Creating Follow-Up EDI Documents

A follow-up EDI document employs the same concept as a turnaround document in that it saves you time and effort by pulling information from a related EDI document. However, a follow-up EDI document is based upon a transaction you have already created—not a transaction sent to you by a trading partner.

Follow-up EDI documents are considerably less common than turnaround or original EDI documents, but they can be very convenient under the right circumstances. For example, let's assume for a moment that your trading partner sends you purchase orders and in response, requires you to send advance ship notices and invoices. In this scenario, it is likely that you will send the advance ship notice first and then “follow up” with an invoice at a later date.

Because you may send multiple advance ship notices per incoming purchase order (depending upon whether or not you ship the entire purchase order in one shipment), it may make more sense to base the invoice on the advance ship notice than the original purchase order. That way, you can easily invoice on a per-shipment basis instead of waiting for all shipments to go out and then sending one large invoice.

To create a follow-up EDI document, open or highlight the sent EDI document you would like to base your follow-up on and click the Follow Up icon. This icon is only available if follow-ups are available for that particular document. After you select a follow-up document type, Athena displays a data entry screen just as when you create a turnaround document. For information on filling out this screen, see Creating Turnaround EDI Documents.