Dunham's Sports EDI runs inside AIMS360 as a built-in feature, not a connector to an outside EDI company. One provider, one contract, one support team. 850 purchase orders and 860 changes inbound, 855 acknowledgments, 856 ASNs with GS1-128 carton labels, 810 invoices and 997 acknowledgments outbound. No third-party EDI provider, no VAN, and no document or kilocharacter fees.
Take Dunham's 850 purchase orders and 860 purchase order changes straight into live inventory. Send the 855 acknowledgment, the 856 advance ship notice with GS1-128 carton labels, and the 810 invoice back on Dunham's own X12 004030 VICS specification. One system, no middleware between the map and the stock record, and no per-document fees.
Dunham's Sports EDI is the electronic document exchange between Dunham's Sports and its vendors, built on the ANSI X12 standard in the VICS retail flavour. Rather than emailing purchase orders and invoices, Dunham's sends structured files that your system reads directly.
Dunham's sends you the 850 purchase order and the 860 purchase order change. You send back the 855 purchase order acknowledgment, the 856 advance ship notice with GS1-128 carton labels, the 810 invoice, and the 997 functional acknowledgment that confirms receipt. AIMS360 runs every one of those inside the same platform that holds your inventory, so an order lands against a real stock number instead of being retyped off a PDF.
Dunham's Sports is one of the largest full-line sporting goods chains in the United States. Founded in 1937 and headquartered in Troy, Michigan, it sells athletic equipment, activewear and casual apparel, footwear, outdoor and hunting gear across more than 250 stores in more than 20 states. For a vendor that means DC receiving, store-level distribution and a compliance program that expects the paperwork to be right the first time.
The core document set for a Dunham's vendor. Your exact required list depends on the program you are set up under, so confirm it with the Dunham's EDI team before you build anything.
| Transaction | Name | Direction | What it does in the Dunham's relationship |
|---|---|---|---|
| 850 | Purchase order | Inbound | The order itself. Carries the Dunham's PO number, department, ship-to store or DC, ship window and every line with item, colour, size, quantity and cost. AIMS360 drops it straight onto live inventory and allocation. More on EDI 850. |
| 860 | Purchase order change | Inbound | Changes an order Dunham's already sent. Price, quantity up or down, added line, deleted line, moved ship or cancel date, or a full cancellation. More on EDI 860. |
| 855 | Purchase order acknowledgment | Outbound | Your answer on whether each line is accepted, accepted with a change, or rejected. Sent from the same order record, so it reflects what you can commit to shipping. |
| 856 | Advance ship notice | Outbound | The pack structure of the shipment, carton by carton, with the SSCC-18 serial number on each. Built from the actual pack, so the notice and the GS1-128 carton label cannot disagree. |
| 810 | Invoice | Outbound | Billed off what shipped, with the terms and any allowances Dunham's sent on the order carried through, so the invoice matches the PO and clears without a deduction. |
| 997 | Functional acknowledgment | Outbound | Machine receipt confirming a file arrived and parsed. Missing 997s are the earliest warning that a connection has quietly broken. More on EDI 997. |
| 865 | PO change acknowledgment | Outbound | Program dependent. Where required, this is how you accept, reject or counter an 860 rather than staying silent on it. |
| 846 | Inventory advice | Outbound | Program dependent. An availability feed, used where the retailer wants to see sellable quantity before writing the next order. |
AIMS360 EDI is built in-house. There is no third-party translator or value-added network in the middle of these documents, and no per-document or per-kilocharacter charge. See the full EDI feature overview or the list of supported EDI retailers.
The 860 is where sporting goods vendors lose money. A season turns, a category over-performs or under-performs, and Dunham's revises orders that are already in your book. If those revisions land in an inbox instead of in your order record, you ship the old quantity at the old price and eat the difference.
On the Dunham's outbound 860 specification the header carries a purpose code that separates a change from a full cancellation, and each affected line carries its own change type. Together they cover the real scenarios a Dunham's vendor sees. For the transaction in general, see EDI 860 purchase order change.
| Change scenario | How it arrives | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Price change | Line change type PC with the revised unit price | The cost on the line moves. Bill the old price and the invoice fails against the PO. |
| Quantity increase | Line change type QI with the quantity to add | More units are wanted. The added quantity has to be committed against real availability, not assumed. |
| Quantity decrease | Line change type QD with the quantity to remove | Units come off the order. If allocation is not released, that stock sits reserved for an order that no longer wants it. |
| Start ship date change | Date qualifiers for requested ship date and ship-not-before | The window moves. Shipping to the old date is an early shipment, which is a compliance issue in its own right. |
| Cancel date change | Date qualifier for the cancel date, plus ship-no-later | Your deadline moved. Miss the revised cancel date and the order is refused at the door. |
| Added or deleted line | Line change type AI to add, DI to delete | The order's line structure changes. Lines that are unaffected are restated with a no-change code so the whole order is visible. |
| Complete order cancellation | Header purpose code set to cancellation rather than change | The order is dead. Everything allocated to it has to be freed for other demand. |
The 860 is not only quantities and dates. The Dunham's specification also carries commercial terms on the same document, which is why treating it as a simple quantity update is a mistake:
Co-operative advertising allowance, defective allowance, discount, free goods and new-store discount, each with a percentage against item list cost. These land on the invoice, so they have to be captured on the order.
Terms basis date, discount percentage and days, net due date and net days, plus the payment method. Revised terms on an 860 change what your receivable is really worth.
Freight terms of collect, collect with freight credited back, or prepaid by seller. Plus the backorder rule: consignment, no backorder, or backorder if out of stock.
An 860 arrives, is matched to the original Dunham's PO number and PO date, and each changed line is matched back to the right order line using the item identifiers Dunham's sends. The revised quantity, price and dates are applied to the live order. Allocation follows: quantity that came off is released back to sellable stock, quantity that was added is committed against what is truly available, and the moved ship window flows through to the pick. When the shipment goes, the 856 and the 810 are generated from the revised order, not the original one.
The part that matters commercially is boring and specific: one order record, revised in place. The alternative is a change request that lives in a shared mailbox while the warehouse picks against a stale pick ticket.
This is the part that decides whether EDI works or creates a second job. Dunham's puts several identifiers on the same line so both sides can match without guessing. Cross-reference them once against your styles and sizes, and every order and change after that matches itself.
| Qualifier | What it carries | Whose number it is | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| IN | Buyer's item number | Dunham's short SKU | The primary key on the Dunham's side. Every change order refers back to it. |
| UP | UPC, UCC-12 consumer package code | Shared GTIN | The identifier the carton label, the ASN and the store scanner all agree on. Get this wrong and you get chargebacks. |
| EN | EAN or UPC-13 international article number | Shared GTIN | Used in place of the 12-digit UPC where the item carries a 13-digit code. |
| VN | Vendor's item number | Yours | Your own SKU echoed back, so a human reading the order recognises the product. |
| IT | Buyer's style number | Dunham's long SKU | The fuller Dunham's code. Useful for grouping a style across its size and colour range. |
| IZ | Buyer's size code | Dunham's | Their size code, which is rarely identical to yours. This is the field that breaks matching if it is not mapped. |
| BO | Buyer's colour code | Dunham's | Same story as size. Colour codes drift between vendor and retailer more than any other field. |
Alongside the coded identifiers, free-form description segments carry the product description, the colour description and the size description in plain text. Those are for humans, not for matching. Matching runs on the coded fields.
Ship-to is handled the same way: the Dunham's distribution center is identified by its own location code, and direct-to-store deliveries carry a Dunham's store number. AIMS360 maps each of those to a ship-to record so routing, freight and the carton label are correct before the shipment is built.
If you have the Dunham's EDI specification document in front of you, here is what to look at first, and what to confirm with their EDI team rather than assume.
Dunham's identifies itself with the D-U-N-S qualifier on the interchange header and accepts a range of receiver qualifiers from you. The interchange control version is 004030, and the functional group carries PC as the identifier code with 004030VICS as the version and release.
The interchange header carries a usage indicator: T for test data, P for production. Nothing goes to production until Dunham's certifies each transaction set in test.
The repetition separator and the component element separator are both specified as particular characters, and at least one is non-printing. Getting either wrong makes the file unparseable on arrival.
Every retailer specification has places where the summary, the segment tables and the worked example do not perfectly agree. That is normal, and it is cheaper to ask than to discover it in certification. On the Dunham's 860, ask about:
AIMS360 works through this list with you during onboarding rather than handing you a mapping document and wishing you luck. See how implementation runs.
A worked example in the Dunham's structure: a quantity increase of 50 units on one line of an existing order, with a revised ship window and a co-operative advertising allowance. Identifiers are placeholders.
ISA*00* *00* *01*BUYERID *12*VENDORID *260805*0930*^*00403*000000123*0*P*>~ GS*PC*BUYERID*VENDORID*20260805*0930*0123*X*004030VICS~ ST*860*0001~ BCH*04*SA*4412887***20260612*****20260805~ REF*DP*5~ REF*MR*D~ FOB*CF~ CSH*N~ SAC*A*B720****1*20~ ITD**15*****30~ DTM*010*20260901~ DTM*038*20260915~ DTM*001*20260930~ N1*ST*DISTRIBUTION CENTER*93*002~ N3*2201 EXAMPLE ROAD~ N4*ANYTOWN*IN*46952*USA~ POC**QI*800*50*EA*4.65**IN*0005398318*UP*025725210114*VN*2886F2*IT*0308-86280-0065~ PID*F*08***YOUTH BASEBALL PANTS~ PID*F*75***BLACK/WHITE~ PID*F*91***XL~ CTT*1~ SE*20*0001~ GE*1*0123~ IEA*1*000000123~
| Segment | Reading it |
|---|---|
| ISA / GS | Envelope. Version 00403 at the interchange level, 004030VICS at the group level, functional identifier PC for a purchase order change. P is production data. The repetition separator shown here as ^ is a non-printing character in the Dunham's specification. |
| BCH | Purpose code 04 is a change, 01 would be a cancellation. SA is a stand-alone order. Then the Dunham's PO number, the original PO date and the change date. |
| REF | Department number, and merchandise type where D is domestic and I is import. |
| FOB / CSH | Freight collect with freight credited back, and no backorder if the line cannot be filled. |
| SAC | An allowance: co-operative advertising at 20 percent against item list cost. This has to reach the invoice. |
| ITD | Terms basis is receipt date, net 30. |
| DTM | Requested ship date, ship-no-later date, and cancel date. Three separate deadlines, all of which can move on an 860. |
| N1 / N3 / N4 | Ship-to. Here the distribution center, identified by a Dunham's location code. |
| POC | The change itself. QI is a quantity increase: 800 on order before the change, 50 to be added, each, at 4.65. Then the Dunham's item number, the UPC, your vendor item number and the Dunham's style number. |
| PID | Free-form product, colour and size descriptions for human readers. |
| CTT / SE | Line count and segment count. The segment count runs from the transaction header through the trailer inclusive, and it has to match what is in the file. |
Looking for the transaction in general rather than the Dunham's flavour of it? See EDI 860 purchase order change.
Getting on the shelf is a merchandising conversation with a Dunham's buyer. Once you have that commitment, the operational side runs like this.
Ask the Dunham's IT and EDI team for the current transaction specifications, the vendor routing guide and the carton label requirements. Confirm which documents are mandatory for your program and which X12 version applies to each.
Trade interchange sender and receiver IDs with their qualifiers, and agree the communication method. AIMS360 configures the envelope so the interchange and group headers match what Dunham's expects on arrival.
Load the UPC, the Dunham's item number, your style and the Dunham's size and colour codes against each AIMS360 style and size. This is the step that decides whether change orders match themselves later.
Map the distribution center and any direct-to-store numbers to ship-to records, and set the freight terms and allowance handling Dunham's specifies, so routing and margin are right before the first carton is packed.
Run each transaction set in test mode until Dunham's signs it off: the purchase order, the change scenarios, the advance ship notice with its carton labels, and the invoice.
Switch the usage indicator to production. AIMS360 flags failed or unacknowledged documents, so a missing advance ship notice or a rejected invoice surfaces while it is still fixable rather than after the deduction lands.
Any provider can receive an 860. The difference shows up in what happens in the ninety seconds after it lands.
The 860 is translated outside your ERP and handed over as data. Someone has to open the order, work out which line moved, adjust the quantity, release or commit stock, and remember to move the ship window. Between the translation and the order record there is a person and a delay, and the pick ticket may already be printed.
The mapping and the stock record are in the same system. The 860 matches the original PO, the changed lines are applied in place, allocation adjusts, the revised ship window drives the pick, and the resulting advance ship notice and invoice are generated from the revised order.
Volume-based document fees mean a busy change period costs more precisely when you can least afford it. AIMS360 charges no per-document or per-kilocharacter fee, so an 860 storm at the end of a season costs nothing extra.
The same logic runs across the rest of the relationship. The advance ship notice is built from the actual pack, so the GS1-128 carton label and the 856 cannot drift apart. The invoice bills what shipped at the revised price with the allowances carried through. And chargebacks are tracked by reason code, so a repeating compliance problem is visible instead of buried in a remittance advice.
AIMS360 includes 24x7 emergency support and priority support for EDI, because a broken retailer connection is not a next-business-day problem.
The recurring deduction reasons in a sporting goods vendor program, and what has to be true to avoid them.
For the wider picture, see the advance ship notice and reporting pages.
The questions vendors ask before they build the connection.
Dunham's Sports EDI is the electronic document exchange between Dunham's Sports and its vendors, built on the ANSI X12 standard in the VICS retail flavour. Instead of emailing purchase orders and invoices, Dunham's sends structured files that your system reads directly. Dunham's sends the 850 purchase order and the 860 purchase order change. You send back the 855 acknowledgment, the 856 advance ship notice with GS1-128 carton labels, the 810 invoice and the 997 functional acknowledgment. AIMS360 runs all of it natively inside the ERP, so the order lands against live inventory rather than being retyped from a PDF.
The core set for a Dunham's vendor is the 850 purchase order and the 860 purchase order change inbound from Dunham's, and the 855 purchase order acknowledgment, 856 advance ship notice, 810 invoice and 997 functional acknowledgment outbound from you. Depending on the program, Dunham's may also ask for an 846 inventory advice or an 865 purchase order change acknowledgment. Confirm your exact required set with the Dunham's EDI team, because it varies by vendor program. AIMS360 supports all of them through built-in EDI.
The 860 is the purchase order change. Dunham's sends it when something on an order they already placed has to move. On the Dunham's specification the change is carried at the line with a change type code: price change, quantity increase, quantity decrease, added item, deleted item, or no change on a line that is being restated. The header carries a purpose code that distinguishes a change from a full cancellation, and date qualifiers move the requested ship date, the ship-not-before date, the ship-no-later date, the anticipated delivery date or the cancel date. In practice that covers five real scenarios: a price change, a quantity change, a start ship date change, a cancel date change and a complete order cancellation.
The Dunham's outbound 860 specification is written to ANSI X12 version 004030 in the VICS retail subset, with the version and release identifier carried in the GS segment as 004030VICS. Other transaction sets in your program may be on a different version, so confirm the version for each document with Dunham's rather than assuming one version covers the whole relationship.
Dunham's sends several identifiers on the same line so both sides can match without ambiguity. There is the Dunham's short SKU as the buyer item number, the UPC or the EAN 13, your own vendor item number, the Dunham's long SKU as the buyer style number, a buyer size code and a buyer colour code. Free-form description segments carry the product description, the colour description and the size description in plain text. AIMS360 cross-references those against your style and size so a change order matches the right line automatically.
Getting on the shelf is a merchandising conversation with a Dunham's buyer for your category. Once you have a purchase order commitment, the operational side begins: request the EDI specifications and the vendor routing guide from the Dunham's IT and EDI team, exchange trading partner identifiers, cross-reference your items to the Dunham's item numbers and UPCs, map the distribution center and store ship-to locations, run test transactions until each document is certified, and then move to production. With AIMS360 that setup happens inside the ERP you already run.
No. AIMS360 EDI is built in-house and included, so there is no per-document or per-kilocharacter transaction fee for trading with Dunham's. That matters most on a purchase order change, because an 860 storm at the end of a season can multiply document counts fast on a metered plan. See pricing.
No. AIMS360 EDI is native to the ERP. Purchase orders, changes, acknowledgments, advance ship notices and invoices are read and generated by the same system that holds your inventory and your order book, with no middleware sitting between the mapping and the stock record. If a retailer program specifically mandates a particular network, AIMS360 works within it, but the Dunham's connection does not require a third-party translator.
Assume yes and confirm against the current Dunham's routing guide. Retailers of this size receive at a distribution center that scans cartons on arrival, and the advance ship notice and the carton label have to agree exactly. AIMS360 prints GS1-128 labels with the SSCC-18 serial number from the same pack record that builds the 856, so the label and the notice cannot drift apart.
Yes. AIMS360 is a consumer brands ERP serving ten categories: outdoor and sporting goods, footwear, jewellery, bags and accessories, cosmetics and personal care, wellness and supplements, home, furniture and lifestyle, household and home care, baby and children's, pet products, and fashion and apparel. A Dunham's vendor selling activewear, outerwear, footwear, team sports gear or hardgoods runs one catalogue and one stock record across all of it. See Outdoor and Sporting Goods ERP.
AIMS360 includes native EDI to major retailers across the sporting goods and outdoor channel, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Academy Sports and Outdoors, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Scheels, Hibbett Sports, Sportsman's Warehouse, Bass Pro, Cabela's, Sun and Ski Sports, Rally House, PGA TOUR Superstore and Golf Galaxy. Adding a second sporting goods account is a configuration step, not a second system.
Retail compliance programs turn a late advance ship notice, a mislabelled carton or a shipment outside the window into a deduction against your invoice. The fix is upstream: the ship window has to be visible on the order at allocation time, the advance ship notice has to leave before the truck, and the carton label has to match the notice. AIMS360 keeps the ship-not-before and ship-no-later dates on the order, builds the notice from the actual pack, and tracks chargebacks by reason code so a repeating compliance problem is visible instead of buried in a remittance.
Purchase orders, change orders, acknowledgments, ASNs with GS1-128 labels and invoices, generated by the same platform that holds your inventory. No middleware, no per-document fees.
By Shahrooz Kohan, CEO, AIMS360. Reviewed by the AIMS360 EDI team. Last updated August 2026. Talk to our team.
Dunham's Sports is a trademark of its respective owner. AIMS360 is an independent software vendor and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Dunham's Sports. Transaction details on this page describe general ANSI X12 and VICS conventions and are for orientation only. Always work from the current specifications and routing guide supplied to you by Dunham's.
