Lowe's EDI: How to become EDI compliant with Lowe's

Headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina, US, Lowe's is an American retail company founded in 1921. Lowe's operates a chain of retail stores in the United States and Canada. Lowe's has around 2,197 home improvement and hardware stores in North America. Lowe's is the second largest home improvement retailer of bathroom decorating items, patio furniture, supplying tools and construction products. It leads your way to expand opportunities, which is important for making your product rank quite easily.

Infocon System has the technology and experience to ensure suppliers meet their specific EDI needs. Getting businesses set up for EDI success with Lowe's, including providing assistance through the testing process, is something Infocon Systems has been doing for years. Once a company is a Lowe's supplier, Infocon Systems knows how to help them avoid errors and costly chargebacks.

EDI for Lowe's is vitally important. To avoid mistakes, delays, and missed deliveries—your EDI process becomes an integral part in Lowe's seamless supply chain.

Any company that wants to become a merchandise supplier on the Lowe's platform needs to follow two important steps.

Step 1: Product Submission for Approval

• Add short description for product’s benefits
• Add photos or illustrations of the product
• Add product’s price and ordering information
• Send relevant documents like patents or other documentation
• Present packaging structure of product
• Contact details with website url
• Insert the attractive short description, photographs relevant pricing and ordering information of the product
• Add customer testimonials, patents and other documentation
• Share contact and website info

Step 2: Lowe's EDI Compliance

To be a vendor of Lowe's, you’ll need to exchange important business documents through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Lowe's aims to electronically exchange all required business information through its distribution network and in-store point-of-sale systems.

EDI or Electronic Data Interchange is a digital communication standard that enables computer-to- computer communications without human intervention. EDI replaces the need to send documents via email, fax and mail. In order for both the seller’s systems and those of the company fulfilling an order to communicate properly, business partners must agree on a standard EDI format.

To transfer data securely from one computer to another, Lowes supports Value Added Network (VAN), AS2, FTP, HTTPS EDI protocols. Each communication protocol consists of a set of universal guidelines used for data encryption and configuration while in transit. To be a vendor of Lowe's, it’s important to fully integrate with their point-of-sale, ERP, and other back-office application systems.

Hot to become EDI compliant with Lowe's

EDI allows vendors and Lowe's to communicate electronically by submitting business documents like Purchase Orders, Invoices, and Functional Acknowledgement. Lowe's offers two options Traditional EDI and LowesLink® Webforms which allow vendors to meet EDI requirements.

1. Send all the requisite data to EDI-Implementation@Lowes.com or Contact EDI Service Provider (Infocon Systems). You will find all required information at LowesLink website under Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) tab.
2. An EDI analyst will contact you. Once received, you can copy the dedicated Infocon Systems client delivery representative in your reply.
3. Infocon Systems will do the testing on your behalf, and copy you in all further communications. As testing is finished, Infocon Systems inform you to go live with the successfully tested connection.
4. Testing with Infocon Systems (EDI service provider): As all the documentation has been set with Lowe's edi compliance for the various formats (JSON, XML, CSV, etc.) for all types of scenarios (all data), Infocon Systems at this stage will ensure that the data is adequately transmitted between all parties.

Basic EDI documents for EDI setup with Lowe's

As a supplier of Lowe's your company may be required to send the following EDI business document types:

Outbound EDI documents (from Lowe's):

• EDI 850 (Outbound Purchase Order) – Required to all vendors
• EDI 204 (Motor Carrier Load Tender) – Required to all carriers
• EDI 820 (Remittance Advice) – Required to all vendors
• EDI 852 (Product Activity Data) –provides Sales information to Macy’s vendors upon request
• EDI 846 Inventory Data – Required to all vendors
• EDI 180 (Return Merchandise Authorization & Notification) – Available to any vendor participating in the Macy’s Destroyed In Field program
• EDI 856 ( Advance Ship Notice ) – Required to all vendors
• EDI 997 (Functional Acknowledgement) – Required to all vendors

Inbound EDI documents (to Lowe's):

• EDI 832 (Price/Sales Catalog) – Required from all vendors
• EDI 850 (Inbound Purchase Order) – Select vendors only
• EDI 855 (Inbound Purchase Order Acknowledgement) – Select vendors only
• EDI 856 (Advance Ship Notice) – Required from all vendors
• EDI 210 (Motor Carrier Freight Details & Invoice) – Required from all carriers
• EDI 212 (Motor Carrier Delivery) – Required from selected LTL carriers
• EDI 214 (Transportation Carrier Shipment Status) – Required from all carriers
• EDI 990 (Response to Load Tender) – Required from all carriers
• EDI 240 (Motor Carrier Package Status) – Required from all carriers
• EDI 810 (Invoice) – Required from all vendors
• EDI 997 (Functional Acknowledgement) – Required from all trading partners.

To learn more about how Infocon Systems can take care of your EDI needs for Lowe's, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at +1 888-339-0722 or email sales@infoconn.com. We’d love to hear from you.