UnitechEDI Support - ISBN13
ISBN13 and Amazon.com 09/22/06
You
may have received the email below from Amazon.com in August, 2006:
Subject:
Amazon.com 13 Digit ISBN transition
Dear Vendor,
Following the Book Industry Study Group's (BISG) recommendations, Amazon.com is preparing to use 13 digit ISBNs (EANs) with all of our trading partners. We anticipate all vendors to be capable of sending and receiving EANs in all EDI exchanges no later than January 1, 2007. We will need your help to ensure that the transition is seamless.
Our transition process will be to switch over, on a vendor by vendor basis, to using EANs as the item ID in out-going EDI 850 Purchase Order transactions. We prefer then to receive the EAN item ID on all in-coming EDI documents (855 PO acknowledgement, 856 Advanced Ship Notice, 810 Invoice) as well. However, we will have capability to receive 10 digit ISBNs, 13 digit EANs or both in all in-coming EDI transmissions.
Our vendor by vendor transition process is scheduled to begin in September 2006 and will be staged over multiple months' time. We ask that you inform us of when your company will be capable of trading EANs with Amazon, as described above, so that we can jointly establish a transition date.
In addition to establishing a transition date, we need your help in maintaining the highest level of data accuracy during the transition process. Please be sure that all ISBN-10s are correctly converted to their EAN 13-digit counterpart. Several data mistakes, including failure to recalculate the final check digit as well as using a 979 prefix prematurely, have been identified as likely data errors.
Please contact your Amazon.com Buyer no later than September 1st to discuss your company plans to utilize EANs and to establish a transition date to make them our primary item ID in all EDI transactions. Please note that this transition process is intended to cover only orders shipped within the United States. Please communicate with your Buyer if you require more information on using EANs for international trade with amazon.
Thank you for your commitment to maintaining a successful trading partnership with Amazon.com.
What
this means for UnitechEDI clients
UnitechEDI has updated
the EDIxl translation software to handle Amazon's current ISBN13 processing.
If you have release
3.134 or higher of the EDIxl software installed on your system, your software
will comply with Amazon's ISBN13 initiative at this time. To check your software
release number, open the UnitechEDI dashboard and double click Release Notes
under the Other Options menu on the right hand side of the dashboard. If your
release number is lower than 3.134, you can download and install the current
release by clicking the Update Software button on the dashboard.
Once you
have verified that you have the appropriate software release, you will need
to contact your Amazon buyer to let them know that you are able to test. They
will set up the test schedule with you. They will send you a PO with ISBN13
item identifiers, and will watch subsequent POA and invoice files from you
to make certain that you are returning the correct ISBN13 data.
How
the software works
When Amazon sends you the first PO in the new format, the incoming PO file
will set a flag in the software identifying them as an ISBN13 trading partner.
Your subsequent outbound documents will be converted to ISBN13 formatted items
even if you are still using ISBN10 internally.