ShipHero is a warehouse management system rather than a warehouse. AIMS360 connects to any warehouse running it, whether that is a 3PL holding your goods, your own building, or both at once alongside the AIMS360 WMS, with locations, picking, packing, shipping and inventory on one stock record.
ShipHero is a warehouse management system rather than a warehouse, which changes what a pre-built integration is worth. Connect once and you can work with any 3PL running ShipHero, run your own building on it, or do both at the same time alongside the AIMS360 WMS. Locations, picking, packing, shipping and inventory stay in step, and the retailer documents stay where they belong, in the ERP.
AIMS360 connects to warehouses running ShipHero, whether that warehouse is a 3PL or your own. The item catalog and the ship orders go out; receipts, shipment confirmations with carton detail and tracking, inventory adjustments and stock snapshots come back. AIMS360 holds the order, calculates availability per location, and builds every retailer document from what the warehouse confirmed. You can run ShipHero at a 3PL and the AIMS360 WMS in your own building at the same time, on one stock record.
The distinction that matters here is that ShipHero is software, not a building. A 3PL is a company you contract with; ShipHero is what that company runs inside its four walls. Once an ERP speaks to the platform, every warehouse on that platform becomes reachable, which is a very different proposition from a vendor list of named partners.
Brands rarely stay in one shape for long. The useful question is not which one you are in today but whether moving between them costs you a project.
The most common shape. You contract with the warehouse, AIMS360 connects to the platform it runs, and the ship orders and confirmations move without either side building something bespoke. Other 3PLs on the AIMS360 list run their own platforms, and the pattern is the same.
Your building, your staff, ShipHero as the warehouse layer. AIMS360 stays the system of record for orders, allocation, retailer compliance and accounting, and the warehouse operates against the ship orders it receives.
A distribution center on the AIMS360 WMS with handheld scanning and bin locations, a 3PL on ShipHero for a second coast or for overflow, and allocation rules deciding which one fills an order when both can.
A new warehouse becomes another stocking location. The retailer side does not move, because it never left the ERP, so switching is a warehouse project rather than an EDI recertification.
More than 30 warehouses already have live AIMS360 connections, which is what makes those brands go live faster. What that list is not is a boundary on who you are allowed to hire.
| Situation | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| Your 3PL runs ShipHero | The platform integration already exists. The remaining work is your item data and confirming which fields that specific facility returns. |
| Your 3PL runs another platform | Extensiv 3PL Warehouse Manager is covered the same way, with no connector subscription in between. Other platforms connect on their own rail. |
| Your 3PL runs something in house | If it can send and receive EDI, expose an API or drop a file on a schedule, AIMS360 talks to it. That covers essentially every warehouse operating in North America, Europe and Asia today. |
| Your ERP can only reach its own list | Then your fulfillment strategy is pinned to a vendor's roadmap. An ERP that cannot connect to the 3PL you want is telling you which 3PL you are allowed to use. |
These are the ASC X12 names, used as shared vocabulary. How each one actually travels is a transport decision made per warehouse, and on an API rail the same events move as endpoints and webhooks.
| Event | What it carries | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| 832 catalog | Style, color, size, UPC, case pack, dimensions, weight, lot flags. Sent before the first order. | AIMS360 to warehouse |
| 940 ship order | What to ship, to whom, by which carrier, packed to which retailer's rules. | AIMS360 to warehouse |
| 943 inbound advice | Production on the way, so the dock is expecting it. | AIMS360 to warehouse |
| 944 receipt | What was actually received, including shortages and damages. | Warehouse to AIMS360 |
| 945 shipment confirmation | What shipped, with carton detail, weights and tracking. The advance ship notice and the invoice are both built from it. | Warehouse to AIMS360 |
| 947 adjustment | A count variance, damage or correction, with a reason code. Logged with a timestamp to the second. | Warehouse to AIMS360 |
| 846 snapshot | On hand at that warehouse, used to reconcile against the ERP. | Warehouse to AIMS360 |
Keeping those two jobs apart is what makes a warehouse replaceable and a retailer account stable.
The 856 advance ship notice, the GS1-128 carton labels and the 810 invoice are generated from the shipment confirmation. Routing guides and label content are retailer specific and change without the warehouse being told, so they belong with the order.
ShipHero receives a ship order and returns a shipment. It does not need to know which retailer the box is for, what that retailer's ASN spec looks like, or what a chargeback is.
Consumer parcels, retailer dropship and bulk cartons on a pallet for a distribution center all come from the same stock, with compliance applied only where it belongs. 350+ retailers run on the same connection.
Returns are received against the order they came from and post as return authorizations and credits. Returns management covers the connected apps.
The same AIMS360 implementation manager who demos the platform runs this and stays on the account afterward.
Two warehouses on the same platform can behave differently, so these belong in the conversation with the building rather than with the software.
| Question | Why it decides the outcome |
|---|---|
| Which rail, and which fields | The transport and the returnable field set are confirmed per facility during implementation rather than assumed from the platform. |
| Can it return what your category needs | Apparel needs size matrices and case packs. Footwear needs size run depth and widths. Beauty and supplements need lot numbers and expiry dates. Home needs freight class and damage detail. See the consumer brand industries AIMS360 serves. |
| How often does inventory come back | Published availability is only as current as the last thing the warehouse reported. Core size stockouts hurt most in footwear and fast turning apparel. |
| What happens to a count variance | An adjustment should arrive with a reason code and be logged with a timestamp on both sides. A warehouse that corrects a number quietly is a season end reconciliation problem. |
What brands ask when their warehouse runs ShipHero and their retailers do not care what it runs.
Yes. ShipHero is a warehouse management system rather than a warehouse, so the connection covers three situations: a 3PL running your goods on ShipHero, your own warehouse running on ShipHero, or both at once alongside the AIMS360 WMS. Locations, picking, packing, shipping and inventory stay in step across all of them, with AIMS360 holding the order and the retailer compliance.
Commercially you contract with the warehouse. Technically the connection is to the platform the warehouse runs on, which is why a pre-built platform integration matters more than a pre-built warehouse list. If your 3PL runs ShipHero, the integration work is already largely done and the remaining questions are about your item data and which fields that specific facility returns.
Yes, and plenty of brands do. Each site is its own AIMS360 location on one stock record. Your own distribution center can run on the AIMS360 WMS with handheld scanning and bin locations while a 3PL on ShipHero handles overflow or a second coast, and allocation rules decide which location fills an order when both can.
No, and it should not. Retailer EDI stays in AIMS360. The purchase order arrives there, the ship order goes to the warehouse, and when the shipment confirmation comes back AIMS360 builds the advance ship notice, the GS1-128 carton labels and the invoice. The warehouse never touches a retailer document, which is what lets you change warehouses without recertifying with a retailer.
The item catalog goes over first, carrying style, color, size, UPC, case pack, dimensions, weight and any lot flags. Then ship orders go out and receipts, shipment confirmations with carton detail and tracking, inventory adjustments with reason codes and periodic stock snapshots come back. On an API rail those events are order pushes, shipment webhooks and inventory endpoints rather than numbered files, and the logic inside AIMS360 is the same either way.
Availability is calculated in AIMS360 per location and published outward to your channels, with open orders and allocations netted out first. Every receipt, shipment, return and adjustment from the warehouse updates the same record. How quickly a given warehouse reports back is a question to put to that facility, because your published availability is only as current as the last thing it told you.
Yes. Single parcels to consumers and cartons on a pallet for a distribution center come out of the same stock, with retailer packing rules, carton labels and advance ship notices applied only to the orders that need them. Retailer dropship runs the same way, with the consumer's address arriving on the retailer's purchase order.
Returns come back to the warehouse and are received against the order they came from, posting as return authorizations and credit memos in AIMS360. Connected returns apps can create the authorization automatically. The refund itself is issued wherever the money was taken, in the cart or the marketplace.
They are three different things that sometimes get compared as if they were one. ShipHero and Extensiv 3PL Warehouse Manager are warehouse management platforms that 3PLs and brands run inside a building. The AIMS360 WMS is the warehouse layer inside the ERP itself, with handheld scanning, bin locations and scan to verify picking. A brand can run any combination of the three across its locations.
The item catalog, more often than the integration. Style, color, size, UPC, case pack, carton dimensions and weight have to be complete and correct before the first order routes. Once that is clean, the remaining steps are confirming the rail, mapping the documents both sides can actually send, running a full test cycle with real orders, and going live with exceptions watched through the first season.
Then it connects another way. More than 30 warehouses already have live AIMS360 connections, and a warehouse that is not on the list connects the same way: if it can send and receive EDI, expose an API or drop a file on a schedule, AIMS360 talks to it. A pre-built list is a head start rather than a fence, and an ERP that can only reach the warehouses on its own list is quietly choosing your 3PL for you.
Yes. Apparel needs style, color and size matrices with case packs and prepacks picked as a unit. Footwear needs size run depth, half sizes and widths. Beauty and supplements need lot and batch numbers with expiry dates, or a recall is not possible. Home and furniture need freight class and damage detail. Ask any warehouse whether it can return those fields before you sign with it.
Last reviewed 16 September 2026 by the AIMS360 team. Warehouse transport rails and returnable field sets differ by facility and are confirmed for your program during implementation. Company and product names belong to their owners.
Bring the facility you are quoting and the retailers you ship to. We will walk through the rail, the fields that have to come back for your category, and what the retailer receives at the other end.
