SupplierWiki curates detailed articles to help suppliers win at retail.

Don't let Walmart Post-Audits catch you off guard in 2025. Join Allie and Bekah to learn best practices for preventing and disputing Post Audits.

Prepping for Walmart Audits

Post Audits are preventable and disputable! Join Allie and Bekah to learn how to best prepare for Walmart Post Audits.

Articles

Seasonality and Gifting Cycles in Health, Beauty, and Wellness

____________________________________________________________________________________ 

The health, beauty, and wellness (HBW) category often gets planned around a marketing calendar: campaigns, launches, gifting tie-ins. But a season's outcome is usually decided months earlier, by the forecast, the item setup and ship deadlines, and the inventory placement and in-season replenishment behind it. 

Most retail categories spread demand across the year. A slow month can be recovered in the next one. But HBW doesn't work that way. A huge share of its volume moves through a handful of short, date-locked windows, and once a window closes, the sale inside it is gone. 

Two demand engines drive this. The first is 

, primarily for events such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Father's Day. Each one is tied to a fixed date on the calendar, not a season, and each one pulls enormous volume into a narrow span of weeks. The second is 

, such as sun care products in the spring and summer and immunity and cold-and-flu products in the fall and winter. These cycles are longer than a single gifting date, but they still have a defined start, peak, and decline. 

Put the two together, and HBW spends most of the year building toward, executing through, or winding down from a concentrated demand event. But this isn't a category where a supplier can under-plan in March and correct in April. Miss a gifting window and the sale is lost for the year; overshoot it and the result is a warehouse of dated, seasonally branded stock with a shrinking list of places it can still be sold. If you want to win the HBW calendar, you have to 

 the window correctly, get ready before it opens, and stay in control while it's live. 

The Two HBW Demand Patterns: Gifting and Seasonality 

 placement depend on which kind of demand a supplier is planning against, and HBW runs on two distinct patterns that overlap for most of the year. 

Gifting spikes attach to a date, not a season. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and the Q4 holidays (primarily Christmas and Hanukkah) each pull a large share of a supplier's annual volume into a two to four week window built around a fixed point on the calendar. 

Most of that volume runs through gift sets and value sets, not the core line. A gift set is usually its own SKU, with its own components, packaging, assembly, and item setup at the retailer. Bundling three existing SKUs onto a shelf isn't the same project as building and shipping a set from scratch. 

Gifting has a hard cutoff. The set has to be live, set up, and shippable before the retailer resets its gifting section. Arriving after the reset is a missed sale. 

Layered under the gifting calendar is a slower cycle tied to the season itself rather than a fixed date. Sun care builds through spring into summer, while immunity and cold-and-flu demand builds through fall into winter. New-year wellness spikes every January. Fragrance runs underneath most of it, picking up at nearly every gifting peak. 

These cycles give suppliers more runway than a single gifting date, but the window still has a build, a peak, and a decline. Inventory staged too early sits unused in a warehouse, while inventory staged too late misses the peak. Either way, the timing decisions made well before the season determine how much of it a supplier actually captures. 

What It Looks Like To “Win the Window” 

Even if you know the shape of the two patterns, you still have to win the demand window. Winning the window comes down to four operational disciplines, each with its own point of failure. 

Forecast Early With Real Retailer Data 

The best input for a seasonal or gifting forecast is actual sell-through and inventory data from retail partners: what sold, where, and how fast, by retailer and by channel, not just what was shipped in. That data has to be in hand early enough to size this cycle's gift sets and seasonal SKUs before the buy is locked. 

Set Up Seasonal and Gift SKUs Ahead of Hard Cutoffs 

A gift set is a new item, and new items take time, from item setup, packaging, and compliance. Most missed launches don't come from a lack of product, but rather come from item, pricing, or packaging data that got stuck somewhere in the retailer's system before anyone caught it. 

Get Inventory Into Position Before the Window Opens 

Forecasting the right total volume only helps if allocation decisions are made at the retailer level ahead of the peak. A single national number hides exactly the kind of mismatch that leads to stockouts in one region and markdowns in another. 

Even a good plan needs correcting once the window is live. That means seeing sell-through in near-real time while the peak is still happening, and being able to act on it: reallocating stock, expediting a shipment, triggering a reorder before the shelf goes empty. Suppliers running on lagging or manual reports find out a set sold out, or stalled, only after the window has already closed.  

What a Single Cycle Looks Like as a Supplier 

The window in stores runs about three weeks, but the work behind it starts the previous fall: 

Every one of those five stages depends on the one before it. A late setup shortens the shelf window no matter how good the forecast was. A missed in-season read means the replenishment call comes too late to matter. 

Consider two suppliers with very similar products, selling to the same stores.  

One supplier builds its forecast on actual retailer sell-through, not last year's shipment totals, and sizes its Valentine's sets accordingly. The sets clear setup with weeks to spare. Inventory lands at the retailers that actually sold through the fastest last cycle. Two weeks in, sell-through data shows one set running ahead of plan, and the supplier expedites a reorder before it stalls out on the shelf. The set sells through cleanly, with almost nothing left to mark down. 

Another supplier forecasts based off of last year's shipments, not sell-through, and overestimates demand at retailers where sales had already been softening. Item setup slips past the internal deadline, and the sets ship late; some retailers only get partial distribution before the season starts. Without in-season visibility, the supplier doesn't know the sets are underperforming until the sales data comes in after the window has closed. What's left goes to markdown, dated and unsellable until next Valentine's Day 

Every gifting moment and every seasonal cycle in HBW runs on the same underlying test: forecast it early, set it up on time, place it correctly, and read it while there's still time to act. 

Don't Let Item Setup Be the Reason a Set Misses Its Window 

Missing a launch window often comes down to item setup — getting a new gift set's data, packaging details, and compliance requirements into a retailer's system correctly and on time. That's exactly what SPS Assortment is built to handle. It centralizes and standardizes product data, checks it against each retailer's specific requirements, and delivers it automatically, with pre-built connections already in place to 3,000+ buying organizations. For suppliers building seasonal and gift sets against a hard cutoff, that's one less place for a launch to stall. 

If HBW's calendar is where your business wins or loses the season, don't let item setup be the reason a set misses its window. 

Why Retail Growth Execution Breaks Before Demand Does

Most growth plans assume the hard part is finding demand. Get the marketing right, land the assortment, and the orders follow. But retailers who have actually pushed through a growth phase tell a different story. The orders show up fine. What breaks is everything downstream of them: supplier onboarding, purchase order (PO) accuracy, 

 (OTIF) delivery, the small handoffs that have to work at 10 times the volume they were built for. 

The SPS Commerce Retailer Value Impact Study, based on responses from 55 retail, distribution, and grocery operations leaders, backs this up with data. Execution capacity, not market appetite, is what decides whether growth sticks. 

What Is Actually Capping Retail Growth Right Now? 

Execution, not demand, is what is really capping retail growth in 2026.  

Every new supplier relationship, every new channel, every seasonal spike adds coordination work. Purchase order acknowledgements have to happen on time. Advance ship notices (ASNs) have to match what actually ships. Invoices have to reconcile against both. None of this is hard in isolation. It gets hard when a retailer is managing it across a supplier base growing faster than the systems and staff built to support it. 

That is the execution wall: the point where saying yes to more volume stops being a demand question and becomes a capacity question. It tends to arrive quietly too, as a slow accumulation of missed acknowledgements and late shipments, rather than one obvious failure.

Flowchart branching from 'Sourcing decision' into two paths: top path shows 'Disconnected systems' leading to 'Manual onboarding' leading to 'Live in months' (highlighted in orange); bottom path shows 'Connected network' leading to 'Onboarding absorbed' leading to 'Live in weeks' (highlighted in blue).

decision_execution_gap.png

Where Does Retail Supply Chain Execution Break First? 

Retail supply chain execution breaks in three places, consistently: 

 relationship that takes months to reach reliable compliance is a growth tax, not a one-time cost. Every expansion multiplies this by however many new suppliers the plan requires. 

 Routing guides, OTIF thresholds, and chargeback logic differ by category and channel. A retailer with a structured vendor program can absorb that variation. One running on spreadsheets and email can’t, and the gap shows up first during growth, when volume exposes every inconsistency at once. 

 Not knowing what is arriving until the truck is at the dock means problems surface too late to prevent an OTIF penalty or a shelf gap. Whether an order will ship complete and on schedule needs to be visible well before receiving. 

What Do Retailers With Strong Supplier Execution Do Differently? 

According to the Value Impact Study, retailers who report scaling without breaking share a common trait. They have moved supplier execution onto a shared, structured network rather than managing it retailer by retailer. 

That last point matters more than it sounds like it should. A retailer managing supplier onboarding alone is solving problems for the first time, every time. A retailer on a network that already understands how a given supplier type typically operates is applying an answer someone else already found. 

How Does a Connected Network Change the Math? 

The study ties this to measurable outcomes, not just sentiment. 

Read those three together and the shape of the argument gets clear fast. Reduced risk, more volume, and a better customer experience are not three separate wins. They are what happens when execution capacity stops being the constraint. The network absorbs the coordination work, compliance requirements are understood before an order ships, and the retailer’s own team spends its time on judgment calls instead of chasing down missing acknowledgements. 

This is also why the commercial framing matters more than the operational one. A late shipment or a receiving snag is not just an internal headache. It is lost sales, a shopper who found the product somewhere else. Execution failures are revenue failures wearing an operational disguise. 

What Does This Mean for Your Next Growth Push? 

Before adding headcount or another growth initiative, it is worth asking a narrower question. If supplier volume doubled tomorrow, would onboarding, compliance, and inbound visibility hold, or would they become the next constraint? 

For most retailers, the honest answer is that the constraint shows up well before any real demand ceiling does. The Value Impact Study suggests the fix is not more people managing more spreadsheets. It is a network that already knows how supplier relationships tend to work, so new capacity does not require rebuilding execution from scratch every time. 

What Is the Difference Between a Demand Ceiling and an Execution Wall? 

A demand ceiling is a limit on how much a retailer’s market will buy. An execution wall is a limit on how much order volume a retailer’s operations, primarily supplier onboarding, compliance monitoring, and inbound visibility, can actually process without errors or delays. Most retailers hit the execution wall well before they hit any real demand ceiling. 

What Is On-Time and In-Full (OTIF), and Why Does It Matter for Growth? 

On-time and in-full measures whether a shipment arrives on schedule and complete. Retailers use it to hold suppliers accountable, and repeated OTIF misses translate directly into stockouts and lost sales. As supplier volume grows, OTIF tracking gets harder to do manually, which is why it is one of the first places the execution wall appears. 

How Does a Connected Supply Chain Network Help Retailers Scale? 

A connected network gives retailers shared visibility into supplier performance and onboarding status across their entire supplier base, plus the accumulated pattern knowledge from other retailers’ relationships with the same suppliers. That means less time spent solving onboarding and compliance problems from scratch for every new supplier. 

Want to See What Execution Capacity Actually Looks Like in Practice? 

 gives retail, distribution, and grocery operations leaders the inbound visibility and structured vendor accountability that keep growth from outrunning execution. See the full findings, including how 52 operations leaders described the shift, in the 

 has more on how retailers are approaching supplier accountability and growth. 

The 2026 World Cup Effect on Norway's Retailers and Suppliers

It is no secret that Norway’s glorious return to the World Cup after 28 years left a lasting impression on both local and international audiences. 

After the team went on to beat Brazil, reaching the quarterfinals for the first time in its history, the celebration went beyond just the football pitch.

Retailers and suppliers across Norway quite literally saw consumer demands shift overnight, in ways very few could have anticipated.

TV screens sold out. Grocery shelves turned red, white, and blue. A small club on the southwest coast found itself at the center of a global spotlight. And, for some retailers, the excitement came with a costly lesson in supply chain readiness.

Here's how Norway's World Cup run turned retail and supply in the country on its head, and what it revealed about the gap between consumer excitement and supply chain readiness.

TV and Projector Sales Went up Before the Brazil Match

In the days leading up to Norway's match against Brazil, Norwegian shoppers began to look for larger displays and sharper picture quality, chasing that stadium-like experience for their own living rooms.

As a result, local electronics retailers saw 

. According to Ardian Gashi, Elkjøp's sales manager for audio and video, TV sales roughly doubled compared to the same period the year before (with TVs over 75 inches being most favored).

Projectors saw an even sharper jump. As Gashi claimed “Sales have increased by as much as 563 percent.”

Electronics weren't the only category riding the wave. As Norway's World Cup run picked up steam, food brands across the country rushed to put the 

Chocolate bars carried "Alt for Norge" branding. Bread came in football-shaped variants. Even an ice cream flavor from the 1990s made a comeback under its old World Cup-era name.

One of the companies that joined the football branding trend was Baxt, the maker of Vestlandslefse (a traditional Norwegian flatbread), which teamed up with the Norwegian Football Federation to release a football-themed version of the product.

Mølbach, managing director of Baxt, claimed this phenomenon wasn't only a marketing opportunity. It reflected something far deeper about what the World Cup meant to Norwegians. As he put it, "the sense of community and patriotism is strong" this year, a sentiment that helps explain why so many brands leaned into the moment, and why Norwegian consumers responded to it.

For a country that hadn't celebrated a World Cup appearance in almost three decades, this was a significant national moment, and one with real, measurable demand behind it.

No storyline captured the scale of the moment better than Erling Haaland's. As the famed striker scored his way through the tournament, most notably with two goals against Brazil, 

- Bryne (and especially to his football club - Bryne FK).

Joachim Baardsen, who runs the sports communications agency Baardsen Sport, even claimed “the World Cup is worth billions over time”, and that much of that value is likely to spill over onto both Bryne and Norway in general.

Baardsen called it the biggest commercial opportunity in Bryne FK’s history, one with the potential to build a brand that lasts long after this World Cup ends.

As Haaland's global profile continues to grow, so does the appeal of Bryne as a destination, and the commercial upside for the region and the businesses connected to it.

Not every part of Norway's World Cup retail story was a success. As national pride translated into a sudden surge in demand for official Norway football shirts, 

At XXL, one of Norway's largest sports retailers, demand for the Norway national soccer team jerseys became so high that the supply chain failed to handle it. Jan Christian Thommesen, XXL's communications director, pointed to the root cause: the supplier hadn't been able to produce enough shirts in time, leaving retailers with far fewer units than customers wanted.

Frank Løke, a former Norwegian national handball player who was among those unable to get a shirt, summed up the missed opportunity bluntly: "it's a crisis" that comes with real lost revenue potential for everyone involved, not just an inconvenience for fans.

His comment captured what many in the industry were thinking: a historic moment for Norwegian football had run headlong into a supply chain that couldn't respond fast enough to meet it.

The Future of Norwegian Retailers and Suppliers

Norway's World Cup run showed how quickly customer expectations can shift when a nation rallies around a shared moment, and how unevenly retailers and suppliers can respond to it.

Elkjøp and Baxt moved fast because they had the flexibility to react to what customers wanted, when they wanted it. XXL's experience with jerseys tells a different story: demand existed, but the connection between retailer and supplier couldn't keep pace with it.

That gap rarely comes down to a lack of effort. More often, it's a 

. When a retailer and its supplier don't have shared, timely visibility into orders, inventory, raw materials, and production capacity, a sudden spike in demand becomes a missed opportunity rather than a sales record.

 helps close that gap. It gives both sides a shared, real-time picture of what's selling, what's in stock, and what's coming next, so a surge in demand can be met with a plan and not with panic.

Norway's next major moment, whether on the pitch or in another unexpected wave of consumer enthusiasm, no doubt, will test the same readiness.

And with increased global attention to Norway, thanks to the national team’s viral appearance on the pitch, the need for end to end supply chain visibility will likely only grow further.

Case Pack Configuration: How to Build a Pack That Works at Retail 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Landing shelf space at a major retailer is a milestone for any brand, but that dream can quickly turn into a logistical nightmare if you overlook the back-of-house details. While new suppliers often view the case pack as a purely physical decision that is centered on how many units fit in a box that can survive a truck ride, retailers experience the case pack as a sophisticated data object. A configuration only works at retail when the physical carton and its digital data record are in total agreement across every touchpoint: the item setup, the 

, and the pallet on the warehouse floor. 

In the high-stakes world of retail logistics, a case pack is a critical compliance metric. Discrepancies between what was declared in your data and what actually arrives at the distribution center (DC) are the primary drivers of 

, manual rework fees, and rejected loads. This guide walks you through the discipline of building a configuration from the ground up, ensuring your physical builds and digital footprints remain perfectly aligned. 

Building an effective configuration starts with understanding the hierarchy of trade items. This layered approach ensures that every person and automated system in the supply chain knows exactly what they are handling. 

, or the smallest sellable unit purchased by the consumer. Above this, suppliers often use 

 (sometimes called warehouse packs) to bundle eaches together. These groupings allow retailers to handle smaller quantities without breaking down a full case, which is especially useful for modular resets or slower-turning items. 

, is the larger carton containing either multiple inner packs or individual eaches. 

 can be particularly tricky here as they treat the warehouse pack as an inner grouping and the vendor pack as the primary shipping case. Understanding these distinctions is vital during item setup. Some retailers may require every level of the hierarchy to be declared precisely. 

Consider three common ways to configure a 48-unit shipment: 

The Identity Layer: Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) 

The most unmissable rule in case pack configuration is the 

 for identity: Any change to the number of trade items in a case requires the assignment of a new 

. This is the single fact that turns a simple decision to go from 12 to 16 units per case into a cross-functional project. 

A unique GTIN is required at every level of the packaging hierarchy above the base unit. For Walmart suppliers, 

, which is essentially a modified UPC that identifies the specific pack configuration. If your item file says you are shipping a 12-pack, but the barcode on the box represents a 10-pack, the scanner at the DC will trigger a defect immediately. 

Physical Build Constraints and the Multi-Retailer Reality 

A case pack that satisfies one retailer rarely satisfies everyone. Retailers increasingly disagree on what the ideal case looks like, forcing suppliers to navigate a fragmented landscape of standards. 

Walmart generally prefers lightweight, scannable cases that can be scanned from multiple angles in motion. They also utilize the 

 framework for shelf-ready packaging: Cases must be easy to identify, open, stock, shop, and dispose of. Conversely, 

 expects sturdy club packs that function as both a shipping container and a shelf display. Target may request smaller inner packs for their modular resets, while 

 parcel-shipping standards to ensure they survive the small-parcel environment. 

Secondary packaging also faces unique pressures regarding cost and sustainability. Materials typically account for 2–15% of a product’s total cost, and retailers like Walmart are now tying packaging standards directly to corporate sustainability targets. Suppliers are increasingly expected to replace non-recyclable materials like PVC or EPS foam with recyclable alternatives. 

Connecting the Case to the Pallet: TI/HI Mechanics 

The intersection of physical stacking and digital data is most visible in 

 (Tier by High) configurations. TI refers to the number of cases on a single layer of a pallet, while HI is the number of layers stacked vertically. 

Retailers care about these numbers because their automated storage and retrieval systems are calibrated to specific dimensions. If you declare a 10x5 pattern but ship an 8x6 configuration, it disrupts the entire inbound flow, leading to manual rework and 

. Furthermore, the pallet must be built for stability. This includes placing the heaviest goods on the bottom, using interlocking brick-laying patterns to prevent tipping, and ensuring edge alignment to avoid the overhang trap. 

 strategy becomes a compliance tool. Your ASN (or EDI 856) must accurately reflect the physical TI/HI on the truck. If the digital ASN and the physical pallet disagree, a compliance defect is triggered, often resulting in receiving delays and chargebacks. 

Case pack configuration now has a direct impact on your freight invoice, not just your compliance scorecard. As of July 19, 2025, the 

 shifted many commodities to a density-based classification system. 

Under these rules, freight is classed primarily by its weight-to-volume ratio. Denser packaging can earn a lower freight class and lower rates, while light, bulky packaging can lead to higher classes and significantly higher shipping costs. In this environment, every inch of wasted space in a case pack is money leaving your margin. 

Getting these details wrong is expensive. Walmart’s 

 enforces these standards with a rigorous fine structure. Packaging and labeling defects typically incur a $200 administrative fee per defect per PO, plus an additional $1 per impacted case. 

Common configuration-driven defects include: 

When these defects occur, they trigger a waterfall effect. Receiving associates must remove the "problem freight," generate tickets, and wait for disposition from the home office before the goods can even be processed for sale. This leads to lost sales and administrative burdens that often exceed the value of the original fine. 

A case pack that works at retail is one where the physical box and its digital data record never tell two different stories. By mastering the packaging hierarchy, adhering to GS1 GTIN standards, and ensuring your TI/HI patterns match your EDI transmissions, you transform a potential source of chargebacks into a competitive advantage. 

As you add retailers and volume, managing these complex fulfillment requirements becomes harder to do manually. 

 helps your team stay aligned to thousands of trading partner requirements, reducing exceptions and ensuring your digital data moves as fast as your physical products. From purchase orders to ASNs and beyond, our network intelligence helps you get it right, protect your bottom line, and scale your business with confidence. 

How to Document Tariff Charges in EDI 

Two federal deadlines are colliding this month, and they are reshaping how quickly goods move through U.S. ports. The 

 sunsets on July 24, and a separate round of tariffs tied to forced labor enforcement could follow soon after. Suppliers shipping internationally are accelerating orders to avoid getting caught with cargo at sea when new tariffs take effect, and that speed only works if tariff charges show up cleanly on every invoice a trading partner receives. 

 documentation comes in. Undocumented or inconsistently documented tariffs create reconciliation problems between trading partners exactly when speed matters most. This guide walks through five ways suppliers are documenting tariff charges in EDI invoices today, plus how to choose the right one for your systems and your trading partners. 

Why Is Tariff Documentation Suddenly Urgent? 

Import volumes have already responded to the deadline. 

 a sharp rise in import volumes to businesses front-loading shipments ahead of expected tariff increases, with major U.S. ports handling their highest May volume in more than a year. 

The Section 122 surcharge, a 10% tariff applied to most imports under the Trade Act of 1974, is scheduled to expire by operation of law at 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24, 2026, 150 days after it took effect. Around the same time, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative proposed additional duties of 10% to 12.5% on 60 economies following an investigation into forced labor enforcement, holding a public hearing on the proposal on July 7, 2026. No effective date has been set for that action yet, but the timing lines up closely enough with the Section 122 sunset that many importers are planning for both. 

For suppliers, the practical effect is a compressed shipping window and a higher chance that tariff charges need to show up correctly on 

 under time pressure. A tariff charge that is not documented the way a trading partner’s EDI spec expects does not just create a billing question. It stalls the invoice, delays payment, and pulls both sides back into manual reconciliation right when neither side has time for it. 

What Are Your Options for Documenting Tariffs on an Invoice? 

Every trading partner relationship needs one clear answer when tariff charges appear on an invoice. The methods below range from a separate line item both sides can see and audit (the most visible) to folding the charge into item costs (the least visible). None of them is universally correct. The right choice depends on the visibility your finance team needs and what your trading partner’s EDI spec already supports. 

Adding tariffs as a distinct line item is the most straightforward way to give both sides clear visibility into the charge. This can happen in the summary tab of an invoice, coded as either a tax or an additional charge, or as a specific duty charge if the trading partner’s system supports it. 

Some trading partners use a dedicated line-item code, for example a “T” designation, or an item-level charge code, to flag the tariff separately from the rest of the invoice. The exact code varies by trading partner, so double-check the convention before the first invoice goes out. 

SPS Commerce can accommodate tariffs within the charges or allowances field of an invoice. This approach works well, but it depends on clear agreement upfront: how the supplier is sending the tariff information, and how that information needs to convert for the trading partner’s system on the receiving end. 

Settle this during the testing phase of the first invoice, not after go-live. A mismatch discovered after invoices are already flowing is far more expensive to fix than one caught in test. 

Assigning tariffs to a dedicated General Ledger (GL) account number lets the system pull the tariff amount automatically whenever it posts under that account. This method is often the lowest-lift option since it does not require significant changes to existing systems, but it also gives less line-level visibility than a separate invoice line item. 

Folding the tariff directly into the cost of the item is the simplest method to implement. It also gives up the most visibility, since the tariff amount is no longer broken out anywhere on the invoice. This works well when granular tariff tracking is not a priority for either side, but it becomes harder to unwind later if a trading partner asks for a tariff breakdown or if the tariff rate changes mid-contract. 

This is far and away the most-used option. It is the most recent, real-world impact of tariffs on supply chain organizations.  

How Do You Choose the Right Method for Your Trading Partners? 

There is no single method that fits every trading partner relationship. Weigh these four factors before you commit: 

Most suppliers use different methods for different trading partners rather than picking one method network-wide, since specs and finance requirements vary by relationship. 

How Do You Get EDI Specs and Communication Right? 

 has to reflect it accurately, and the trading partner needs to know what to expect before the first invoice goes through. SPS Commerce provides guidance on how to handle tariffs so the chosen method is documented correctly in the EDI spec. 

Proactive communication matters here as much as the technical setup. Telling a trading partner how tariffs will appear on an invoice, before the first one arrives, prevents exactly the kind of confusion that tariff volatility is already creating across the supply chain. 

Can you combine tariffs with other charges on the same invoice? 

Yes. Tariffs can sit alongside other charges and allowances on an invoice. The key is making sure your EDI spec distinguishes the tariff charge from other charges clearly enough that your trading partner’s system parses it correctly. 

Which method should a new trading partner relationship start with? 

Start with whatever the trading partner’s EDI spec already documents. If the spec does not specify, the charges or allowances field is usually the easiest to test and double-check during onboarding, before committing to a separate line item or GL account setup. 

What happens if tariff documentation does not match a trading partner’s spec? 

A mismatch typically stalls the invoice rather than rejecting it outright. That delay pushes back payment and pulls both sides into manual reconciliation, the exact outcome a clear EDI spec is meant to prevent. 

Does SPS Commerce Support All Five Methods? 

SPS Commerce supports multiple approaches to documenting tariff charges, including the charges and allowances field, and provides guidance on aligning the EDI spec to whichever method a trading partner relationship uses. 

Track Your Tariffs on Every EDI Invoice 

Tariff rates are shifting fast enough that manual reconciliation is not a sustainable plan. SPS Commerce Fulfillment automates the order-to-invoice cycle, including EDI invoicing, so tariff charges show up accurately and consistently across every trading partner, without a manual check on each invoice. 

Not ready to change your EDI setup yet? 

 has more guides on EDI compliance as the tariff landscape keeps shifting. 

Chain Reaction Newsletter Archive

 newsletters archive to explore past editions, with the newest issue listed first. Each edition highlights the latest retail, supply chain, CPG, and AI insights from 

Welcome to the July edition of Chain Reaction, your source for staying ahead of the news and insights shaping modern supply chains. 

Supply chain volatility is not new. But the pace of disruption in 2026 has made reactive operations genuinely unsustainable. Tariff policy has shifted repeatedly across major trading relationships, port volumes are hitting record highs as brands pull shipments forward to stay ahead of the next change, and the average retail order now changes six times before it ships. The organizations absorbing this without breaking are not the ones with the most sophisticated tools. They are the ones that built clean, connected foundations before the disruption arrived and are now using AI to move faster on top of those foundations. 

The industry's message on volatility is hardening into something practical: move from reactive to predictive, or keep paying the price. 

, supply chain disruptions cost $1.5M per day on average for companies that are not watching until something breaks. The shift procurement teams are making is from periodic audits to real-time risk signal monitoring — catch the exposure early, not after the damage is done. 

Retailers are being pushed in the same direction. 

 shows that agility and resilience are no longer separate goals. The organizations outperforming are the ones acting on shared data quickly, adjusting assortments, and keeping supplier alignment intact rather than chasing problems after they surface. 

Meanwhile, the macro backdrop keeps moving. 

 captures how frequently landed cost assumptions have been upended across Canada, Mexico, China, and the EU. And 

 as retailers and brands front-load shipments to get ahead of the next potential shift. Peak season arrived early this year, whether teams were ready or not. 

From inside hundreds of thousands of trading relationships, the pattern SPS Commerce sees is consistent: the teams navigating this environment with the least disruption are the ones whose data was structured enough to act on when things moved. For CPG brands, that means using AI demand forecasting to model tariff exposure and protect margins before a policy shift forces a reaction. 

 breaks down what separates the brands getting results from those still reacting after the fact: a clean, connected picture of landed cost, sell-through signals, and supplier capacity before the model is asked to reason about risk. 

Volatility is not just a macro story, either. SPS Commerce data shows order changes have doubled year over year, with 1 in 5 orders now coming back with acknowledgement changes. 

, drawn from a session with Sprouts Farmers Market and Sunkist Growers, shows what proactive coordination looks like in practice: weekly data-driven conversations, scenario planning, and onboarding practices that align on item data from day one. For midmarket retailers, 

Articles

SupplierWiki curates detailed articles to help suppliers win at retail.

Prepping for Walmart Audits

Overview

Articles