Designed to replace ANSI X.12 832 and other custom manufacturer-pricing formats, the PPIF (Product & Price Information Format) is a singleprogram system for use by manufacturers, distributors, and original-equipment manufacturers. The ASCII template lets users transmit data via mail, e-mail, or the Internet without having to develop software to do so.
The PPIF improves efficiency in the power-transmission/motion-control distribution channel by letting manufacturers receive price updates in a single standard style. It also eliminates manual rekeying and thus reduces transaction and administrative costs.
The newly released Version 2.0 has revised field names to better match industry terminology, expanded field definitions and comments, and improved nomenclature to flag new, obsolete and price-on-request products. There are also new fields for minimum order quantity, conditional price multiplier, conditional invoice price, and user-defined use.
More information on PPIF v. 2.0 is available at www.ptda.org/PPIF. The format is available for free download at www.ptda.org/PPIFdownloads