Kohl's buys three different ways: bulk purchase orders by EDI, dropship through Dsco, and marketplace. AIMS360 runs all three from one order and inventory record, with native EDI and no middleware.
Kohl's buys from a brand three different ways, and they are not variations of each other. Bulk purchase orders to distribution centers run on classic X12 EDI. Every dropship supplier on Kohls.com runs through Dsco. Marketplace sellers run on a third track again. AIMS360 runs all three from one order and inventory record, so the same style can ship a pallet on Monday and a single unit on Tuesday without a second system.
Kohl's bulk wholesale runs on standard X12 EDI: an 850 purchase order in, an 855 acknowledgment back, an 856 ASN before delivery, an 810 invoice after. Dropship does not run on that channel at all. In 2019 Kohl's named Dsco, now part of Rithum, the platform for every drop ship supplier on Kohls.com, so dropship orders arrive through Dsco rather than as a retailer 850. Marketplace is a third relationship again, where the seller lists and ships and Kohl's takes a commission.
The mistake brands make is assuming that being set up for one means being set up for the others. A vendor certified for bulk EDI still has a separate onboarding for dropship, a separate inventory obligation, and a separate performance record. The warehouse work is different too: a bulk shipment is cartons on a pallet with GS1-128 labels, a dropship order is one box to a consumer with a Kohl's branded packing slip.
| Program | How orders arrive, and what you owe |
|---|---|
| Bulk wholesale | Kohl's 850 purchase orders to distribution centers. You return an 855, ship on the routing you were given, transmit an 856 ASN before delivery, and invoice on an 810. Cartons carry GS1-128 labels with an SSCC that has to match the ASN. |
| Dropship on Kohls.com | Runs through Dsco, now part of Rithum. You publish inventory, receive consumer orders, ship direct with Kohl's branded packaging and packing slip, and send back tracking. Inventory accuracy matters far more here than in bulk, because a stale feed produces a cancellation rather than a backorder. |
| Kohl's Marketplace | Launched as a pilot and expanded to a full program across apparel, home, toys, pet, baby, electronics and sports. The seller owns the listing, the price and the shipment, and Kohl's takes a commission. Closer to selling on a marketplace than to being a wholesale vendor. |
Kohl's posts mapping guidelines for the set below, mostly at 4010 VICS. Every one is generated natively inside AIMS360.
| Document | What it does at Kohl's |
|---|---|
| 850 | Purchase order. Kohl's to you, for stores or a distribution center. |
| 855 | PO acknowledgment. What you commit to ship against that order. |
| 860 | PO change. Kohl's publishes an 860 guideline, so changes arrive as a change document rather than as a retransmitted order. |
| 856 | Advance ship notice. The document Kohl's compliance leans on hardest, and the one most deductions trace back to. |
| 810 | Invoice, matched against the order and the ASN before payment. |
| 820 | Remittance advice. What was paid and what was taken off. |
| 816 | Organizational relationships. The store and distribution center hierarchy behind the ship to codes on your orders. |
| 864 | Text message. Notices that arrive in the EDI channel and are easy to ignore until one of them mattered. |
| 997 | Functional acknowledgment. Confirms a document was received and parsed, and is the first place a rejection shows up. |
| 846 | Inventory advice. Relevant on the dropship side, where Kohl's needs current availability rather than a weekly snapshot. |
Not every department store does. Macy's, Inc. publishes no 860 and retransmits the 850 instead, which means a system listening for a change document misses Macy's changes silently. Kohl's is the opposite case: if you are not consuming the 860, you are missing changes that were sent properly.
Kohl's publishes portal versions of the 810 and the 856 alongside the 4010 VICS maps, so a very low volume vendor can key documents on the web. It works, and it does not scale. Every portal entry is a person retyping something the ERP already knows, at exactly the moment volume is growing.
Most retailer scorecards measure whether a document was correct. Kohl's supplier scorecard also measures how you operate: how often you route, how far ahead you create the shipment, and whether you hit the first available day.
| Measure | Published goal |
|---|---|
| Received as ordered, the fill rate | 100 percent |
| Compliance dollars as a share of cost receipts | Under 0.07 percent |
| Audit failure rate | Under 1 percent |
| Average routing days per week | Once per week per shipping location |
| Shipment creation | Five days before the start ship date |
| First available day | Zero days, meaning on the start ship date |
Read those last three together and the intent is clear. Kohl's wants the shipment visible in its system five days before the window opens, wants you routing on a predictable weekly cadence, and wants goods available the day the window starts. A brand that ships accurately but late in the window still scores badly, which surprises people whose previous accounts only cared about accuracy.
The audit failure measure is worth separate attention, because it is a physical audit of the carton against the ASN. It is the one place a warehouse process problem shows up as an EDI number.
This is the detail that catches brands out, and it is worth stating plainly.
Kohl's supplier compliance and dispute handling runs in Traverse Systems, a separate portal, not in the EDI channel. The deduction shows up against your remittance as a compliance charge, but the detail behind it, the evidence and the dispute window all live in Traverse.
The practical consequence: a brand that watches only its EDI documents sees money disappear and cannot explain it. The 820 remittance tells you an amount was taken. Traverse tells you which shipment, which rule and what the evidence was. If nobody on your team has a login, deductions age past the dispute window and become permanent by default.
Every deduction that lands on the 820 is captured against the order and the invoice it belongs to, so you have the shipment record, the ASN and the pick history in one place when you go into Traverse to dispute. See EDI chargeback management.
It does not file the dispute for you inside Kohl's portal. No ERP does. What it removes is the two hours of reconstruction before you can file one, which is usually the reason disputes do not get filed at all.
Vendor managed inventory in the strict sense means the supplier owns the stock at the retailer and decides when to replenish it. That model is common in hardware, industrial supply and grocery. In department store apparel it is rare, and what usually gets called VMI is a basics replenishment program where the retailer forecasts and reorders automatically against an agreed model stock.
Kohl's does not publish a public vendor guideline describing a supplier owned VMI program, and its posted mapping guideline set does not include an 852 product activity document, which is the transaction a true replenishment feed normally rides on. If a Kohl's buyer has offered you a replenishment or VMI arrangement, confirm in writing how the data will actually reach you before you plan around it. It may be an 852, it may be a report from their systems, or it may be a flat file.
Model stock levels per location, minimum and maximum thresholds, automatic replenishment suggestions, and 846 inventory advice out to any partner who wants a feed. If Kohl's sends product activity data in any form, it becomes a demand signal rather than a spreadsheet.
Replenishment programs live and die on never being out of stock in the core sizes. That is an inventory accuracy problem before it is a forecasting problem, which is why it belongs in the same system as your warehouse rather than in a planning tool bolted on beside it.
Native EDI, so the documents are built from the same records that hold your inventory and your shipments. No middleware, no separate EDI subscription.
Kohl's 850s import as sales orders against your live stock. Dropship orders arrive through the Dsco connection and join the same queue rather than sitting in a separate portal someone has to remember to check.
Bulk allocations, dropship availability and marketplace listings all draw on one stock record, with allocation rules deciding what each program can take. A large bulk order does not quietly eat the units dropship needs.
Acknowledgments are generated from what you can actually ship, not from a copy of the order, so the commitment Kohl's records matches the commitment your warehouse can meet.
GS1-128 carton labels print with an SSCC written to the shipment record in the same action, and the 856 is built from the cartons that were actually scanned. The label and the file cannot drift, which is what the carton audit is checking.
Shipments are created against the start ship date rather than when someone gets to them, which is what the five day shipment creation and first available day measures are actually scoring.
Single unit orders process at volume with Kohl's branded packing slips, carrier labels and tracking returned automatically, including through peak. See the Dsco integration and how Mirakl, Rithum and Dsco dropship compare.
The 810 is generated from the same shipment record as the ASN, so the three way match against the 850 holds without anyone comparing documents by hand.
Compliance charges on the 820 are logged against the order they belong to, ready to take into Traverse with the shipment evidence attached.
Most first-year failures at a new department store account are mapping and process failures, not warehouse failures. AIMS360 starts from pre built, retailer tested maps and label rules rather than from a blank guideline, and the implementation team runs Kohl's testing and certification with you.
The 850, 855, 856, 810, 860, 816, 820 and 997 configured to Kohl's published guidelines, with the test cycles run before your first live order.
Dsco is its own program with its own catalog and packing requirements, and AIMS360 has been running Dsco connections for years. It is set up as part of the same project rather than discovered three weeks after the bulk account goes live.
Your team is trained on scan and ship, because the carton audit measure is testing the packing, not the mapping.
EDI and ERP are the same system and the same support team, so a failed ASN does not become a three-way conversation while the clock runs.
What apparel, footwear, home and accessories brands ask before they open a Kohl's account.
Kohl's publishes mapping guidelines for the 850 purchase order, 855 acknowledgment, 856 advance ship notice, 810 invoice, 860 purchase order change, 816 organizational relationships and 820 remittance advice, along with the 864 text message and the 997 functional acknowledgment. Dropship suppliers also work with 846 inventory data. Which subset applies to you is set in the guideline issued to your account.
Through Dsco, now part of Rithum. In 2019 Kohl's announced Dsco as the platform for all drop ship suppliers on Kohls.com, so dropship orders do not arrive on the same channel as your bulk 850s. You publish inventory to Dsco, receive consumer orders, ship direct with Kohl's branded packaging and a Kohl's packing slip, and return tracking. Being certified for bulk EDI does not make you set up for dropship, though AIMS360 connects to both.
No. On the marketplace the seller owns the listing and the price, ships the order, and Kohl's takes a commission. There is no purchase order, no wholesale cost and no bulk compliance program. It is a different commercial relationship from being a wholesale vendor, and a different one again from dropship, where Kohl's still sets the retail and owns the customer relationship.
Yes. Kohl's publishes an 860 guideline, so changes to an existing order arrive as a change document. This is worth knowing because it differs from some other department stores. Macy's, Inc. publishes no 860 and retransmits the 850 instead. With Kohl's the risk runs the other way: a system that is not consuming the 860 misses changes that were sent correctly.
The money comes off your remittance, but the detail and the dispute process live in Traverse Systems, a separate supplier portal rather than the EDI channel. If nobody on your team has access, you see the deduction without the reason, and the dispute window can pass before anyone investigates. Make sure someone owns that login before your first shipment, not after your first deduction.
Published goals include a 100 percent fill rate, compliance dollars under 0.07 percent of cost receipts, an audit failure rate under 1 percent, routing once per week per shipping location, shipment creation five days before the start ship date, and first available day on the start ship date. Notably, three of those measure how you operate rather than whether a document was correct.
Kohl's does not publish a public vendor guideline describing a supplier owned VMI program, and its posted mapping guideline set does not include an 852 product activity document, which is the transaction a replenishment feed normally rides on. In department store apparel, what is usually called VMI is a basics replenishment program run on the retailer's own forecast. If a buyer has offered you one, confirm in writing how the data will reach you before planning around it. AIMS360 supports model stock levels, replenishment thresholds and 846 inventory feeds regardless of which form it takes.
For a while. Kohl's publishes portal versions of the 810 and the 856, so a very low volume vendor can key documents on the web. The problem is not that it fails, it is that it works just well enough to defer the decision. Every portal entry is someone retyping data the system already has, and the error rate rises exactly when volume does.
Not with AIMS360. The EDI is built into the ERP, with the Kohl's maps maintained in house, so there is no middleware subscription and no per document fees from AIMS360. Documents are generated from the same records that hold your inventory and shipments, which is what keeps the ASN and the invoice consistent with what actually left the building.
A mismatch between the carton and the file. A receiver scans an SSCC that is not in your ASN, or a carton audit finds contents that do not match what the ASN declared. The usual root cause is the label and the EDI document being produced by two different systems that drift apart. Generating both from the same scan removes the failure mode rather than managing it.
Yes. Peak weeks run on the same platform as an ordinary week, including a customer processing over 1.2 million orders per day, and AIMS360 charges no per document or per kilocharacter fees of its own, so a holiday spike in dropship orders does not multiply an EDI bill. Bulk retail EDI keeps running through the same weeks on the same system.
Yes, and that is the normal case. The same platform runs Macy's, Nordstrom, Costco and 350+ retailers, each with its own hierarchy, label rules and timing windows, from one warehouse process. The per retailer differences live in the mapping, not in your operation.
Last reviewed 7 August 2026 by the AIMS360 EDI team. The document list reflects the EDI mapping guidelines Kohl's publishes for suppliers, mostly at 4010 VICS. Scorecard measures and their goals, and the use of Traverse Systems for compliance disputes, are from published Kohl's supplier compliance material. Dsco as the platform for Kohls.com drop ship suppliers is from Kohl's own announcement of that selection. Store count reflects public reporting in March 2026. Retailer requirements change, and the guideline issued to your account governs, so confirm specifics with your Kohl's contact.
Bring your Kohl's programs to a demo and we will walk through the mapping, the Dsco onboarding and where your deductions are actually coming from.
