Updated October 2026
Resellers, dealers and big-box retailers each set rules for how freight reaches them. Before a pallet leaves our dock, the ship notice, the labels and the pallet itself all have to match those rules.
To sell office supplies wholesale, each retailer expects three things. You send an EDI 856 advance ship notice that matches the freight. You label every carton and pallet to the GS1-128 standard. And the freight follows that retailer's routing guide. Retailers typically charge back for a miss on any of them. We handle all three, and we build pallets to spec.
By The Fulfillment.com team
A direct-to-consumer order goes well if the right item reaches the customer undamaged. A retailer's purchase order is held to a routing guide, and the guide asks for more. The advance ship notice has to arrive ahead of the freight and match it. Every carton and pallet needs a correct GS1-128 label. The shipment has to arrive on time, packed and stacked the way the retailer asked.
When something is off, the retailer doesn't just complain. It typically deducts a chargeback from what it pays you. A warehouse that has only ever picked single units for consumers isn't a good fit for orders like these.
Retailers typically check the ship notice, the labels and the routing guide on every shipment, and charge you back when one is missed. The details differ from one retailer to the next.
The EDI 856 is an electronic notice sent ahead of the freight. It lists what is in the shipment and how it is packed, down to each carton and item, and the retailer's receiving dock scans the freight against it. A notice that is late, missing or wrong makes the shipment non-compliant the moment it arrives. We generate the ASN from the same pick that built the shipment, so the notice and the freight describe the same goods.
GS1-128 is the barcode label standard for cartons and pallets shipped between businesses. Each label carries a serial shipping container code (SSCC), a number unique to that carton or pallet, plus the contents and routing data the retailer's system reads. The retailer also decides exactly where the label goes and what data it holds. A label that's wrong, missing or won't scan usually turns into a line on a chargeback. We print GS1-128 carton and pallet labels to each retailer's routing guide.
Each retailer publishes a routing guide, its rule book for how freight must arrive. A guide covers points like these:
Guides differ from one retailer to the next, and retailers rarely bend them. We prep orders to the routing guide and build pallets to its spec. A reseller, dealer or corporate account gets freight set up the way it asked, rather than the way a warehouse would stack it by default.
A chargeback is money the retailer deducts from your invoice when a shipment breaks its routing guide. Common causes include:
Chargebacks are how retailers pass the cost of a broken rule back to the vendor, and they eat into wholesale margin a little at a time. No warehouse can promise to end them. Careful picking and labeling can help keep them rare.