AIMS360 connects to Walmart natively over EDI. Bulk supplier orders and drop ship vendor orders run on one connection and one stock record, with the document set, packaging and label rules applied per program.
Supplier, drop ship vendor, Marketplace seller, WFS. They are four different businesses with four different document sets, four sets of obligations and four ways to get fined, and most brands end up running more than one. AIMS360 runs them natively over EDI from the same order and inventory record as the rest of your retail, with the rules applied per program.
AIMS360 connects to Walmart natively over EDI, as part of the ERP rather than a separate subscription. It handles the supplier programs that run on EDI, including bulk purchase orders into Walmart distribution centers and drop ship vendor orders going to a customer's door, from the same order and inventory record that runs your other retail accounts. Purchase orders, acknowledgments, ASNs, invoices and inventory feeds are produced by the same system that scans and packs the freight, which is what keeps the file and the truck in agreement.
The thing worth understanding before anything else is that "selling Walmart" is not one relationship. A brand can be a first party supplier shipping pallets into a distribution center, a drop ship vendor shipping single boxes to consumers, a Marketplace seller listing on walmart.com with no EDI at all, and a WFS user with inventory sitting in Walmart's own fulfillment centers. Those have almost nothing in common operationally. What they do have in common is that they all draw from the same pile of stock, which is where most of the trouble starts.
Get clear on which one you have been offered before anyone configures anything, because the answer decides both the plumbing and the deal.
| Program | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| 1P supplier | Walmart buys your goods and owns the inventory. Bulk purchase orders into distribution centers, full routing guide compliance, and EDI is mandatory. This is the classic wholesale relationship and it carries the heaviest compliance load. |
| Drop ship vendor (DSV) | Walmart takes the consumer order on walmart.com, you ship it to the customer's door in Walmart packaging. Runs on EDI, and adds the warehouse transaction set on top of the retail one. Service level expectations are measured in a day or two, not in a delivery window. |
| Walmart Marketplace | Third party selling. You set the price, Walmart takes a commission, you own the customer relationship in a way you do not on the other three. Notably, Marketplace does not require EDI. It runs on Walmart's Seller Center and API, which is a different integration entirely. |
| Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) | Your inventory physically sits in Walmart's fulfillment centers and Walmart picks, packs and ships it. Requires inbound preparation and Walmart's own labeling. Usually layered on top of a Marketplace listing rather than standing alone. |
The retail set is common to supplier and DSV work. DSV then adds the warehouse set on top, which is the part that surprises brands coming from bulk only.
| Document | What it does on a Walmart program |
|---|---|
| 850 | Purchase order, from Walmart. On a supplier program it is a bulk order into a distribution center. Everything downstream keys off it. |
| 855 | Purchase order acknowledgment. Some categories expect it back quickly, reported as within two hours, so this is not a document you want a person to remember to send. |
| 856 | Advance ship notice, sent as the carrier picks up. This is the document Walmart's compliance program is built around, and the one that generates the most chargebacks when it does not match the freight. |
| 810 | Invoice. Triggers payment, and gets matched against the purchase order and the ASN before it does. |
| 846 | Inventory inquiry and advice. The availability feed on the drop ship side, keeping walmart.com from selling a unit you no longer have. |
| 940 | Warehouse shipping order, on the drop ship program. Walmart telling the warehouse to ship a specific consumer order. |
| 945 | Warehouse shipping advice, back with tracking. The DSV equivalent of the ship confirmation. |
| 997 | Functional acknowledgment. The document that tells you the file arrived and parsed, and the one whose absence is the first sign something broke. |
Walmart's supplier tooling has more names than it needs, and the recent additions have not replaced the older ones.
| Surface | What it is |
|---|---|
| Retail Link | The long standing Walmart supplier portal. Sales and inventory data, scorecards, and the home of the EDI setup and testing process. |
| Supplier One | Launched in 2024 and available to continental US suppliers. It consolidates Retail Link applications, including Item 360 and purchase order management, into one interface, along with payments, accounting reports, performance metrics and forecasts. It does not retire Retail Link. Think hub over the top rather than replacement. |
| Item 360 | Where item data lives: catalog, setup, maintenance and submissions. Your style, color, size and UPC data has to be correct here before anything else works, and item data accuracy is scored. |
| Global Enterprise Mailbox (GEM) | The EDI mailbox inside Retail Link. EDI setup and testing run through it. |
| AS2 | The communication method. Certificates get exchanged during setup and tested before you go live. |
Walmart's published program figures. Thresholds and windows move, so confirm your current scorecard in Retail Link rather than relying on any article, including this one.
| Measure | What is published |
|---|---|
| OTIF threshold | 98% for full truckload suppliers, 95% for less than truckload. |
| The fine | 3% of the cost of goods sold on the affected order for a miss. |
| MABD | Must arrive by date. It defines the close of the OTIF window, and an appointment is not a suggestion. Published guidance treats time past the appointment as late with no tolerance. |
| Scheduling lead time | A minimum of 72 hours to schedule against MABD. |
The part brands underestimate is the "in full" half. On time is a logistics problem and most people plan for it. In full is an inventory and allocation problem, and it is decided weeks earlier when somebody committed the same units to two places. If your available to sell number is not honest, OTIF is where you find out.
Walmart's Supplier Quality Excellence Program runs in four phases. Figures below are Walmart's published SQEP figures.
| Phase | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Purchase order accuracy and the advance ship notice. Since 1 February 2021, all domestic purchase orders shipping to Walmart distribution and fulfillment centers require an EDI 856 ASN, judged on data accuracy, completeness and timeliness. |
| Phase 2 | Barcode and labeling. |
| Phase 3 | Load quality, label quality and packaging. |
| Phase 4 | Scheduling and transportation. |
| Defect | Published fine |
|---|---|
| Purchase order defect | $200 per defective PO plus $1 per handled line item |
| ASN not downloaded, DSDC | $200 flat per PO |
| ASN not downloaded, non DSDC | $25 flat per PO |
| ASN quantity mismatch | $0.25 per case with mismatched quantities |
| Cap | 30% of total cost of goods sold per defective PO |
Read the defect list and notice what almost all of it is: a statement about whether the document matches the freight. Wrong DC, overage, short ship, ASN not downloaded, ASN mismatch. None of those are EDI formatting problems. They are warehouse problems that surface as EDI problems, which is exactly why a translator sitting beside an ERP struggles here. It has to be told what shipped, and whatever tells it is a second copy of the truth.
The published specifications. Your category and your DC can add to these, so treat them as the floor rather than the whole list.
Case labels carry a GS1-128 barcode including the SSCC, applied to two adjacent sides so a receiver can scan without rotating the carton. The SSCC on the box has to be identical to the one in the ASN.
Published guidance calls for GMA 48x40 four way entry pallets, with a maximum height of 90 inches. Grocery has a tighter single layer stack limit at 50 inches, general merchandise up to 90.
The most common cause of an ASN mismatch is the carton label and the EDI file being produced by two different systems that drift apart over time. AIMS360 generates both from the same scan, which removes the failure rather than monitoring it.
Style, color and size means far more SKUs per style than most categories, prepacks, and size curves that change by door. A flat SKU list handles none of that well, which is where an apparel native inventory model earns its keep.
Single unit picking, Walmart branded packing slips, and a service level measured in a day or two. Same warehouse, same stock, completely different rules, applied per program rather than per person.
If a third party 3PL fulfills your Walmart volume it maps to a real AIMS360 location, so the ASN and the tracking come back from wherever the freight actually left.
Sam's Club is part of Walmart Inc. and it shows everywhere in the configuration: you set it up through Retail Link and the Global Enterprise Mailbox, you communicate over AS2, and your vendor number and department number both use Walmart's numbering. But Sam's Club carries its own interchange ID and its own GLN, and its required document set differs by department in a way Walmart's does not.
Sam's Club's delivery windows are also looser: published Sam's Club OTIF guidance gives dry distribution centers and direct club deliveries a four day window against a one day window on grocery and perishable. That is one of the few places the club is easier than the parent.
The practical point for a brand doing both: being live with Walmart does not make you live with Sam's Club, and the two sets of requirements are not interchangeable. See Sam's Club EDI for the detail, including the three Sam's Club programs and how the document set changes by department.
The EDI is built into the ERP, so the order that arrives, the units it consumes and the document that goes back are all the same record.
Bulk supplier orders and drop ship orders each get the document set, packaging and labeling their program requires, configured once during implementation rather than decided per order by whoever is on shift.
Walmart orders land in order management next to your other retail EDI, wholesale, marketplace and DTC volume, rather than in a portal somebody has to remember to open.
The 846 publishes available to sell with open orders and allocations already netted out. This is the number that decides the "in full" half of OTIF.
When a Walmart bulk order, a drop ship order and another retailer want the same units, allocation rules settle it deliberately rather than whoever picks first.
The GS1-128 carton label and the 856 come from the same system that scanned the carton, so the SSCC on the box and the SSCC in the file cannot disagree.
AIMS360 charges no per document or per kilocharacter fees of its own. A Walmart program that multiplies your document count does not multiply an EDI invoice, which matters more on this account than on most.
Black Friday and the December run go through the same platform as an ordinary week, including a customer processing over 1.2 million orders per day. No holiday system to stand up.
The implementation team configures the ERP and the Walmart connection together, so there is no handoff between the people who know your inventory and the people who know the maps.
What brands ask when Walmart opens a program.
Yes, natively over EDI, as part of the ERP rather than a separate subscription. AIMS360 handles the Walmart programs that run on EDI, including bulk supplier purchase orders into distribution centers and drop ship vendor orders to consumers, from the same order and inventory record that runs your other retail accounts. Purchase orders, acknowledgments, ASNs, invoices and inventory feeds all come from the system that scans and packs the freight.
The core retail set is the 850 purchase order, the 855 acknowledgment, the 856 advance ship notice, the 810 invoice and the 997 functional acknowledgment. A drop ship vendor program adds the warehouse set on top: the 940 warehouse shipping order, the 945 warehouse shipping advice with tracking, and the 846 inventory advice. Walmart Marketplace is the exception and does not use EDI at all.
Commercial control, and they are opposites even though the shopper sees the same thing. On drop ship vendor, Walmart takes the order, sets the retail price and pays you a wholesale cost, and you ship in Walmart packaging. It runs on EDI. On Marketplace, you set your own retail price and Walmart takes a commission, and it runs on Seller Center and Walmart's API rather than EDI. Establish which one you have been offered before anything is configured.
Walmart's published OTIF thresholds are 98% for full truckload suppliers and 95% for less than truckload, with a fine of 3% of the cost of goods sold on the affected order for a miss. The window closes at the must arrive by date, scheduling requires a minimum of 72 hours lead time, and published guidance treats time past the appointment as late without tolerance. Thresholds move, so confirm your current scorecard in Retail Link.
SQEP is Walmart's Supplier Quality Excellence Program, run in four phases covering purchase order and ASN accuracy, barcode and labeling, load and packaging quality, and scheduling and transportation. Walmart's published figures include $200 per defective purchase order plus $1 per handled line item, ASN not downloaded charges of $200 per PO on DSDC and $25 per PO otherwise, and $0.25 per case on quantity mismatches, capped at 30% of cost of goods sold per defective PO.
Yes. Since 1 February 2021, all domestic purchase orders shipping to Walmart distribution and fulfillment centers require an EDI 856 advance ship notice under SQEP Phase 1, judged on data accuracy, completeness and timeliness. The ASN is sent as the carrier picks up. It is the document Walmart's whole compliance program is built around, and the most expensive one to get wrong.
No. Supplier One launched in 2024 for continental US suppliers and consolidates Retail Link applications, including Item 360 and purchase order management, plus payments, accounting reports, performance metrics and forecasts, into one interface. Retail Link is still live and suppliers use both. If a guide tells you Retail Link has been retired, treat the rest of that guide with suspicion, because it is out of date.
Case labels carry a GS1-128 barcode including the SSCC, applied to two adjacent sides of the carton. Pallets are specified as GMA 48x40 four way entry, with a maximum height of 90 inches, and grocery has a tighter single layer stack limit at 50 inches against 90 for general merchandise. The SSCC on the physical box has to match the one in the ASN exactly, which is why the label and the file should come from the same system.
Not with AIMS360. The EDI is part of the ERP, so the ASN is produced by the same system that scanned the cartons and printed the GS1-128 labels, and connects over the communication method Walmart mandates. The alternative, a translator sitting beside your ERP, has to be told what shipped, and that second copy of the truth is what eventually disagrees with the freight. AIMS360 also charges no per document or per kilocharacter fees of its own.
Same infrastructure, different identity. Sam's Club is part of Walmart Inc., you set it up through Retail Link and the Global Enterprise Mailbox, you communicate over AS2, and your vendor number and department number both use Walmart's numbering. But Sam's Club carries its own interchange ID and its own GLN, and its required document set varies by department. Being live with Walmart does not make you live with Sam's Club. See Sam's Club EDI.
Yes, and that is the normal setup for a growing brand. Both arrive on the same connection, both draw from the same stock record, and each gets the document set, packaging and labeling its program requires. Allocation rules decide which program gets the units when they compete, rather than whoever picks first. Nothing has to be re-keyed and nobody has to sort it by eye.
By publishing available to sell rather than units on hand. Open orders and allocated stock are netted out before the number reaches Walmart, so a bulk purchase order already committed cannot be sold again to a consumer on a drop ship program. Units can also be held in a virtual warehouse so they never enter the calculation at all. This is what decides the "in full" half of your OTIF score, and it is an allocation problem rather than a logistics one.
Yes, and it matters more on Walmart than on most accounts because of the volume. A single apparel style becomes many SKUs once you multiply colors by sizes, and prepacks and door level size curves add another layer. AIMS360 treats the style, color and size matrix as native data with a UPC per size rather than as a flat SKU list, which is what Item 360 and the retail documents both need.
Yes. A third party 3PL maps to a real AIMS360 location, so a Walmart program can be pointed at whichever site actually fulfills it, and ship confirmation and tracking come back from where the freight left. That matters on Walmart because the ASN has to describe the shipment accurately, and an ASN built on an assumed origin is an ASN that fails at receiving.
The timeline is driven by Walmart's own testing and certification cycle rather than by the software, and by which program you are onboarding, since a drop ship program adds the warehouse transaction set on top of the retail one. Item data has to be correct in Item 360 before anything downstream works, and that is where projects usually lose time. Ask for a timeline against your specific program during evaluation rather than a generic number.
Last reviewed 7 August 2026 by the AIMS360 EDI team. OTIF thresholds, the must arrive by date rules, scheduling lead time, the transaction set, and the carton, label and pallet specifications are Walmart's published supplier program figures. SQEP phase definitions and fine amounts are Walmart's published SQEP figures; the ASN requirement for all domestic purchase orders into distribution and fulfillment centers took effect 1 February 2021. Supplier One launched in 2024 and consolidates Retail Link applications including Item 360; it does not retire Retail Link. Sam's Club delivery window figures are from published Sam's Club OTIF guidance. Retailer programs, thresholds and requirements change, so confirm current specifics in Retail Link and with your Walmart contact.
Bring the programs you have been offered and your worst OTIF month to a demo, and we will walk through what each one requires, where the chargebacks come from, and how the same stock record serves all of them at once.
