Ship wholesale EDI, retailer dropship, Shopify, marketplace, store and 3PL orders from one order pool, each on its own path. Ship via codes, packing rules, warehouse per line and automation templates per channel, with ASNs, labels, invoices and tracking sent back where each channel expects them.
Multi-channel distribution in AIMS360 means a retailer DC order, a retailer dropship order, a Shopify order, a marketplace order, a store order and a wholesale order from the portal all sit in one order pool against one inventory, and each one picks, packs, labels, ships and confirms the way its channel requires. The customer account, its ship via, its packing rules, its warehouse and the automation template that runs it decide the path, so the warehouse does not have to remember which rules belong to which customer.
Multi-channel distribution in AIMS360 is one order pool and one inventory feeding a shipping and fulfillment path per sales channel. Wholesale orders to a retailer DC pack against the retailer's packing rules, print GS1-128 labels and send an ASN and an EDI invoice. Retailer dropship orders run through an automation that imports, picks, ships, confirms and invoices one parcel at a time. Shopify, marketplace and store orders import against their own customer accounts, pick from the warehouse tied to their location, ship on the service the shopper paid for and fulfill back with tracking. Any of them can ship through a 3PL on a 940 out and a 945 back. What makes each path different is set once on the customer account, the ship via code, the packing rule, the warehouse and the automation template, not decided by a packer per order.
The order management page covers how orders from every channel get in and how inventory stays honest across them. The shipping labels page covers carrier rates and label printing. This page is the map between the two: which channel ships how, and where in AIMS360 that is decided.
| Channel | How it ships in AIMS360 |
|---|---|
| Wholesale to a retailer DC | An EDI 850 or a keyed order lands on the retailer's trading partner account. Pick, then pack in shipment processing against the packing rules on that account, print GS1-128 carton labels, send the 856 ASN and the 810 invoice. Freight is usually collect on the retailer's routing guide, so the ship via on the account is the retailer's carrier. |
| Wholesale to stores and distros | The same account with store and DC ship to locations. Orders carry the store, cartons are packed per store, and the ASN carries the pick and pack structure the retailer asked for. Ship to locations can be changed inside shipment processing when the retailer redirects a carton. |
| Retailer dropship | One EDI 850 per consumer on the retailer's dropship account. The dropship automation imports the order, allocates and picks it, sends the pick ticket to your warehouse system, a 3PL or a shipping app, takes the shipped confirmation back, builds the shipment, sends the 856 and 810 and invoices, one workflow per shipment. |
| Your own web store | Shopify orders download into a staging table, become AIMS360 orders on the connected customer account, pick, ship from your warehouse or a 3PL, invoice, and the order is fulfilled in Shopify with tracking. The shipping method the shopper chose is mapped to an AIMS360 ship via, so the warehouse ships the service that was paid for. |
| Marketplaces through Shopify | Orders from a marketplace channel connected to Shopify import like any other Shopify order. A tag on the order can route it to its own customer account, so each marketplace reports as its own account while the order source stays Shopify. Amazon fulfilled by merchant has its own connection and flags its orders for review. |
| Amazon FBA | FBA orders download into the sales channel staging table, become orders, pick tickets and invoices in AIMS360, so units that Amazon ships still leave your books correctly. |
| Retail stores | A store on Shopify POS is its own Shopify location and its own AIMS360 warehouse. POS orders import against a customer account per store, pick, invoice and fulfill on their own workflow, and the store can be a local pickup point for web orders with a pickup ship via of its own. |
| B2B portal, rep app, JOOR, NuOrder | Orders from the B2B portal, the rep app, JOOR or NuOrder arrive as wholesale orders on the buyer's account and ship the way that account ships. When a 3PL confirms the shipment, the shipment is created already finalized and the pick ticket carries tracking, cartons, weight and freight, ready to invoice. |
| Any channel through a 3PL | A 3PL can ship any of the above. Pick tickets, or whole orders if you prefer, go out as a 940 in XML or a flat file; the shipped confirmation comes back as a 945, and for EDI orders that confirmation builds the shipment and the ASN with the carton details the warehouse produced. |
Every path starts with a pick ticket and ends with an invoice, whatever the channel; picking optimization covers how the warehouse decides which of those orders gets stock first.
| Control | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Ship via codes | A two character code per service: description, carrier SCAC, EDI type, the shipper it belongs to, shipping days, and the shipping service it maps to for label printing. Default codes for the major carriers ship with the system and cannot be deleted because the integrations depend on them; brands add their own, including a customer pickup code. |
| Customer account | The account decides most of the path: its ship via, its shipping instructions that print on every pick ticket, its ship to locations, its terms, its warehouse, and for a trading partner its EDI and automation settings. Every channel that needs its own reporting gets its own customer account, including a marketplace tag account and a POS account per store. |
| Packing rules | Per customer and size scale, a pack code from the retailer defines what a pack contains and the quantity per size. A system packing rule is the default that every new rule copies. Shipment processing packs against them; case packs and prepacks cover the wholesale packs you define yourself. |
| Warehouse per line | With multi-warehouse, the order warehouse defaults from the customer and can change per order and per line. Each Shopify location is tied to one AIMS360 warehouse and one OTS template, and a Shopify order pulled from two locations imports with the warehouse on each line and picks as two tickets. |
| Automation templates | A template per channel decides how far the machine goes: EDI dropship import only, or import plus allocate, pick and export to the warehouse; Shopify import only, or import plus pick and export; POS orders through to invoice and fulfillment; FBA; batch email invoice. Every run is logged as a workflow you can read, filter for failures and re-run; see automated order processing. |
| Order source | Every imported order carries where it came from, so views, reports and batch picking can be filtered to one channel. Marketplace orders that come through Shopify keep Shopify as the source and use a tagged customer account to tell them apart. |
| Ship via changes flow down | Changing the ship via on an order that already has pick tickets asks whether to update the tickets too, and reports which tickets could not be changed because they are already in a shipment, a warehouse export or finalize, so a ticket on the floor never disagrees with the order quietly. |
| Documents per channel | Pick ticket, packing list per carton or per shipment, sequential carton labels from shipment processing, GS1-128 labels where the retailer requires them, ASN, invoice or 810, carrier label from the shipping integration, and the tracking and fulfillment that goes back to Shopify. The channel decides which of these exist; the order record ties them together. |
Order category and text custom fields can carry an order type or event type from a B2B platform into the order list, for brands that want a channel or campaign column on every order.
A trading partner account for a retailer, a tag account for a marketplace that arrives through Shopify, a customer account per POS store, the buyer's own account for portal and rep orders. Give it the ship via, terms, shipping instructions, ship to locations and warehouse the channel needs.
Add any ship via code the channel needs, with the carrier, SCAC, shipping days and the shipping service for labels. Map Shopify shipping methods to ship via codes, including a pickup code for local pickup, and give the 3PL a cross reference to its own codes.
One AIMS360 warehouse and one OTS template per Shopify location, whether it is active or not. A physical store is its own warehouse and its own location; do not share a warehouse between two locations or the inventory shows twice.
For each retailer, the pack codes from its routing guide per size scale, so shipment processing packs and labels what the retailer expects. Case packs and prepacks for the packs you define yourself.
Import only, or import plus allocate, pick and export to the warehouse, for EDI dropship and for Shopify. POS through to invoice. Shipment automation with or without the electronic 810. Set the schedule, and the auto re-run for business validation failures.
For a 3PL, the FTP, the warehouse setup, the shipping cross reference, the product export so codes match, and the company setting for pick tickets or orders. For your own floor, the handheld, shipment processing and the label printer.
| Method | How it works |
|---|---|
| Accurate | The default. Enter cartons, the carton type and weight, ask the carriers for rates on that parcel to that address, pick one, and the freight and service land on the invoice. Style weights and the empty carton weight are used when they are set up, so the quote is for the box, not a guess. |
| At the order | The same calculation from the order's discounts and freight tab, before or after it is saved, so a confirmation or proforma carries real freight, and a card pre-authorization can include it. |
| At finalize | From finalize pick tickets, once picked quantities are confirmed, for the freight that goes on the invoice from a warehouse that does not print labels through AIMS360. |
| Automatic on new orders | With weights and standard packs by size set up, a system setting calculates freight on every order keyed directly into AIMS360 as it is saved, from the ship via on the order. |
| Estimate | For brands that do not print labels through AIMS360 and want cartons and weight on the invoice quickly, with an estimated rate from the configured services. |
Freight type and amount can be columns on order views, so a manager sees what was quoted per channel without opening orders. Rate shopping across your carrier accounts at label time is on the shipping labels page; it applies to the freight you pay for, not to collect freight on a retailer's routing guide.
Each automated order, shipment, inventory sync and invoice email is a workflow with steps and a status. Views by step, by date and by failure show the day's exceptions without the routine.
A business validation is yours to fix: not enough stock to pick, a missing ship via or terms, an unmapped style or UPC, an invoice created by hand before the warehouse confirmed. A service error is a connection or API fault that retries on its own.
Open a failed item and retry it, or tag a set from a failed by step view and re-run them together. Fix the cause first: receive the stock, add the ship via, map the style.
Templates can re-run failed steps on a schedule, so a Shopify order that arrived authorized rather than paid, or an order that hit an unmapped shipping method, imports on its own once the status or the mapping is fixed.
The dropship shipment automation runs per shipment, with a footer that links the customer PO, the order, the pick ticket, the 945, the warehouse, the shipment, the ASN and the invoice from one screen.
Every automated step began as a manual module, so a stalled order can always be finished by a person: import the 945, build the shipment, generate the ASN, create the invoice.
If a shopper orders more of one size than any single location holds, Shopify assigns the whole line to the primary location, that location can go negative, and the pick fails in AIMS360 until units are transferred. The order cannot be split by hand without losing the confirmation link. Sending zero when open to sell is negative is the guard.
It does not run bulk DC or cross dock EDI orders; those pick and pack through shipment processing with a person choosing when. It needs multi-warehouse and runs on the AIMS360 EDI service.
A local pickup order gets a pick ticket like any other and the automation cannot hold it back from the warehouse export. The pickup ship via and the missing ship to address are how the floor recognizes it, and the ready for pickup notice is sent from Shopify.
Warehouses that can read XML use the 940 and 945 integration. The flat file export and import still work for warehouses that cannot, on the standard file, and any warehouse not already on the list uses that standard file. Returns from a 3PL are entered by hand.
One order pool and one inventory, with a shipping and fulfillment path per sales channel. A retailer DC order, a retailer dropship order, a Shopify order, a marketplace order, a store order and a wholesale order from the portal all become orders in the same system, then each picks, packs, labels, ships and confirms the way its channel requires, decided by the customer account, its ship via, its packing rules, its warehouse and the automation template that runs it.
Every imported order carries an order source, and every channel that needs to be reported or handled separately gets its own customer account: one per trading partner, one per marketplace connected through Shopify by tag, one per POS store. Views, batch picking and reports filter on the account and the source, so a manager can pick only the web orders or only one retailer's dropship orders.
Yes. They are the same units in the same warehouse until a pick ticket claims them. What differs is the path after the pick: a DC order packs against the retailer's packing rules and ships collect on the retailer's carrier with an ASN; a dropship order ships one parcel with the retailer's paperwork through the dropship automation; a web order ships on the service the shopper paid for and fulfills back to Shopify with tracking.
Through ship via codes. Each code carries the carrier, the SCAC, the shipping days and the shipping service used for labels. A trading partner account carries the retailer's required ship via; a Shopify shipping method is mapped to a ship via so the warehouse ships what was paid for; a 3PL gets a cross reference between your ship via codes and its own. A local pickup option maps to a pickup code so those tickets are easy to spot.
Compliance lives on the trading partner account: its packing rules, its ship to locations, its ship via and its EDI documents. The packer works in shipment processing against those rules, prints the retailer's carton labels and the ASN goes out with the shipment. A DTC parcel on the next bench has none of that and just needs a carrier label. Neither team has to remember the other channel's rules; the account carries them.
Yes, with the dropship automation. It downloads the 850s on a schedule, imports the dropship orders, allocates and picks them, exports the pick tickets to your warehouse, a 3PL or your shipping app, takes the shipped confirmation back, creates the shipment, sends the 856 and the 810, and invoices. Each shipment runs as its own workflow with a footer that links the PO, the order, the pick ticket, the 945, the shipment, the ASN and the invoice. It applies to dropship orders only, not to bulk DC or cross dock orders, and it runs on the AIMS360 EDI service.
Each Shopify location is tied to one AIMS360 warehouse. If a shopper's order is filled from two locations, the order imports with the warehouse on each line and picks as two tickets. If a single line needs more units than any one location has, Shopify assigns it to the primary location, that location can go negative, the pick fails in AIMS360 until units are transferred, and the order cannot be split by hand without losing the Shopify confirmation link. Sending zero to Shopify when open to sell is negative is the guard for that.
Yes. A Shopify location that fulfills web orders can offer local pickup; each one is tied to an AIMS360 warehouse, and a POS store used this way must push inventory rather than move it. The pickup option maps to a pickup ship via, so those orders arrive with no ship to address and a code that a view can filter. They still need a pick ticket and an invoice, and the ready for pickup notice is sent from Shopify, not from AIMS360. The automation cannot separate pickup tickets from shipping tickets, so the floor watches for the code.
A 3PL receives pick tickets, or whole orders if you set it that way, as a 940 in XML through its FTP or as a flat file, and returns a 945 for what it shipped. For EDI orders the 945 creates the shipment and the ASN with the carton details the warehouse produced; for portal, marketplace and web orders it creates a finalized shipment and writes tracking, cartons, weight and freight to the pick ticket, ready to invoice. Vendor purchase orders can go to the warehouse as a 943 so it knows what is arriving.
Pick tickets, in most cases. A pick ticket tells the warehouse exactly which units to ship, so you can hold stock for another account or ship a partial deliberately. An order tells the warehouse to ship whatever it finds, and it will fill it if it can. The setting is company wide, and changing it later means clearing every exported ticket through its 945 first.
From a carrier rate on the actual parcel. Enter cartons, carton type and weight and AIMS360 asks the carriers for rates on that shipment to that address; you pick one and it lands on the invoice, or on the order for a confirmation or a card pre-authorization, or on the pick ticket at finalize. Style and carton weights are used when set up. Brands that do not label through AIMS360 can use an estimate instead, and orders keyed directly can calculate freight automatically on save.
Only the freight you control. Your own DTC parcels, prepaid wholesale and samples can be rated across your carrier accounts at label time, which the shipping labels page covers. Collect freight on a retailer purchase order ships on the carrier and service in the retailer's routing guide, and most dropship programs name the service too.
Yes. An order can carry several pick tickets, each ships when it is ready, and a pick ticket can be moved from one shipment to another in shipment processing. Ship complete orders are the exception; the whole order must pick at once.
A retailer gets the 856 ASN and the 810 invoice. Shopify gets the fulfillment with the tracking number, which triggers the shopper's notification. A marketplace connected through Shopify gets it the same way. A POS order is fulfilled on its own workflow. A pickup order is best marked picked up in Shopify rather than shipped.
Every automated step is a workflow with a status. Views by step and by date show what failed and why: a business validation such as not enough stock, a missing ship via or terms, or an unmapped style, which you fix and re-run; or a service error, which retries on its own and is reported to us if it keeps failing. Failed steps can be re-run one at a time or in a tagged batch, and templates can schedule re-runs.
Yes, if you give them their own customer account. Orders from a marketplace connected through Shopify carry a tag; map the tag to an account and the orders import there, so sales, margin and receivables report per marketplace. Without the mapping they land on the Shopify account and the breakout has to come from Shopify.
Returns are created in AIMS360 as return authorizations and credit memos against the original invoice whatever the channel. There is no data exchange for returns with a 3PL through the warehouse integration; the warehouse tells you what came back and it is entered. The omnichannel orders hub covers the returns side.
It does not turn a retailer's routing guide into a rate shopping opportunity, it does not split a Shopify line across warehouses, it does not automate bulk DC or cross dock EDI orders through the dropship workflow, and the flat file warehouse export is the older path that XML 940 and 945 replaced for warehouses that can read XML. Sales channel reporting inside Shopify stays in Shopify unless each channel has its own account.
Retailers, dropship programs, your web store, the marketplaces, the stores and the warehouse that ships them. We will map each one to its path in a demo and show you where the rules live.
