The EDI 862 · Shipping Schedule is the document a buyer sends when a forecast stops being a plan and becomes an instruction to ship. Where the 830 · Planning Schedule with Release Capability looks weeks or months ahead and separates what might be needed from what a supplier may start on, the 862 works on the short horizon — days, sometimes hours — and tells the supplier exactly what to ship, in what quantity, and when it must arrive. In a just-in-time flow, the 862 is the last word before goods move.
That short horizon is what makes the 862 both powerful and unforgiving. There is no time to email back and forth clarifying a quantity, and no slack to absorb a schedule that was read as information instead of instruction. If the 830 is a promise about preparation, the 862 is a promise about a truck.
What is the EDI 862 · Shipping Schedule?
The 862 is an X12 transaction set a buyer uses to communicate firm shipping requirements to a supplier. It carries, item by item, the quantities to ship and the dates and times they are required, usually against a schedule the two sides have already been planning with the 830 · Planning Schedule with Release Capability.
Three ideas define it:
- Firm quantities. Unlike a forecast, the quantities in an 862 are requirements. The supplier is expected to ship them, not to plan around them.
- Precise timing. The 862 typically specifies a required arrival or shipment date — and in just-in-time manufacturing, often a time window — because the goods are feeding a production line or a cross-dock that cannot hold buffer stock.
- Cumulative context. Like the 830, the 862 sits inside a cumulative flow: what has already shipped and been received matters, because the new schedule is calling off a running total, not starting from zero each time.
An 862 usually replaces or refines the near-term portion of the most recent 830. It does not renegotiate the relationship; it executes it.
How is the 862 different from the 830, the 850, and the 856?
These four documents form one chain, and confusing any two of them breaks it:
- The 830 · Planning Schedule with Release Capability forecasts demand over a longer horizon and authorizes a supplier to prepare — buy material, fabricate — within its release zone. It plans.
- The 862 · Shipping Schedule firms up the near term and authorizes actual shipments. It ships.
- The 850 · Purchase Order is a standalone firm order with commercial terms — price, terms, ship-to — for buyers and items that do not run on a repeating schedule. Scheduled flows often do not use an 850 at all for the scheduled items.
- The 856 · Ship Notice / ASN flows the other way: the supplier sends it to say what actually shipped. The 862 says what must ship; the 856 says what did.
A useful shorthand: the 830 says "get ready, and here is roughly how much," the 862 says "ship this much, arriving then," and the 856 answers "here is what is on the truck." When a supplier asks whether a document is a heads-up or a commitment, the 862 is a commitment.
Why do buyers use an 862 instead of just sending purchase orders?
Because in a repeating manufacturing relationship, a fresh 850 · Purchase Order for every shipment would bury both sides in order administration for demand they already planned together. The schedule does the planning once, in the 830, and the 862 then calls shipments off that plan with minimal overhead.
The deeper reason is just-in-time production. A plant that holds hours, not weeks, of inventory cannot wait for an order cycle. It needs a lightweight, frequent, machine-readable way to say "the line will need this on Thursday morning" — and to change that instruction on Wednesday if the line's plan changes. That is exactly the job the 862 was built for, which is why it is most common in automotive and other high-volume manufacturing supply chains.
Where do 862 flows usually break?
The first break is the schedule treated as advisory. A supplier files the 862 alongside the forecast, plans loosely around it, and discovers it was a firm requirement only when the buyer's line stops or a premium-freight bill arrives. The fix is the same discipline as the 830, one step firmer: everyone who touches the document needs to know that an 862 quantity is a ship instruction, not a planning hint.
The second break is the missed update. An 862 flow lives on cadence — daily is common — and each new schedule can change the near-term requirement. If a supplier's system fails to load one day's schedule, or loads it after the shipping cutoff, the supplier ships yesterday's requirement with complete confidence. Monitoring that a schedule arrived and was applied, not just that a file was received, is the control that catches this.
The third break is cumulative-quantity drift, inherited from the 830 flow. If the two sides disagree about what has already shipped and been received, the quantity the 862 appears to require can be wrong even when the document itself is perfect. The schedule calls off a running total; a corrupted running total corrupts every call-off after it.
The fourth break is the timing window read as a date. In just-in-time flows, "Thursday" often really means a specific window on Thursday tied to a line sequence or a dock appointment. A shipment that arrives on the right day but outside its window can be functionally late — refused, rescheduled, or charged back — to the surprise of a supplier whose system only stored the date.
What should you check in an 862 flow?
Four checks keep a shipping schedule honest:
First, instruction clarity: does the supplier's system treat an 862 as a firm ship requirement, visually and operationally distinct from a forecast?
Second, cadence monitoring: is each expected schedule confirmed as received and applied before the shipping cutoff it governs, with an alarm when one is missing?
Third, cumulative reconciliation: do both sides agree on shipped and received totals before the next schedule's quantities are trusted?
Fourth, window fidelity: are required times stored and planned as times or windows where the buyer specified them, not flattened to dates?
A flow that runs those checks turns the 862 from a daily file into what it is meant to be: the reliable last word before goods move.
Frequently asked questions
Is an 862 · Shipping Schedule a purchase order?
No. An 850 · Purchase Order is a standalone firm order with commercial terms. An 862 is a firm shipping instruction inside an existing scheduled relationship — it authorizes shipments against a plan the 830 · Planning Schedule already established, rather than creating a new order.
What is the difference between the EDI 830 and the EDI 862?
The 830 · Planning Schedule with Release Capability forecasts over a longer horizon and authorizes preparation. The 862 · Shipping Schedule works the short horizon and authorizes actual shipments. Many manufacturing relationships run both: the 830 to plan, the 862 to ship.
How often is an 862 sent?
Frequently — daily is common in just-in-time flows, and some relationships update more often when production plans change. Each new schedule refines or replaces the near-term requirement, which is why missing one is a serious break.
What happens after an 862 is shipped against?
The supplier sends an 856 · Ship Notice / ASN describing what actually shipped, and later an 810 · Invoice for it. The buyer compares the 856 against the 862 requirement — that comparison is where short, late, and out-of-window shipments surface.
Does a small supplier need the 862?
Only if it serves a buyer running a scheduled, just-in-time relationship. For ordinary ordered goods, an 850 · Purchase Order plus an 856 · Ship Notice covers the flow more simply. The 862 earns its keep when shipments are called off a plan instead of ordered one by one.
A forecast gives a supplier time to prepare; a shipping schedule takes that preparation and spends it. The 862 works when both sides treat it with the seriousness its horizon demands — firm quantities, precise windows, and no schedule left unapplied. At SignalEDI, we treat the 862 as an instruction document, not a reporting document — because by the time it arrives, the next move belongs to a truck, not a planner.
— Chris, founder of SignalEDI
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