It is understood that you may not service your entire Item catalogue using 3PL services, or that you may use different 3PL companies for different types of Items. Within Business Central you therefore need to setup the Items that are applicable to each relevant 3PL Location and integrate the Items to the 3PL system using Clever EDI functionality.
3PL Item Creation
The list of Items that you want to integrate with a specific 3PL Location are managed in the "3PL Items" screen, where the following information is held.
| Location Code | This specifies the Location Code of the 3PL |
| Item No. | The Item No. as setup in the Business Central Items list |
| 3PL Item No. | There is potential that 3PL will create a unique Item No. reference for your Item within their own systems and this Item No. should be populated here to ensure correct matching when exporting and importing 3PL transactions |
| Exported | This flag indicates whether the Item information has been sent to the 3PL associated to the Location Code. It will get populated when an Item record is submitted via the Clever EDI 3PL Inventory file, as detailed below |
From the "3PL Items" screen you have the ability to setup Items manually for the relevant 3PL Location, or alternatively you can use the Populate Default 3PL Items menu option which will create a 3PL Item record for each Item that you have setup in Business Central. When using this feature you must first set a Location Code filter on the "3PL Items" screen for the Location that you want to create Items against.
The "3PL Items" list is also available from the "Location List" and "Location Card" Screens - where the 3PL Items relevant to the selected Location record will be shown.
If you have a new Item created in Business Central, you can quickly setup this Item for all 3PL Locations. To do this simply select the Setup as 3PL Item action which is on the menu of both the "Item List" and "Item Card" screens.
On the Item Card in Business Central - you can quickly identify whether an Item is being interfaced to a 3PL - as the 3PL Item Exists attribute will be set to Yes if there are any associated 3PL Item records setup for the Item.
Sending Item information to the 3PL
With the 3PL list of Items completed, for any Items that have not yet been sent to the 3PL, you can create an Inventory file to do so.
From the menu, simply select the Send EDI Document, which will create the outbound Inventory for your 3PL based on the relevant Document Agreement and Document Type setup you have in place. When the Outbound Document is sent to the 3PL, the Exported attribute shown on the "3PL Items" screen will be set.
The information that is communicated to the 3PL will be based on the Document Types and EDI Field Mappings that have been setup.