Safeway EDI Policy

Safeway has achieved a reputation as a leader in lowering operating costs through best practices and further extending cost reduction opportunities throughout both sides of the supply chain. Safeway considers EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) an enabler in expediting our ability to exchange business documents in an economical, accurate and timely manner. This exchange of documents in a standardized digital format provides mutual benefit in:

• Reduce the amount of paperwork created for orders, invoices, etc.
• EDI data can be stored on tape or diskettes, thus reducing the amount of physical storage space needed for your current transactions and filling time
• Eliminate duplicate entry of data
• Reduce the errors that can result from key-entry of data.
• Allow you to increase business volume without increasing your staff by reducing the amount of manual or redundant tasks performed in the processing of a business document

Safeway is now requiring all invoices for warehouse purchases to be submitted via EDI and will be instituting a paper handling charge for those suppliers continuing to send paper invoices.

Safeway strongly recommends that each vendor directly accept EDI purchase orders, instead of routing the purchase order through a broker. This gets the order in the hands of the vendor quicker, more accurately and provides traceability. It also allows you to use data from the purchase order when forming the corresponding invoice. Many of our vendors utilize their VAN to send carbon copies of the purchase orders to the broker, to keep them informed.

We value our relationship with you and understand there are costs and technical challenges associated with EDI; therefore, Safeway supports several alternatives to implementing traditional EDI in house. There is a list of solutions providers that includes both services and software solutions that will allow your company a choice in selecting how you might meet our electronic document exchange requirement. Safeway does not intend this list to be exclusive, as many service and software options are available and we encourage you to investigate alternatives and select the best solution fit for your business.

Adherence to industry standards lowers the cost of EDI for all suppliers and retailers and as a further measure towards reducing EDI costs The EDI standards that Safeway uses are published by the Uniform Code Council (UCC) and American National Standards Institute (ANSI). To obtain copies of these standards, you can contact them through their Internet site or via mail.

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