NetSuite EDI With Suppliers: POs, ASNs and Vendor Bills

Most NetSuite EDI guides stop at the customer side: a retailer's 850 becomes a Sales Order, and acknowledgments, ship notices and invoices go back out. Distributors also buy. Their suppliers send acknowledgments, ship notices and invoices too, and some suppliers won't take a purchase order unless it arrives by EDI.

This guide covers that buying side on NetSuite: which documents go out and come back, which NetSuite record each one lands on, what your NetSuite admin sets up, and what to decide before go-live. It is based on how Comparatio's NetSuite integration works and on what we have learned connecting distributors' NetSuite accounts.

The Buying Side at a Glance

Document	Direction	NetSuite record
850 Purchase order	To supplier	Read from the Purchase Order
855 PO acknowledgment	From supplier	Purchase Order, acknowledgment fields updated
856 Advance ship notice	From supplier	Inbound Shipment (In Transit) or Item Receipt, created
810 Invoice	From supplier	Vendor Bill, created; repeat invoice numbers skipped
832 Price catalog	From supplier	Item vendor pricing, updated (on request)
820 Remittance advice	To supplier	Read from the Vendor Payment (on request)

The first four are the core of procure-to-pay EDI on NetSuite, and Comparatio has run them end to end in customers' NetSuite accounts. The last two are built and then switched on and tested for your suppliers during setup.

Purchase Orders Out (850)

A purchase order goes to the supplier as an EDI 850, built from the NetSuite Purchase Order. A few things to know:

• You decide which POs go out by EDI. That is a business rule, configured per supplier.
• The ship-to comes from the PO. For a drop-ship order, the ship-to on the NetSuite Purchase Order is what the supplier receives.
• Expected receipt dates go out. Each line's Expected Receipt Date is sent as the requested delivery date (DTM*002), so the supplier sees when you need the goods.
• The send is recorded. A custom field on the PO holds the date the 850 went out, so a buyer can see that it did.

Acknowledgments In (855)

When the supplier confirms the order, its 855 updates the Purchase Order. The results land in custom fields on the PO and its lines: acknowledgment status and date, acknowledged quantity and price, and the supplier's confirmation number. The original EDI line number is stored on each line as well.

That puts a price change or a short quantity in front of the buyer when the supplier confirms the order, not when the invoice arrives.

Ship Notices In (856): Inbound Shipments or Item Receipts

A supplier ASN can create either of two NetSuite records:

• An Inbound Shipment with status In Transit. This is the default. Stock is received when it actually arrives, against what the supplier said it shipped. It needs NetSuite's Inbound Shipment Management feature.
• An Item Receipt, if you want the ASN itself to receive the goods.

In 2026 we made Inbound Shipments the default, after a customer asked us to stop supplier ASNs from receiving stock before it arrived. Unless your process really does receive on the ASN, start there.

Supplier Invoices In (810): Vendor Bills

A supplier 810 creates a Vendor Bill. If the supplier sends the same invoice number again, it is skipped rather than billed twice. One rule to settle before go-live: may a bill post before the goods are received, or not?

Some suppliers will never send EDI invoices. Comparatio's PDF Import reads the PDFs they email: invoices that reference a PO become Vendor Bills alongside your EDI traffic, and bills without a PO, such as carrier bills, are flagged for your team to enter.

What Your NetSuite Admin Sets Up

The buying side needs the following in your account:

Area	What to grant	Needed for
Integration access	An integration record, a role for the EDI user and an access token. The RESTlet deployment's audience must include that role and subsidiary.	Signing Comparatio's calls
Lists: View	Items, Vendors, Locations, Units and the other lists on our checklist	Item and vendor lookups
Buying: transactions	Purchase Order (Edit), Inbound Shipment (Full) or Item Receipt (Create), Bills (Create)	POs out; acknowledgments, ASNs and invoices in
Features	Inbound Shipment Management	Supplier ASNs as Inbound Shipments
Custom fields	About ten EDI fields on purchase orders and their lines	Acknowledgment results where buyers work

Missing permissions are the most common cause of a slow NetSuite go-live, because NetSuite reports them one error at a time. On one go-live this year, a missing role permission was one reason documents failed on the first day. Grant everything up front. Comparatio's setup check then reads your account and lists anything still missing in one pass.

Your team also keeps NetSuite's vendor and item records current. We map each supplier's item numbers to your NetSuite items during setup.

Testing in the Sandbox

Sandbox and production are separate connections. For each supplier, a purchase order goes out from a sandbox PO, and test acknowledgments, ship notices and invoices come back in. Check that the PO fields, the Inbound Shipment and the Vendor Bill look right in the sandbox before the supplier moves to production. Suppliers can go live one at a time.

Supplier Maps: Many Are Already Built

The buying side is where most of the map work sits, and much of it already exists. In October 2026 Comparatio had 355 supplier maps, and 3,117 supplier connections were live for other distributors. See procure-to-pay EDI for distributors for the suppliers and the documents on every ERP we connect.

Moving to NetSuite From Another ERP?

If your supplier EDI runs on Prophet 21 or another ERP today, it moves with you. Your trading-partner connections and maps stay with Comparatio; only the ERP connection changes. We test every partner against NetSuite while the old ERP keeps trading, compare the documents NetSuite builds with the ones your current ERP sends, and switch on a planned date with a rollback plan.

Connecting NetSuite takes days to weeks. Moving an existing EDI program takes a few months, most of it partner testing. More on that in Changing ERPs? Your EDI moves with you.

A Short Checklist

• List your suppliers by PO volume, and note which already send EDI or ask for it.
• Decide which POs go out by EDI, whether ASNs create Inbound Shipments or Item Receipts, and whether bills may post before receipt.
• Have your admin grant the role, token, permissions, feature and custom fields in one go.
• Test each supplier in the sandbox: PO out, then acknowledgment, ASN and invoice in.
• Move suppliers to production one at a time, starting with the busiest.

How Comparatio Helps

Comparatio is a managed EDI provider for distributors on NetSuite. Our engineers build and change the maps, test with each supplier, maintain the AS2, SFTP and VAN connections, and watch the documents. We install one RESTlet in your NetSuite account and keep it updated: there is no SuiteApp to buy.

For the full list of documents on the customer and supplier side, see our NetSuite EDI integration page. To talk through your supplier list, request a call.

Frequently Asked Questions