If you've ever worked on generating an Advanced Ship Notice (ASN) from SAP to send to your partner, you'll know it's one of the more complicated transactions to set up and align with customer's requirements. Why is it so messy and what can you do to ensure success?

You will typically output your ASN off of a Delivery (DESADV IDoc) or Shipment (SHPMNT IDOC). The issue you will encounter is that while the IDoc is hierarchical, it's not in a way that aligns with the 856. structure. You will get lines by material and handling unit info (assuming you use HU management), but it won't group items by carton as the 856 requires.

The Pick/Pack Challenge

Most customers receiving an 856 want to know:

• What items are in which cartons (handling units)
• What quantity of each item is in each HU
• What cartons are on which pallets (sometimes)

But SAP's standard IDoc output doesn't handle this logic. You need a way to:

• Summarize or split quantities
• Link materials to handling units
• Format the hierarchy to fit the EDI 856 spec (SHIPMENT > ORDER > PACK > ITEM)

What can you do to solve this problem?

This is where you need either:

• A robust EDI mapping tool that can ingest the IDoc and apply logic (grouping, hierarchy building, field manipulation), or
• Custom ABAP to format the outbound data before it ever leaves SAP — which can work, but is harder to scale across partners with different ASN requirements and leads you to have more custom code in your system to manage with upgrades and migrations

In Summary: SAP’s IDocs don’t natively format data the way an 856 pick/pack ASN needs it. You’ll need smart mapping or custom logic to group items into cartons, align with handling units, and meet customer-specific ASN requirements.