Weekly sales data is as central to Kohl's EDI as the purchase order itself. Replenishment vendors receive an 852 product activity feed carrying location-level sell-through and on-hand positions, and Kohl's expects them to plan from it — the retailer is effectively handing you the demand signal and asking you to keep the shelves full. Everything else in the Kohl's program supports that loop.
The planning loop
Treat the Kohl's 852 as an input to forecasting, not a report to file. Weekly location-level sell-through tells you which SKUs are accelerating before the reorder arrives, which is precisely the information that protects fill rate — the metric replenishment relationships live on. Vendors who close this loop systematically walk into line reviews with in-stock numbers that defend themselves.
Orders and honest acknowledgments
The 850 purchase order is UPC-led, with style, color, and size expanding at the line level in standard apparel fashion. Ship windows arrive in DTM segments and are enforced, which gives the 855 acknowledgment its real job: confirm what you can meet, flag what you cannot. An acknowledgment generated from live inventory availability keeps your commitments and your fill-rate score aligned; a rubber-stamp 855 quietly converts inventory problems into compliance problems.
The ASN leaves when the truck does
Kohl's vendor compliance concentrates on ASN accuracy and routing, and the 856 requirements follow the scan-based-receiving pattern:
- Carton-level contents exactly as packed. Receiving reconciles physical cartons against the document, size-level detail included.
- GS1-128 labels matching the ASN's MAN serials. One carton dataset feeds both, or they eventually disagree.
- Transmission at truck departure. The document travels ahead of the freight, always.
Routing chargebacks sit alongside ASN accuracy in the compliance program — follow the routing instructions attached to each order, and make sure the shipment your documents describe is the shipment your carrier picked up.
Routing belongs in the same conversation
Because routing chargebacks sit next to ASN accuracy in Kohl's compliance program, the shipping side of the house needs to be in the loop from setup. The order's routing instructions determine the carrier and the handoff; the BOL your carrier generates, the cartons your warehouse labels, and the 856 your system transmits all describe the same physical shipment and must agree with each other and with those instructions. The failure pattern to design against is the split-brain shipment — warehouse ships one way, documents describe another. Feeding the ASN from the actual ship-confirm event, carrier assignment included, keeps the document telling the same story the freight does.
Deduction prevention as architecture
Nothing in Kohl's program requires heroics; it requires wiring. Orders flow into your system untouched, acknowledgments derive from availability, ASNs fire on ship-confirm with validated structure, invoices inherit shipment data. When every document is generated from the operational event it describes, the compliance scorecard maintains itself — deductions are what happen when humans retype things under deadline.
Pitfalls seen in the wild
Watch for the quiet ones: an 855 that auto-accepts lines the warehouse cannot actually fill, an ASN batch job that runs hours after trucks have departed, and routing instructions the carrier followed but the documents never reflected. Each of these looks fine from inside your own system and costs money from inside Kohl's — which is why outcome monitoring (did the ack come back, did the invoice clear) matters as much as transmission monitoring.
Connecting to Kohl's
Setup follows a short arc: Kohl's vendor onboarding, ERP or commerce connection (NetSuite, Unleashed, or another of 30+ systems), UPC cross-reference load, then per-document sandbox certification. With EDISQ's certified Kohl's maps, expect the EDI side in 2–3 days, with the vendor paperwork setting the wider calendar.
The bill is one line. Documents: first 25 per month free, then $0.50 apiece stepping down to $0.10 through the volume tiers, billed marginally so you keep every discount you've earned. No setup or mapping charges, connectivity — AS2, SFTP, VAN — rides along, and the Production plan's $100/month minimum applies in full to usage with Kohl's included as your first live partner. Tier details on the pricing page.
FAQ
Why does Kohl's send vendors the 852?
Replenishment programs share weekly sales and on-hand data so vendors can forecast and protect in-stocks. EDISQ lands it in your ERP or a feed you can analyze.
When should the ASN transmit to Kohl's?
At truck departure. Kohl's receiving reconciles scanned cartons against the 856, so the document needs to be there before the freight is.
How are items identified on Kohl's purchase orders?
UPC-led, with style, color, and size expanding per line. Your cross-reference and your ASN carton contents both work at that level of detail.
What does Kohl's EDI cost on EDISQ?
Per document — 25 free monthly, then from $0.50 each with rates falling as volume rises. Connectivity is included and there are no partner or mapping fees.