This article provides information on the following:
Purpose
Ace has begun sending promotion hotsheets that place an entire class, subclass (called ‘Product Group’ by Ace), or items from certain vendors on sale rather than individual part numbers. To accommodate the new behavior, a new sale type has been added; the Supplier Non-Part Number sale type. A Supplier Non-Part Number sale creates a sale that applies to parts based on some data other than part number, and that data must be defined by the supplier for both the sale itself as well as the items impacted by the sale. The class, subclass, or vendor data does not have to be a contiguous range. A sale may apply exclusively to classes 300 and 305. An example of a Supplier Non-Part Number sale would be:
Spend $20 Save $5 on Armor All Car Cleaning Products
The above sale would apply to any parts in the Car Cleaning Products class.
Design
The following are part of the new design:
Supplier Non-Part Number sales will be evaluated exclusively against the supplier’s catalog data stored locally. With this, a given store can alter the class and subclass definitions for a given part without altering the behavior of a Supplier Non-Part Number sale.
To support the new sale type, new data columns will be added to the INVENTORY_SUPPLIER and SALEPART data tables in database version 4.71. It should be noted that there are columns added for department number values. As of May 2026, Ace does not send sales that apply to given departments, but these columns will be added in preparation of that future possibility. For now, these columns will go unused. INVSUP_SUPPDEPTNUM will be filled by Ace’s Department definition for the item, and SALEPART_DEPTNUM will be null.
New Data Columns – Inventory_Supplier Data Table
Stores should be able to alter the class or subclass definitions for a given item without ruining the functionality of the sale. With this, Supplier Non-Part Number sales must use supplier-defined catalog data for a given item to determine if the part qualifies. The following columns have been added to the Inventory_Supplier data table to store this supplier-defined data:
- INVSUP_SUPPDEPTNUM
- INVSUP_SUPPCLASSNUM
- INVSUP_SUPPSUBCLASSNUM
- INVSUP_SUPPVENDORNUM
The data in these new columns will be updated regularly via data validation. For detailed information on how the Ace Catalog Data is updated, view the Dependencies – Ace Catalog Data section of this article.
New Data Columns – Salepart Data Table
Generally, a Salepart data record describes a given part number that is on sale. This will not be the case for Supplier Non-Part Number sales. The following columns will be added to the Salepart data table:
- SALEPART_DEPTNUM
- SALEPART_CLASSNUM
- SALEPART_SUBCLASSNUM
- SALEPART_VENDORNUM
For normal sales, these values will be NULL. For Supplier Non-Part Number sales, these values may or may not be NULL. If these values are not NULL, then a given item’s Ace catalog data MUST match the values present in the Salepart data record. For detailed information on how the new sales are created, view the Ace Promotion Hotsheets section of this article.
Dependencies
The following are dependencies:
- Database Version
- Ace Catalog Data
- The Syncing Process for Ace Catalog Data
- Full Refresh of Ace Catalog Data
- Required External Communication with Ace
Database Version
Supplier Non-Part Number sales require database version 4.71 or later to be properly supported. If a Supplier Non-Part Number sale is created via Ace Promotion Hotsheet on a prior database version, the sales will not behave as expected. In this event, upgrading to the current database version, running a full refresh on the Ace Catalog Data for the store’s inventory (See Dependencies – Ace Catalog Data for more details), and asking Ace to respool the sale will fix the sale.
Ace Catalog Data
Supplier Non-Part Number sales are defined by Ace using a combination of class, subclass, and vendor data that can be found for parts in the Ace catalog. This data will be stored locally for use in Paladin and must remain up-to-date. To ensure catalog data is properly synced, small batches of items will have their locally stored catalog data refreshed as a daily data validation step. Paladin Service will pull this data from an Ace API, and the store must have Ace EDI enabled to pull the catalog data from Ace. Most stores will take roughly 15 days to sync their entire inventory, but the full sync should never be longer than 30 days.
When the store initially upgrades to database schema 4.71, all catalog data will be used for the first set of runs until the entire Ace-supplied inventory is written to. On subsequent runs, Paladin Service will only get item data that has been changed since the previous run.
The Syncing Process for Ace Catalog Data
When running data validation, Paladin Service will update all items of a given class number before moving on to the next class. Because Ace class numbers will always be 3 digits, Paladin Service will start the run at class 100 and end at class 999. If a given class number is not defined in the Ace catalog, Paladin Service will receive no item data for the value and skip it.
When daily validation is complete, the amount of items updated and the class range that was used will be viewable in the update log, displayed as follows:
Added Ace Catalog Data to 2167 inventory items from class 100 to 146.
In this case, the next day’s data validation step to refresh Ace Catalog Data will start at class 147. Also, on the initial run, at least 2,000 inventory items will be refreshed every day. On subsequent runs, that minimum quantity will be reduced to 300.
Full Refresh of Ace Catalog Data
There may be instances where a store’s catalog data becomes out of sync, or there may be instances where a store may need all of their data to refresh immediately. For these cases, there is a process to start a complete refresh manually that will cover the store’s entire inventory. To start this process, perform the following steps:
- Launch Paladin.
- Login as Paladin Support.
- Navigate to Maintain > Data Viewer > Ace API.
- Click Refresh Catalog Data. A dialog window will display, notifying the user that this process could take at least an hour. If that is acceptable, proceed. Otherwise, cancel.
- When the update process is finished, a message will display showing the number of inventory items affected.
Required External Communication with Ace
When refreshing the Ace Catalog Data, Paladin relies on Ace’s API to pull data from the catalog. If Paladin or Paladin Service cannot get data from Ace at any stage of either the nightly or full catalog refresh, the refresh will be aborted, and the reason will either be displayed to the user or added to the update log if it was started from daily data validation.
Ace Promotion Hotsheets
The following are Ace Promotion Hotsheets:
Supported Sales
Not all kinds of Ace promotions can be created as Supplier Non-Part Number sales. As of May 2026, the only promotions that support Non-Part Number sales are Ace’s Buy More and Save (BMAS) sales. The BMAS sales map to the following TYPE_CD values in the raw promotion hotsheet data:
- 9: Buy X Quantity Save $Y (may or may not be BMAS)*
- J: BMAS – Spend $X Get Y Items Free
- K: BMAS – Spend $X Get $Y or Y% Discount
- L: BMAS – Spend $X Get Free $Y Gift Card
- M: BMAS – Spend $X/Buy X items Get Y Items Free
*Since Type 9 promotions may or may not be BMAS, all Type 9 promotions are supported.
If a Non-Part Number sale is sent by Ace using an unsupported TYPE_CD value, the hotsheet will be processed as if it is a normal sale instead, leading to most parts not working in the sale.
PROMO_TYPE
When Ace creates a Non-Part Number sale and sends it to Paladin via promotion hotsheet, the following will be true:
- In the raw hotsheet data, the TYPE_CD value used must be a supported value.
- The PROMO_TYPE value will be some value between 2 and 6 inclusive.
The PROMO_TYPE value is a value that can be found in hotsheet data, and it determines the criteria the sale uses to determine if a part qualifies.
PROMO_TYPE – Possible Values
PROMO_TYPE has 6 possible non-empty values. If PROMO_TYPE is 1, null or empty, the sale will be considered a normal sale. The definitions for the non-empty values are:
- 1: Sale by Part Number
- 2: Sale by Class
- 3: Sale by Subclass*
- 4: Sale by Vendor
- 5: Sale by Class and Vendor
- 6: Sale by Subclass* and Vendor
*The term used by Ace for Subclass is ‘Product Group’ and should be referred to as such when communicating with Ace.
For PROMO_TYPE values 5 and 6, both criteria must be true for a given part for the sale to work. Also, when determining if a part qualifies for a sale, the Ace catalog data stored in the INVENTORY_SUPPLIER data table will always be the data that is considered. This way, stores will have the freedom to change class and subclass definitions of a part without breaking the functionality of a given sale.
Important Hotsheet Data Values
There is a collection of values that will be present in the hotsheet data that are important to consider when viewing a hotsheet for a Non-Part Number sale. Those values are:
- TYPE_CD: Describes the kind of sale.
- PROMO_TYPE: Describes the criteria used for parts.
- MERCH_CLS_CD: Indicates class number if the sale uses class number.
- PRODUCT_GRP_CD: Indicates subclass number if the sale uses subclass number.
- VENDOR_NUM: Indicates vendor number if the sale uses vendor number.
These are not the only values relevant to the sale, but these are the values that the sale will use to determine which parts are impacted by the sale.
If you have questions or suggestions about this information, contact support@paladinpos.com.
