI cost flat as Costco volume grows. The implementation team handles the Costco mapping, test rounds, and certification with you.
Costco runs its own multi-round certification covering your 850, 856, and 810 documents plus GS1-128 labels, so part of the timeline is gated by Costco's test schedule. Most brands go live in roughly three to five weeks. AIMS360 starts from pre-built, Costco-tested maps and label rules rather than building from scratch, which removes most of the mapping iterations that stretch first-time onboarding. The AIMS360 implementation team runs the testing with you.
Yes. AIMS360 manages pack-by-pallet configurations, prepacks, ratios, and size curves for Costco depot shipments, and processes very high volume — including a single customer running over 1.2 million orders per day. Peak warehouse-club buys and seasonal apparel programs stay within scale, with the WMS handling pallet build, carton labeling, and the ASN hierarchy each load needs. Beyond Yoga, acquired by Levi Strauss & Co. for roughly $400M, scaled on AIMS360.
Yes. AIMS360 connects to your 3PL so Costco depot and Costco.com orders can ship from an outside warehouse while AIMS360 still owns the EDI. The 3PL prints Costco-compliant GS1-128 / SSCC labels or sends shipment data back, and AIMS360 generates and transmits the depot-ready 856 ASN tied to the correct PO and shipment ID. Inventory across your DC, 3PL, and stores stays in one available-to-sell pool, so Costco never sees a stale number.
A standalone Costco EDI tool sits beside your ERP — two systems, two vendors, and constant reconciliation between what the tool sent and what the ERP shipped, which is exactly the drift that produces three-way-match deductions. AIMS360 is a fashion-native ERP with EDI, OMS, WMS, PLM, and accounting in one platform. For Costco you get pre-built maps, depot-ready ASNs, GS1-128 / SSCC labeling, and one team owning the full lifecycle across a 300-plus retailer network with no per-transaction fees.
Costco runs its whole supplier order-to-cash cycle on EDI and made full compliance mandatory for vendors in 2024. Purchase orders go out as 850s, suppliers send back 855 acknowledgments, depot-ready 856 ASNs, and 810 invoices, and Costco's systems match all three before paying. EDI is what lets Costco's high-velocity depots preload receiving data and move product to clubs within hours. AIMS360 gives apparel and fashion brands that full exchange built into the apparel ERP, so you send and receive every Costco document automatically.
At minimum Costco requires the 850, 855, 856, 810, and 997, transmitted over AS2, SFTP, or HTTPS, with the ASN built to Costco's Enterprise 856 v4010 hierarchy and GS1-128 / SSCC-18 labels on every carton and pallet. Acknowledgments are due within 24 hours and the ASN must arrive before the truck. AIMS360 maps to Costco's specifications and label rules out of the box — the requirements box above lists the full spec the apparel software handles for you.
Your Costco buyer approves you as a supplier and issues a Vendor ID through the Costco vendor portal before EDI onboarding begins — only then does Costco invite you to test and certify your documents. AIMS360's implementation team configures your maps to that Vendor ID and runs the send-and-receive testing with you, so 850s flow in and 855 / 856 / 810s flow back automatically once you go live. The same setup covers Costco U.S. and Costco Canada vendor IDs from one apparel ERP.
Yes — fraudsters do send fake “Costco” purchase-order emails to vendors, which is one reason real Costco orders move over a secured EDI connection rather than loose email attachments. With AIMS360, genuine Costco 850 POs arrive through the certified EDI channel and validate against your catalog and Vendor ID before they ever reach the warehouse, so a spoofed PO has nowhere to land. Treat any “Costco order” that shows up as a plain email attachment as suspect and confirm it through your buyer.
AIMS360 has spent four decades building software for apparel, fashion, beauty, and consumer-goods brands — the same brands that ship Costco depots and Costco.com. EDI, OMS, WMS, PLM, and accounting sit in one fashion-native ERP, so Costco compliance is part of the platform, not a bolt-on.
Read how brands scaled on AIMS360 or book a Costco EDI demo to see it on your own orders.
Run Costco alongside the rest of your high-volume retail accounts — all from one AIMS360 instance, one inventory pool, and no per-document fees.
See AIMS360 run your Costco depot, Costco.com, and dropship orders in a 30-minute live demo — built specifically for fashion and apparel brands.
