ASN (Advance Shipment Notice)
An ASN (Advance Shipment Notice) is the electronic notice a vendor sends Amazon before a shipment reaches the fulfillment center, declaring what is on the truck, in which cartons, and against which PO.
An ASN (Advance Shipment Notice) is the electronic notice a vendor sends Amazon before a shipment reaches the fulfillment center, declaring what is on the truck, in which cartons, and against which PO.
What it is
The ASN is the heads-up a fulfillment center gets before a delivery shows up, and it carries the shipment’s contents, quantities, carton breakdown, carrier details, and expected arrival, all keyed to the purchase orders being shipped.
Vendors send it one of two ways: keyed into Vendor Central by hand, or transmitted automatically as the EDI 856 from an ERP or EDI platform. The ASN and the 856 are the same document under two names, and the 856 is what the X12 standard calls it.
Where it lives in Vendor Central
Manual submission sits under Orders, then Shipments, then Create Shipment, where you build the shipment against confirmed POs, enter carton contents, and attach carrier information before the freight moves. Amazon keeps its own help for this behind the Vendor Central login, so check the labels against your own account before you write the path into a process.
If an ERP or EDI platform handles your shipping, no one on your team opens that screen, because the 856 goes out from the platform as the shipment is built.
Why it matters to a vendor
Three things can go wrong here, and Amazon charges for all of them: the ASN never arrives, it arrives after the truck does, or it describes a shipment that doesn’t match what the fulfillment center scans in. A transmitted count of 500 units against a physical scan of 480 is an inaccurate ASN, and so is a carton whose SSCC label disagrees with the ASN that declared it. Disputes carry reason codes like Overage, Shortage, and Untimely ASN, and the deductions land as ASN Accuracy chargebacks and Shipment Performance Claims.
Cleveland Research Company data cited by SPS Commerce attributes roughly 24% of all Amazon compliance chargebacks to ASN-related issues. The operational cost comes on top of the money, since a shipment that arrives ahead of its ASN can sit while receiving works out what is on the pallets. For what a delayed or non-compliant 856 costs and how the penalty surfaces in the Chargebacks field, see the Amazon EDI post.
Related terms
- Chargebacks: the deduction an ASN failure turns into.
- Amazon EDI on Vendor Central: Cost, Penalties, and Where They Land: the 856 in context with the 850, 855, and 810.
- Glossary index: the rest of the Vendor Central terms and InsightLeap metrics.
