Computerization: EDI:
EDI Revision, August 1, 1997

Background
August 1, 1997 marks 2 years since the establishment of the AAWCO EDI Standard. Since that time, at least 8 grain accounting software firms have incorporated AAWCO EDI capability into their software products. On the other side of the equation, five states currently accept EDI data from warehousemen on a regular basis during the examination process.

Thus, the AAWCO EDI standard has and will continue to save AAWCO member states and the grain industry time and effort during the examination process. AAWCO recognizes and commends the participating grain companies and grain accounting software vendors for their support of the standard and for their cooperation in increasing examination efficiency. AAWCO remains committed to building on our present success as well as expanding the appeal of EDI examinations to all member states and their clients. To this end, we present the 1997 revision of the AAWCO EDI.

Overview
The first, and perhaps most important, aspect of the 1997 revision is that it will not mandate any changes to those EDI programs now up and running. No software revisions of existing EDI software are necessary (for warehouseman or examiner) to operate under the 1997 revision. Instead, the 1997 revision focuses on adding capabilities to the standard that were not defined in 1995. The major additions are 1) additional grain codes and 2) additional use of the "Location" field #2.

1. Grain Table

GRAIN CODES ADDED FOR 1997 (all existing Grain Codes remain unchanged)

END OF ADDITIONS.

2. EDI Field Descriptions

a. Change in document "EDI Field Descriptions" Page 1. Field #2 "Location" (codes 1 through 42) have the description "Location" listed for that field with the exception of code 43 and 44 where "Acct. No." is the description.

The wording is hereby revised for Codes 7 through 28 (Contracts) to say "Delivery Location/Terms".

b. Change in document "EDI Field Descriptions" Page 2. Field #11 "Price" (codes 8, 9, 19 & 20) have the description "Basis Amount" listed for that field.

The wording is hereby revised for Codes 8,9, 19 & 20 (Contracts) to say "Basis Price".

3. Use of EDI.DAT field #2 "Location" is more specifically defined

Due to the increased use of market valuation tools during the course of examinations, it has become essential to have additional market price indicators available through the "Location" field #2.

EDI.DAT field #12, "Option Month", is limited to 5 characters in the MM/YY format. In many cases, this is insufficient to properly assign a market value to cash and futures contracts on hand. Thus, EDI.DAT field #2 "Location" is hereby designated as the data field to hold additional market information beyond option month.

Often this additional market information comes from 1 or more data fields in the warehouseman’s software system. For example, the warehouseman’s grain accounting software system may contain one or more data fields with descriptions identical or similar to the following: "Location ID", "Price Zone", "Market Zone", "Profit Center", "Delivery Period", "Delivery Start Date", etc. The terms and schemes for pricing are much too varied to establish standards at this time. In the pursuit of uniformity and flexibility, AAWCO recognizes this fact and focuses on establishing the presence of unique, logical, and consistent identifiers within a grain system rather than general agreement across all grain systems. While there is wide variance in the labeling of mark-to-market indicators, the indicators themselves are generally 1 to 3 characters long to facilitate data entry. Thus, with a 15 character location field available, it is possible to concatenate multiple market value indicators together to form a unique string for AAWCO EDI purposes. This unique string is to be placed in the "Location" field #2.

The 1997 standard hereby defines the following information to be placed in the "Location" field.

Any fields, labels, or indicators used within the grain accounting software system that delineate one contract’s price from another should be captured and placed into the "Location" field. More than 1 such indicator may be concatenated together to form a single unique text string (up to 15 characters). An identical text string is to be placed into the "Location" field for each contract (record code 7 through 28) that is to be valued using the same current market price. If more than 15 characters are available, the data may be abbreviated in any convenient way as to retain a unique text string identity for each unique current market price.

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