Emeristar connects to AIMS360 on two documents, ship orders out and shipment confirmations back. That sounds thin until you read what comes back on the confirmation: carton structure, SSCC, dimensions, unit of measure, pro number, trailer and load. It is the most complete shipment confirmation on our list.
This connection carries two messages. Ship orders go out, shipment confirmations come back. On paper that is the shortest document list of any warehouse we publish. In practice it is one of the strongest connections we run, because of what the confirmation contains: carton structure, SSCC, dimensions, unit of measure, pro number, trailer and load. Almost nobody returns that much, and almost nobody explains why it matters.
Two documents, both live. The ship order goes out to the warehouse and the shipment confirmation comes back. Inbound advice, receipts, inventory adjustments, catalog and inventory snapshots are not part of this connection, and we would rather say so on the page than let you find out during scoping.
| Message | Direction | What it carries |
|---|---|---|
| 940 | AIMS360 to Emeristar | The ship order, serving as order or pick ticket depending on a system setting, with the pick number and the customer purchase order |
| 945 | Emeristar to AIMS360 | The shipment confirmation, and the reason this page exists. Full detail below |
Most warehouses confirm a shipment by telling you what quantity went out and giving you a tracking number. That is enough to mark an order shipped and nothing else. A complete confirmation, the kind Emeristar returns, describes the physical shipment well enough that you can build a retailer advance ship notice from it and reconcile a freight invoice against it without opening a spreadsheet.
| What comes back | What it is | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|
| Carton structure | Which units are in which carton, rather than a total for the shipment | Build the nested advance ship notice a retailer requires. Without it there is no compliant ASN, whatever your ERP can do |
| SSCC | The serial shipping container code uniquely identifying each carton or pallet, printed on the GS1-128 label | Let the retailer's dock scan one label and receive the whole carton against your notice, rather than counting units |
| Dimensions | The physical size of what shipped | Check dimensional weight against what the carrier billed, which is where quiet freight overcharges live |
| Unit of measure | Whether a quantity means eaches, inner packs, cases or pallets | Stop the classic error where a case of twelve is received as one unit, or twelve cases as twelve pieces |
| Pro number | The LTL carrier's own progressive number for the freight movement | Trace a pallet with the carrier, and match a freight invoice line to a shipment without guessing |
| Trailer | The trailer the goods physically left on | Prove what was on a load when a retailer disputes receipt, and tie multiple shipments to one movement |
| Load | The load or shipment grouping the warehouse assigned | Reconcile consolidated freight, where several orders travel together, without allocating cost by hand |
If you are evaluating warehouses, this table is the useful thing to take away from this page. Ask each one which of these seven they return on shipment confirmation. "We support ASN" is not an answer, because everyone says yes. The answer is in the fields.
An 856 advance ship notice is a nested structure. Shipment, then order, then carton, then item. It cannot be assembled from a shipped quantity, because a shipped quantity has no cartons in it. The carton structure and the SSCC coming back from the warehouse are the raw material, and the ERP's job is to map them to whatever that specific retailer's routing guide demands.
On this connection AIMS360 also prints the SSCC-18 pallet labels directly, so the code on the physical label and the code inside the electronic notice come from the same place. That matters more than it sounds. When labels are produced by one system and notices by another, they drift, and the first symptom is a receiving discrepancy at a retailer's dock, which is where chargebacks start.
The freight side is the half nobody markets. Dimensions, pro number, trailer and load are what let you check a carrier invoice against what actually shipped. Most brands never do this, and most brands are overpaying somewhere in dimensional weight or duplicate billing as a result.
Cross docking moves goods from an inbound container to an outbound trailer without a putaway, a storage period or a pick. For retailer orders that are already committed before the container lands, it removes handling cost from every unit and days from the timeline.
It also removes your safety net. In a normal flow, goods sit in the building for a while, and mistakes surface during putaway or picking. On a cross dock the goods are moving through, so whatever the paperwork says is what the retailer gets. That is exactly why the label and notice coming from one system matters here: on a cross dock there is no second look.
We publish warehouse connections carrying the full document set, and we are proud of those. But a longer list is not automatically a better integration, and a buyer comparing partner pages should not read it that way.
What the extra documents buy you is inbound and reconciliation automation: telling the warehouse what is arriving, getting receipts back without keying them, taking adjustments as transactions, and comparing full inventory positions on a schedule. Those matter a great deal if you receive containers frequently or run high SKU counts. They matter much less if your inbound volume is low or your receiving is already tightly controlled.
What no amount of extra documents will fix is a thin shipment confirmation. If the 945 comes back with a quantity and a tracking number, your advance ship notices will be weak and your freight reconciliation will be manual, and adding a 943 does not help. That is the honest reason a two document connection with a complete confirmation can be the better one.
Last reviewed 15 August 2026 by the AIMS360 integrations team.
Integration scope and the shipment confirmation field set reviewed against the AIMS360 production configuration for this partner.
On some partner pages this section lists facilities, square footage and services attributed to the operator's own website. We cannot do that here. Emeristar publishes very little publicly and their site did not serve reliably when we checked in August 2026. Company directories carry an address and a headcount band, and directory data is not something we will repeat as fact on our own site.
So, plainly: we can describe the integration because we run it, and everything else should come from the warehouse directly. Ask them in writing which facilities would hold your goods, available square footage, whether they handle garment on hanger or retailer ticketing, which carriers they tender to, which retailer compliance programs they have live experience with, and twelve months of inventory accuracy and on time shipping. Any warehouse worth signing answers all of it.
One thing we can say from the integration itself: a warehouse that returns carton structure, SSCC, dimensions, unit of measure, pro number, trailer and load is a warehouse whose systems are keeping proper records. That is a real signal, and it is not one you can fake.
At minimum, carton structure, meaning which units are in which carton rather than a total, and the SSCC printed on each carton's GS1-128 label. Those two are what an advance ship notice is built from. A complete confirmation also returns dimensions, unit of measure, the carrier's pro number, the trailer and the load, which is what lets you reconcile a freight invoice against what actually shipped. Emeristar returns all seven, which is more than most.
Yes, on two documents. Ship orders go out to the warehouse and shipment confirmations come back. Inbound advice, receipts, inventory adjustments, the product catalog and inventory snapshots are not part of this connection. AIMS360 also prints the SSCC-18 pallet labels for these shipments, so the label and the electronic notice come from the same source.
Not automatically, and it is worth resisting the instinct. Extra documents buy inbound and reconciliation automation: telling the warehouse what is arriving, taking receipts and adjustments without keying them, and comparing inventory positions on a schedule. That matters if you receive containers often or run high SKU counts, and much less if you do not. What extra documents cannot fix is a thin shipment confirmation, so a two document connection returning full carton detail can be the better one.
An SSCC is a serial shipping container code, a unique number for one carton or pallet, printed as a GS1-128 barcode so a retailer's dock can scan the label and receive the whole container against your advance ship notice. Whoever prints the label and whoever builds the notice must use the same codes. On this connection AIMS360 prints the SSCC-18 pallet labels directly, which removes the drift you get when labels come from a warehouse system and notices come from an ERP.
Cross docking moves goods straight from the inbound container to the outbound trailer with no putaway, storage or pick. It suits retailer orders already committed before the container lands, and it takes handling cost out of every unit. The trade is that there is no second look: goods are moving through, so whatever the paperwork says is what the retailer receives. That is why accurate labels and confirmations matter more on a cross dock than in a normal flow, not less.
No. AIMS360 performs the retailer EDI itself, so the 850 comes in and the 855, 856 and 810 go back on the retailer's routing guide spec regardless of what the warehouse can do. The warehouse connection is separate and runs on whatever that warehouse supports: REST API, CSV, tab delimited files, XML, flat files, or real X12. Several of our busiest warehouse connections exchange no X12 at all.
We will show you the advance ship notice built from real carton detail, with the SSCC codes on the labels matching the codes in the notice, and walk through the seven fields to ask your warehouse for.
