Purchasing | Tradesimple - CSV Specification - Purchase Orders

Overview

It is possible to load various types of information and data to Fourth's Purchase to Pay product (formerly known as Trade Simple). Both customers and suppliers can use this functionality to import documents that largely correspond with paper based equivalents, for example - Product Catalogues, Purchase Orders, Delivery Notes or Invoices. These documents are in CSV format.

This guide defines the contents and rules governing the sending of Purchase Orders via Purchase to Pay where the basic Fourth flat file format has been selected.

This article is aimed at the UK-based technical reader, and a working familiarity with CSV files is essential.

Please follow this link to see a full list of articles covering the creation of other CSV files that can be loaded to Purchase to Pay - P2P&I - Purchase to Pay CSV Specification - Contents Page

General Notes on all CSV Documents

File structure

Each record is one line. A record separator should consist of a line feed (ASCII/LF=0x0A), or a carriage return and line feed pair (ASCII/CRLF=0x0D 0x0A).

Fields are separated with commas.

Restrictions on the Fields Data 

• Fields with embedded commas must be delimited with double-quote characters. Ex: Field,Data should be sent across within double quotes as “Field,Data”
• Fields containing double-quote characters must be surrounded by double-quotes, and the embedded double-quotes must each be represented by a pair of consecutive double quotes. Ex: Field”Data should be sent across as “Field””Data”
• Fields with leading or trailing spaces must be delimited with double-quote characters Ex: FieldData should be sent across within double quotes as “ FieldData ”
• Fields containing any special characters (characters other than alphabets (a-z or A-Z) and numerals (0-9)) should be embedded within double quotes
• Fields may always be delimited with double quotes and the delimiters will always be discarded. Please note: The system will not use the quotes to impart type information to fields imported
• The first record in a CSV file should be data and not a header record containing column (field) names
• Optional elements at the end of any line and their delimiters can be omitted but delimiters are necessary when optional elements are omitted “within” a line.

Mandatory/Optional Fields

Tables in this article use the following fields to indicate whether a field is mandatory, optional, or otherwise. 

• M – Mandatory, must be provided
• O – Optional, should be provided if appropriate
• C – Conditional, should be provided under certain circumstances. The notes next to the field will describe exactly when the field should be provided
• D – The system requires this field, but will derive it if not provided

Numeric Data Elements

All numeric data elements must have any decimal point explicitly stated. A negative value may be sent by placing a minus sign before the number, e.g. –1250.02. A decimal point is not needed where the decimal part is equal to zero, e.g. 15.00 may be formatted as 15.

Text Data Elements

The appropriate separator should terminate all variable-length text data elements without trailing spaces or any other “padding” character. Double-quotes may be used to define and enclose single text data elements. Please refer “Restrictions on the fields data” section above for more details.

Date Elements

The date field format in these documents must always be YYYYMMDD unless otherwise stated.

Purchase Orders (received from Purchase to Pay)

Purchase to Pay allows purchase orders to be received in a simple CSV file format. Because the system sends purchase orders to suppliers as soon as they have been sent by customers, each purchase order is sent as a separate file.

Each file will contain: 

• Exactly one Order Document

Each Order document will contain 

• Exactly one Order Header Line
• 1 or more Order Detail Lines

Order Header Line
Each file will contain a single order header line as the first row in the file.

Order Detail Line
Each order will contain one or more order detail lines.

Example Order
H,EL001,N,PO123456,20050601,20050604,,,Mike,The Tiger Tiger,Piccadilly,,,,W52QW,2,6,86.95
D,WE0001,Tropical Fruit Drink,24x330ml,5,12.70,63.50,CS
D,WE0002,Rum Punch Barrel,Each,1,23.45,23.45,EA