Import Waybills (ANSI X12 EDI 417) from Class I Railroads

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Coupling CLM / Sighting data with shipping instruction data (bills of lading or waybills) can be a powerful combination.  For example, not only will you know where your railcars are and what station they are destined to, you will know what customer they are going to and what product they are carrying and many other helpful pieces of information about the shipment.

The Class 1 Railroads have a policy that they call "Customer 417s".  The is policy says that if you are a Party to the shipment (i.e. Shipper, Consignee, Care Of, Freight Payor), you are entitled to get one free electronic copy of the EDI 417 Waybill record.  The key is that the data must be transmitted directly to you.  If the data is transmitted to a third party first, like a Value Added Network (VAN) or an Application Software Provider (ASP), then there may be a charge.  The 417 Waybill is almost identical to the 404 Bill of Lading, which is what the shipper transmits to the railroad to initiate a shipment.  It has all the important information about the shipment such as Shipper, Consignee, Care Of parties, Origin, Destination, Weight, Commodity, Bill of Lading Number, Date, Time, Route, and Contract Number.  However, the information in the 417 record is encoded in X12 EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) format.  This formatting makes it hard to use the information unless you have specific software that understands this formatting and can translate it.

RMS can translate 417s.  All you have to do is tell RMS about where to pick up these records.  These locations will be FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites of the Class 1 Railroads.  FTP sites are accessible via the Internet and are used to transfer files from a remote computer.  Each time one of your shipments (outbound or inbound) is billed (i.e. a bill of lading is transmitted to the originating railroad), the originating railroad creates an electronic record called a 417.  The 417 is used between the various railroads that will be involved in completing this shipment; it gives them vital information required to make sure that the shipment gets to the proper place.  The 417 record is then written to a railroad's FTP site.  It is then available for RMS to download.

Follow these steps to get 417 waybills for your shipments:

1.

Ask the railroads that originate these shipments to set up an FTP account and to send copies of each 417 for each shipment to this FTP site.  Determine what railroads (line haul carrier Class I's - few shortlines have the ability to transmit waybills to customers) originate outbound or inbound shipments for your company. For each of these railroads, contact an e-commerce manager that is in charge of setting up Customer 417 accounts.  They will probably ask you to send a letter on your company letterhead authorizing this and specifying the shipments origins and destinations.  Once this letter is received, they will establish an FTP account and 417 records will begin showing up in this account.

Note: Contact Railcar Tracking Co. Customer Support and ask for a Waybill Authorization Letter template and a list of most Class I railroad e-commerce contacts. If you copy your authorization letters to support@railcartracking.com, we can be available to assist in answering some of the more technical questions that the railroads may have. It is recommended that you follow up with each railroad on a weekly basis. It takes between two to eight weeks to get these accounts established.

2.	From Data Management, click on Data Import Properties and check the Customer 417 (Waybill) check box; the EDI File Transfer Profiles form will open; tell RMS about the locations of these 417 records so that it can import them during the Import Data process.

Note:
Yellow shaded boxes are required entries.

3.	If the EDI File Transfer Profiles form is not already open, from Data Management click on the EDI File Transfer command button.

4.	Click the New command button.

5.	Fill out a name for the particular profile in the Name text box – this is just to identify the account so that you can easily recognize and retrieve it if it needs to be updated.

6.	Choose a Source of the data from the Source drop-down box; this is the railroad that has set up this particular account.

7.	Type in the User Name and Password in the respective text boxes to access the account.

8. Select 417 from the Format drop-down box.

9.

Enter a check into the Delete File After Xfer check box if the 417 files are not automatically deleted after download – be sure to ask the railroad about this because an incorrect setting could cause errors during your import. So far, the UP (via Transentric) is the only account that we know of that automatically deletes files after download.

10.	Enter the URL (Universal Resource Locator – in other words, the Internet address) of the account (example: ftpedi.bnsf.com).

11.	If the files reside in a folder, enter the folder name in the Folder text box.

12.	Enter into the Filename text box the file naming convention; in other words, tell RMS the common characters that identify a particular file from this source (for example: bnsfedi).

13.	Each company (your company) has a unique billing identification, get or establish this with the railroad and enter it into the Corp. ID text box.

14.	Departments or subsidiaries may have separate unique billing identifications, get or establish this with the railroad and enter it into the Dept. ID text box.

15.

Most accounts will require RMS to delete the file after it is downloaded, but some will automatically delete the file once it is downloaded (Transentric accounts are the only ones that do this that we know of at this time). Place a check in the Delete File After Transfer check box if RMS must delete the file after it is downloaded.

NOTE:You don't want to leave files on the account once they are downloaded because then the import process will take longer and longer while RMS is downloading duplicate files. RMS will not add duplicate (exact) records to its database, but you don't want to waste your time waiting for unnecessary files to be downloaded. Plus, the railroad or value added network that manages the account may get upset that you are using so much storage on their server.

16.	If an account is no longer used or you don't want RMS to try to download files from a particular account, check the Inactive check box.

17.	Place a check in the Passive Connection check box if your firewall retricts incoming connections from any of these accounts. A passive connection allows RMS to connect to the server, instead of the other way around.

NOTE: Some servers don't allow passive connections, so you'll have to do a little testing here.

Additional Information :  Copies of the 417 records are placed in the RMS Flat File Directory.  By default, this directory is set to c:\Program Files\RMSFull; you can alter this by following the steps in the Flat File Directory help topic.  If you wish to schedule automatic imports of 417s, see the Scheduler help topic.