EDI GLN Account Hierarchies (Parties and Locations)
GLNs are designed to support unique and unambiguous identification of parties/locations in business processes, which is essential for efficient communication between trading partners. The GLN can be used to identify a functional entity (like a hospital pharmacy or accounting department), a physical location (like a warehouse or hospital wing or even a nursing station), or a legal entity (like a health system corporation).
Guidance for efficient process management:
- Confirm the locations and roles that will use GLNs (e.g., Bill-to; Ship-to; etc.), and the relationship of those GLNs to existing account numbers.
- If there are multiple locations to which a shipment will be sent (e.g., cross-docking), work with the seller to identify which GLN(s) will be sent as part of each transaction and in what order. Note that if GLNs are used in the 810 or 820 to specify location-specific payment terms, these locations must propagate from the buyer’s MMIS to the AP systems.
- Example 1: A seller can only accept a single GLN as part of their EDI transaction set. Should the GLN sent by the buyer be a Ship-to or Deliver-to? If the buyer has a dock facility, they may wish the GLN to be the Ship-to and the buyer can deliver internally based on other information. If the buyer wishes delivery directly to a suite, they may furnish the Deliver-to GLN.
- Example 2: A buyer seeks delivery to a cross-dock location, from which the package will be sent to a loading dock at another facility and finally to a suite. There are potentially three GLNs that are part of the delivery transaction: two Ship-to’s (cross-dock and clinic) and one Deliver-to (suite).
- It is critical to understand not only how the GLNs being exchanged relate to the organizations, but also the capabilities of trading partners to exchange a GLN for each applicable transaction type (e.g., purchase orders, invoicing, rebate/sales tracing, payment remittance, etc.).
- Align your customer/vendor account hierarchy from billing, inventory, and delivery locations (e.g., EMR, MMIS, WHS, etc.).
- Cross-reference other account/party/location identifiers used throughout the system.
- Determine if the cross-references have been validated against within GS1 US Data Hub | Location or another mechanism such as EDI.
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