Macy's and Bloomingdale's are four integrations, not one: bulk wholesale EDI, Vendor Direct Fulfillment dropship, and separate Mirakl marketplaces for each banner. AIMS360 runs all four from one available to sell pool with Macy's EDI built into the ERP.
Macy's and Bloomingdale's are not one integration. Bulk wholesale, Vendor Direct Fulfillment, Macy's Marketplace and Bloomingdale's Marketplace each have their own catalog, their own order stream and their own inventory feed, and none of them reserve stock on each other's behalf. AIMS360 runs all four from one available to sell pool, with Macy's EDI built into the ERP rather than bolted beside it.
There are four distinct ways to sell through Macy's and Bloomingdale's that each require their own systems integration, plus separate vendor setups for Macy's Backstage and Bloomingdale's Outlet. Brands routinely discover the third and fourth one after they have already built for the first.
| Program | Who holds the stock | How it connects |
|---|---|---|
| Bulk wholesale | Macy's, once received at the DC | EDI 850, 856, 810, 832, 846, 852, 820, 997 through a VAN. Macy's names OpenText as its preferred network. Ships to a Macy's DC or direct to store. |
| Vendor Direct Fulfillment (VDF) also called V2C, also called dropship |
The brand | Two paths. Direct EDI using Macy's VDF mapping variants of the 810, 846, 850 and 856, or the Rithum / CommerceHub OrderStream connection. Macy's states that in lieu of an EDI connection, vendors may be required to use the Rithum / CommerceHub connection for VDF documents. Covers macys.com and bloomingdales.com under one standard. |
| Macy's Marketplace | The brand | Mirakl. API, CSV feed or EDI through a Mirakl Connect account. Announced November 2021, launched September 2022. Third party connectors including Rithum's Dsco platform can service these orders. |
| Bloomingdale's Marketplace | The brand | Mirakl, but a separate storefront with its own onboarding, weekly settlement rather than twice monthly, and Bloomingdale's providing return labels charged back to the merchant's carrier account. |
Each program has its own catalog, its own item setup and its own availability feed. VDF publishes availability by EDI 846, once per business day unless Macy's pre-approves more, and Macy's VDF standards note that vendors may be required to send multiple updates per day through Rithum during peak. Marketplace availability publishes separately through Mirakl on Mirakl's cadence and taxonomy. Bulk stops mattering the moment Macy's receives the units.
The consequence is that the same physical unit can be committed against a VDF 846 position and a Mirakl offer at the same time, while also being drawn down by a bulk purchase order. Neither Macy's nor Mirakl reserves stock on the other's behalf. If nothing upstream holds one authoritative number, the brand oversells and takes the cancellation rate penalty for it. That is the argument for running all four out of one OMS rather than three connectors and a spreadsheet, and it is our analysis of how the architecture behaves rather than something Macy's states.
Macy's publishes its vendor requirements openly, and the same document governs Bloomingdale's. The Vendor Standards state that the term Macy's refers to all entities affiliated with Macy's, Inc., including those operating Bloomingdale's, macys.com, bloomingdales.com and the Bloomingdale's Outlet Stores. Macy's Backstage is the carve out and has its own standards. The vendor portal is MacysNet, and new merchandise vendors apply through RangeMe.
Four things are required from every merchandise vendor: the 850 purchase order, the 856 advance ship notice, the 810 invoice, and the 832 UPC catalog delivered through OpenText. A GS1 certificate and GS1 company prefix have to exist before a vendor can even be set up. Everything else follows from those four.
The part that catches brands out is not the EDI itself, it is what has to be true in the warehouse at the same time. Merchandise has to arrive floor ready, which means pre-ticketed with exactly one UPC per ticket, on the correct industry standard hanger, with a GS1-128 carton label whose SSCC-18 has never been used before. The 856 has to leave immediately after the truck door closes and land at least three hours before the delivery. If the ticket, the label, the ASN and the invoice come out of four different systems, that is four chances to drift, and Macy's assesses expense offsets against the difference.
AIMS360 puts all four in one place. The 850 lands in your OMS, inventory allocates, the WMS prints the ticket and the carton label from the same record, the ASN transmits at scan and ship, and the invoice reconciles to both before it sends.
Taken from the MacysNet mapping guide index. Macy's publishes VICS guides at versions 3050, 4010, 4030, 4050 and 5010, with 5010 the newest, plus Vendor Direct variants of the 810, 846, 850 and 856.
| EDI document | Direction | What it does on a Macy's order | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 850 Purchase Order | Macy's to you | The order, including bulk and release. PO changes arrive as a retransmitted 850, not an 860. A Vendor Direct variant carries VDF customer orders | Required from all vendors |
| 856 Ship Notice | You to Macy's | Published in two structures, pick and pack and standard carton pack. Sent immediately after the truck door closes, at least 3 hours before delivery | Required from all vendors |
| 810 Invoice | You to Macy's | Bills the shipment against the PO and the ASN. Separate Vendor Direct variant for VDF | Required from all vendors |
| 832 UPC Catalog | You to Macy's | GS1 US compliant UPC / GTIN / EAN catalog through OpenText, at ID, PID, vendor style, color and size level | Required from all vendors |
| 846 Inventory Advice | You to Macy's | Available to sell by item. On VDF, once per business day unless Macy's approves more frequent updates | Required from select vendors |
| 820 Remittance Advice | Macy's to you | Payment detail used to reconcile what Macy's actually paid, including offsets | Published |
| 855 PO Acknowledgment | You to Macy's | Confirms acceptance, substitutions or backorders | Guide published, not on the all vendor required list |
| 852 Product Activity | Both ways | Sell through and sales data by store and item | Published both directions |
| 180 Return Authorization | Macy's to you | Return merchandise authorization, paired with a reverse 856 for the RTV shipment | Published |
| 997 Functional Ack | Both ways | Confirms an EDI document was received and structurally valid | Published |
Macy's publishes these in the Vendor Standards. AIMS360 produces all of them from the same order record that generates the ASN and the invoice.
Required on every carton shipped to a Macy's DC or direct to a store. Either the 4 by 6 inch or the 3 by 8 inch format, with a GS1-128 barcode 3.02 inches long and 1.25 inches high, subset C symbology at a 20 mil nominal X dimension.
A GS1 certificate and GS1 company prefix must exist before a vendor can be set up at all. Every item needs a code at the ID, PID, vendor style, color and size level, including collateral, gift with purchase and purchase with purchase. Macy's approves and verifies new catalogs before the data goes live.
Merchandise must arrive ready for immediate placement on the selling floor. One UPC per ticket and one EPC per RFID tag, no exceptions. Physical ticket samples are mailed to Macy's EDI during onboarding for approval before the first shipment.
Hanging merchandise ships on the industry standard hanger in Appendix F, with colored sizers on certain children's size ranges and non-slip hangers on wide-neck tops. RFID tags are required per Macy's EPC-Enabled RFID Technical Specifications, and Macy's states RFID has rolled out into most families of business.
The current RFID department scope lives inside the technical specification, which requires a MacysNet login, so confirm whether your departments are in scope after you register rather than relying on any list published elsewhere. The only publicly reachable version of that specification on MacysNet is dated 2012 and its category list should not be treated as current.
On VDF the packing rules change completely. There is no DC carton workflow. Instead every carton shipped to the customer must contain a Macy's or Bloomingdale's branded packing list, the complete order must ship within two business days, and the vendor accepts the consumer return directly unless otherwise negotiated. Macy's reviews VDF vendors monthly against Federal Trade Commission performance benchmarks, and falling below the standard triggers corrective action up to probation or termination.
Macy's publishes a week by week checklist in its New Vendor Onboarding Instructions, measured from receipt of set up confirmation. AIMS360's implementation team runs it with you.
Confirm your account number with Macy's AR and Credit, register on MacysNet, and submit shipping addresses at least 30 days before the first shipment. Read the Vendor Standards, the Master Purchasing Agreement and the VDF Supplemental Standards if you are doing dropship. Complete the EDI Startup form. Review the Routing Guide and the EPC-Enabled RFID specification.
Order UPC and EPC tickets from a ticket provider and mail physical samples to Macy's EDI. Order hangers. Load Store to DC listings and build the merchandise preparation standards into your WMS. This is the week most first time vendors underestimate.
Testing completes and Macy's emails next steps. AIMS360 starts from pre built Macy's maps rather than building from scratch, which removes most of the mapping iterations that stretch a first onboarding. The 856 test and audit request runs by division, covering Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Bloomingdale's Outlet and Backstage.
Macy's names OpenText, formerly GXS and Inovis, as its preferred value added network, and states that EDI documents are to be traded directly to Macy's with no interconnecting VAN. Macy's also publishes a list of supported interconnect qualifiers for vendors on other networks. On VDF you may instead be required to connect through Rithum / CommerceHub OrderStream. AIMS360 handles either route.
Macy's publishes weeks one through three and does not state a total duration, so treat three to four weeks as the realistic floor rather than a commitment. The gating item is almost always physical ticket sample approval, not the EDI. Marketplace onboarding is a separate track through Mirakl Connect and does not depend on the EDI setup at all.
Macy's calls them expense offsets and invoice chargebacks, and they are deducted from what you are owed rather than invoiced to you. The Vendor Standards state that non-compliance constitutes consent to Macy's assessing charges and offsetting them from amounts that would otherwise have been payable, and that some are liquidated amounts assessed where precise costs are difficult to determine.
The schedule of charges by violation type lives in Appendix H of the Vendor Standards. We are not going to publish a rate card here, because the appendix is not retrievable in a form we can verify and any figures circulating elsewhere may be out of date. The one change Macy's states in the body of the document is that effective 1 July 2023 certain expense offsets increased from 0.60 to 0.75 per unit. Pull the current appendix from MacysNet once you have a login.
Disputes run through MacysNet under Activity, then Chargebacks and RTVs, then the AP Form, with separate dispute types for expense offsets, freight claims and cost differences. AIMS360's chargeback management logs each deduction against the original order, shipment and invoice, so a dispute goes out with the ASN timestamp, the carton manifest and the matching invoice line attached rather than being reconstructed by hand weeks later.
Macy's owns a large private brand portfolio, including Style & Co., I.N.C. International Concepts, Alfani, Bar III, Club Room and Giani Bernini. But jewelry, watches, handbags and accessories remain overwhelmingly outside brand. Macy's brand directory lists Bulova, Citizen, COACH, EFFY, Kendra Scott, Movado, Pandora, Seiko and Swarovski in jewelry and watches, and Brahmin, COACH, Michael Kors, Lauren Ralph Lauren, KARL LAGERFELD PARIS and Sam Edelman in handbags and accessories.
Bloomingdale's is further along the same axis. Its designer jewelry directory carries David Yurman, Marco Bicego, Roberto Coin, LAGOS, Messika, Repossi, Sydney Evan, Longines and TAG Heuer, and its handbag directory carries Bottega Veneta, Chloe, Coach, FERRAGAMO, Longchamp, MARC JACOBS, MZ WALLACE, Tory Burch and TOTEME. Bloomingdale's also runs an e-concession model inside its marketplace for luxury brands that want full control of their own assortment.
Assortment rotates and some brands trade through concession or licensing rather than wholesale purchase orders, so treat those lists as evidence that the doors buy outside brands in these categories, not as proof that any named brand exchanges EDI purchase orders with Macy's.
The questions apparel, footwear, jewelry and accessories brands raise before starting Macy's onboarding on AIMS360.
Four that each need their own systems integration: bulk wholesale on EDI, Vendor Direct Fulfillment for dropship, Macy's Marketplace on Mirakl, and Bloomingdale's Marketplace on a separate Mirakl storefront. On top of those, Macy's Backstage and Bloomingdale's Outlet are separate vendor entities with their own setup, and Bluemercury is a separate banner with its own buying. Licensed departments and in-store concessions are negotiated corporate partnerships rather than programs a brand applies to.
OrderStream. Macy's VDF Supplemental Standards name Rithum and CommerceHub and the OrderStream system, and state that in lieu of an EDI connection vendors may be required to use that connection for VDF documents. Dsco is a different Rithum platform, acquired as part of CommerceHub in November 2020, and its verified Macy's touchpoint is Macy's Marketplace, where Dsco can act as a seller's integration layer into the Mirakl storefront. Brands often say Dsco when they mean Rithum, usually because they already use Dsco for Nordstrom, Kohl's, Neiman Marcus or Saks Off Fifth. If your Macy's contact says Rithum, ask which platform they mean before you build.
Macy's Vendor Standards name four as required from all vendors: the 850 purchase order, the 856 advance ship notice, the 810 invoice, and the 832 UPC catalog delivered through OpenText. The 846 inventory advice is required from select vendors and is central to VDF. The 820 remittance advice, 852 product activity, 855 acknowledgment, 180 return authorization and 997 functional acknowledgment all have published mapping guides. Macy's also publishes Vendor Direct variants of the 810, 846, 850 and 856 for dropship.
No. There is no 860 in any published Macy's mapping guide index, at any version from 3050 through 5010, and no 824 application advice either. Macy's handles purchase order changes by retransmitting the 850, described in the Vendor Standards as bulk, release and retransmission. This matters operationally: a system built to wait for an 860 will miss Macy's changes entirely. AIMS360 treats a retransmitted 850 as a change to the existing order rather than a duplicate.
The Vendor Standards require the ASN to be sent immediately after the truck door has closed, and vendors must allow three hours of processing, so it has to land at least three hours before the anticipated delivery. Macy's publishes two ASN structures, pick and pack and standard carton pack. AIMS360 builds the correct structure as cartons are scanned in the WMS and transmits at scan and ship, so the timing requirement is met by the process rather than by someone remembering.
A GS1-128 label with an SSCC-18 must be securely affixed to every carton shipped to a Macy's distribution center or directly to a store. Macy's specifies either the 4 by 6 inch or the 3 by 8 inch format, a barcode 3.02 inches long and 1.25 inches high, GS1 or EAN-128 subset C symbology, and a nominal X dimension of 20 mil. SSCC numbers must never be reused and must be unique at every level. Placement is defined in Appendix E of the Vendor Standards. Note that VDF shipments do not use this workflow at all: they carry a Macy's or Bloomingdale's branded packing list instead.
Yes, and it is a prerequisite to being set up at all. The Vendor Standards state that in order for a new vendor to be set up, a GS1 certificate and GS1 company prefix must be established. Every item then needs a code at the ID, PID, vendor style, color and size level in a GS1 US compliant UPC, GTIN and EAN catalog delivered through OpenText, including collateral, gift with purchase and purchase with purchase items. Macy's approves and verifies new catalogs before the data goes live.
Macy's requires tags in accordance with its EPC-Enabled RFID Technical Specifications and states that RFID has rolled out successfully into most families of business. The specific department scope is published only inside that specification, which requires a MacysNet login, so confirm your own departments after you register. Two rules Macy's does publish openly: use integrated UPC and EPC tickets so the physical ticket appearance does not change apart from the EPC symbol, and never transmit EPC numbers in place of UPC, GTIN or EAN codes. Be cautious with any RFID category list you find elsewhere, including the version on MacysNet dated 2012.
That merchandise arrives ready for immediate placement on the selling floor, with no preparation work at the DC or the store. In practice that means pre-ticketed with exactly one UPC per ticket and one EPC per RFID tag, on the correct industry standard hanger from Appendix F, with colored sizers on certain children's size ranges and non-slip hangers on wide-neck tops. Ticket format and placement are defined in Appendices C and D. Physical ticket samples are mailed to Macy's EDI for approval during onboarding.
For bulk and dropship, no. The Vendor Standards state that the term Macy's refers to all entities affiliated with Macy's, Inc., including those that operate Bloomingdale's, macys.com, bloomingdales.com and the Bloomingdale's Outlet Stores, and the VDF standards read Macy's and Bloomingdale's throughout with a shared operations contact. Macy's Backstage is the carve out with its own standards. Marketplace is where they genuinely diverge: Bloomingdale's runs a separate Mirakl storefront with its own onboarding, weekly settlement rather than twice monthly, and its own returns handling.
VDF is wholesale dropship. Macy's sends a purchase order for a single customer order, you ship direct to the shopper within two business days with a Macy's or Bloomingdale's branded packing list, you accept the consumer return, and it runs on EDI or through Rithum OrderStream. Macy's Marketplace is a Mirakl powered third party seller channel where the brand is the seller and shipper of record for the merchandise and Macy's collects payment from the shopper and remits net of commission. Different commercial relationship, different integration, different catalog. Many brands end up running both.
For bulk, Macy's names OpenText, formerly GXS and Inovis, as its preferred value added network and states that EDI documents are to be traded directly to Macy's with no interconnecting VAN, while publishing a list of supported interconnect qualifiers for vendors already on another network. For VDF you may instead be required to connect through Rithum and CommerceHub OrderStream. AIMS360 builds and processes the EDI in house and connects through whichever route Macy's approves for your account, with no per document or per kilocharacter fees from AIMS360 as volume grows.
Macy's publishes a week by week checklist covering weeks one through three, measured from receipt of set up confirmation, and does not state a total duration. Three to four weeks is a realistic floor. Two items usually set the actual date: shipping addresses have to be submitted at least 30 days before the first shipment, and physical UPC and EPC ticket samples have to be mailed to Macy's EDI and approved. Marketplace onboarding runs on a separate track through Mirakl Connect and does not wait on the EDI setup.
Macy's calls them expense offsets and invoice chargebacks, and deducts them from amounts otherwise payable to you rather than invoicing them. The Vendor Standards state that non-compliance constitutes consent to that offsetting, and that some charges are liquidated amounts assessed where precise costs are hard to determine. The schedule by violation type is in Appendix H, which is not publicly retrievable, so we are not going to quote a rate card. The one figure Macy's states in the document body is that effective 1 July 2023 certain expense offsets increased from 0.60 to 0.75 per unit. On VDF the equivalent pressure is the monthly review against Federal Trade Commission performance benchmarks.
Yes, and that is the whole point. Each program publishes availability separately: VDF through EDI 846 once per business day unless Macy's approves more, and each marketplace through Mirakl on its own cadence. Neither reserves stock on the other's behalf, so the same unit can sit in two positions at once while a bulk purchase order is also drawing it down. AIMS360 holds one available to sell pool across your DC, your 3PL and your retail stores, and publishes derived positions to each channel, so what Macy's and Mirakl show matches what you can actually ship.
Macy's, Inc. directs new merchandise vendors to apply through RangeMe, and points existing vendors to MacysNet for technical requirements and specifications. EDI onboarding begins after a buyer relationship and an account number exist, not before, and MacysNet registration itself requires a twelve digit Macy's account number. Marketplace is the exception: it has its own seller application through Mirakl Connect and does not require the wholesale vendor relationship. Everything else on this page describes what you need to be ready for once a buyer relationship is in place, not a route to getting one.
AIMS360 has spent four decades building software for apparel, footwear, jewelry, beauty and accessories brands, which is most of what a Macy's or Bloomingdale's floor is made of. EDI, OMS, WMS, PLM and accounting sit in one platform, so the ticket, the carton label, the ASN and the invoice all come off the same record, and every Macy's program draws on one inventory number instead of four. That is what makes floor ready achievable at volume instead of aspirational. Read how brands scaled on AIMS360 or book a Macy's EDI demo.
Run Macy's alongside the rest of your wholesale accounts, from one AIMS360 instance, one inventory pool and no per document fees.
Last reviewed 7 August 2026 by the AIMS360 EDI team. Reviewed against the Macy's Vendor Standards, the Macy's and Bloomingdale's Vendor Direct Standards dated April 2026, the MacysNet EDI mapping guide indexes, the Macy's New Vendor Onboarding Instructions, and Mirakl's published Macy's and Bloomingdale's marketplace documentation. Requirements are issued to each vendor through MacysNet and can change. The routing guide, the RFID technical specification and the Appendix H schedule of expense offsets are behind a MacysNet login and are not quoted here.
A 30 minute live demo on your own bulk, Vendor Direct Fulfillment and marketplace orders, built for consumer brands.
