Every year, more holiday shopping happens online. And every year, most shoppers never see the seven B2B transactions that fire between their click and the package on the porch.
Here’s the flow, simplified:
- 832: Catalog. Before you see the item online, the supplier has sent the retailer a catalog with descriptions, pricing, images. The product page is a rendering of that catalog.
- 846: Inventory. The supplier sends inventory updates on a cadence. That’s how the site knows “only three left” or “back order.”
- 850: Purchase Order. You check out. The retailer emits a PO to the supplier with item, quantity, ship-to.
- 855: PO Acknowledgement. The supplier confirms receipt and commits to fill the order.
- 856: Advance Ship Notice. The supplier picks, packs, hands off to the carrier, and sends tracking info back to the retailer. That’s what powers your “your package has shipped” notification.
- 810: Invoice. Once shipped, the supplier bills the retailer.
- 820: Remittance Advice. The retailer pays, attaching a document explaining what was paid and how. Sometimes that 820 goes straight to the bank to initiate the funds transfer.
Seven documents per order. Millions of orders a day. That’s what the B2B layer of e-commerce actually looks like.
This is the work ECGrid does: running the programmable B2B infrastructure that moves the 832s, 850s, 856s, and everything else between the retailers, suppliers, carriers, and banks that keep holiday delivery on schedule.