About the Timber & hardware Exchange

The Timber and Hardware Exchange is made up of two components:

  1. The Trade Document Exchange that allows trading partners to securely, accurately, and easily send and receive trade documents such as Purchase Orders and Invoices.

  2. The Product Data repository which provides a range of tools for both suppliers and buyers to manage and access supplier product data.

This combination of functions differentiates the Timber and Hardware Exchange from other offerings, and provides a complete platform for eCommerce for Australian organisations in these industries.

 

The Trade Document Exchange uses the power of the Internet to remove much of the complexity of electronic trading and allow organisations to move quickly in transferring current manual processes to automated trading for many of their trading partners.

The Exchange provides translation between the different formats used by trading partners. This means that we translate your formats to a common format and you don't have to worry about the formats used by your trading partners. You also don't need to be concerned if your Trading Partners change formats: that's our job.

Some of the current formats available are:

  • EDI (EDIFACT & ANSI),

  • flat files,

  • XML,

  • or email.

  • We offer open trading environment for communications.

Our preference is for Pacific Exchanger software (provided free of charge) that manages the Internet communications including security, reliable transfer, scheduling, and logging of activity.

The T&HE provides secure document transfer, using SSL and the HTTPS protocol. The Pacific Exchanger software transfers documents securely over the internet using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and that is why we prefer that you use Pacific Exchanger.

Some customers prefer other means of communications and we support those when required. Such as:

  • FTP, modem dial-up,

  • VAN,

  • email, or browser interface


A browser interface called "Web Forms" is available. This is a great method of electronic trading for smaller partners, or for partners who have issues with integrating documents into their ERP systems.

Transaction statistics are available on the T&HE Web site. The Secure Web Site also provides a document tracking interface that allows partners to check and view document status for their trading partners only.

The T&HE supports many suppliers all of which could have a different ERP (Accounting) package. What we provide is a one pipe to the buyer (trading partner) so that they receive business documents in one format.

And we use a HIWG standard, developed by Mitre 10, Bunnings, John Danks and many suppliers such as James Hardie, Carter Holt Harvey, and Pine solutions.


The T&HE consist of following components:

  • The Pacific Exchanger client software communicates that via the Internet with the central communications module. It passes the documents the mailbox system (each trading partner has their own mailbox). The message switching module transfers documents to the recipient trading partner's mailbox.

  • Then there is a translator module that translates documents from one format to another, this is similar to translating from one language to another.

  • There is also data management system used for document tracking, that gives trading partners visibility of their documents statuses.

  • And lastly there is Web Forms, a method of electronic trading for smaller partners, or for partners who have issues with integrating documents into their systems (as they are upgrading their business system for example). Web forms allow someone to receive and create documents via a secure Web environment, without their trading partners needing to know that they are not fully integrated.


  • Pacific Exchanger is a client software, provided free of charge to trading partners, that transfers business documents securely between the trading partner and the exchange. This example shows a log of documents being transferred.


  • Pacific Exchanger can also be setup to run at pre-defined times as a scheduler. In the example shown above, Pacific Exchanger will run from 12 AM to 12 PM and will connect every 5 minutes to send and receive documents.

  • Each time Pacific Exchanger is started it performs a self diagnostics to ensure that documents can be securely transferred to the exchange. If any diagnostic fails then a green tick will be replaced by a red X. You can then try and figure out for your self what went wrong or call our help desk.


This is an outline of the typical document flow between Trading Partners:

  1. Buyers procurement (or ERP) system will create a document and transfer it to a directory/folder that is accessible by Pacific Exchanger

  2. Pacific Exchanger will at a designated time pickup documents from this directory/folders and transfer it to the exchange. But before it transfers, the documents will be encrypted for security reasons and decrypted at the exchange by the communication module.

  3. Communication module will then transfer document to the Mailbox System and from there it will be placed in the suppliers mailbox and translated if required.

  4. Suppliers Pacific Exchanger will then pickup their documents from the Exchanger and place them on the defined directory/folder to be picked up by the suppliers ERP system for processing.


Document tracking is a very important and useful tool. The document tracking enables clients to search for documents by partner, date, document type and status. The document status indicates whether a trading partner has received that document. All of this is available using a web.

Document tracking is only available to those trading partners that are trading live. And when they login into the T&HE web site they will be asked for a password. Once inside document tracking the T&HE clients will be able to search for status of their documents by trading partner, date or document type.

This example shows invoices being sent from Company ATC tools it also shows that first two documents have not been read by their trading partner.


For Mitre 10 group, Document Tracking is a very important functionality as rely on this for their payment to suppliers, and if the document can't be seen in the document tracking then it will not be paid.

The T&HE will perform product data management tasks on behalf of suppliers to enable them to send a HIWG Standard (or any standard for that matter and the T&HE will convert it to the HIWG Standard) PRICAT file to Mitre 10 for product data alignment.

In order to ensure that Agency Invoices sent to Mitre 10 contain accurate Store ID data, T&HE will provide an automated mechanism for the provision of that data to suppliers. Mitre 10 will provide up-to-date Store ID data to the T&HE, and the T&HE will allow suppliers to access that data as often as they wish via the T&HE Web site.

As part of the standard service to Supplier and M10, the T&HE will provide data validation of file formats. The T&HE will validate following: Store ID/Customer number must be a valid Mitre10 store ID as per the Store ID listing to be provided by Mitre10 and available to suppliers as discussed above.

Supplier ID must be provided and should consist of the supplier EAN (EC Identifier) code. This field must exist and be valid as per trading partner profile at the exchange and agreed with Mitre 10 at implementation.

All fields to be validated according to data type, i.e. numeric fields must contain numeric data. Mandatory fields must contain data.

Any unit costs included should have 4 decimals precision, in line with PRICAT unit costs. The unit cost is not mandatory but, should it be provided, must be to 4 digits.

Monetary fields should already be totalled and validated against summary records values (as this is mandatory data in the HIWG Standard and so will be required of all suppliers regardless of their selected file format).

In addition to the need for specific data validation above, the T&HE as part of it's standard service will provide an alert to suppliers of issues via an automated email to the primary contact email address as held in the Exchange web site under Trading Partner Profile data.

The paperwork is eliminated as there is no need to print and mail documents.

Error are reduced drastically as we take out human elements.

Suppliers Cash Flow is increased as documents are paid on time every time.

Productivity is increased through process optimisation.

Document delivery is guaranteed otherwise a notification is issued immediately on all erroneous documents.

And by documents being delivered on time the payment is on time and thus reducing Aged Debt. Interesting feedback from Suppliers that trade electronically with Mitre 10 is that they don't have to call Mitre 10 for payments it happens automatically.


The Centralised data repository provides for catalogue data in a shared environment between suppliers and their customers.

All access is controlled by Login, and customers see only information relevant to them. It allows human buyers to view and source product data (new products, product images, specifications, safety sheets, data sheets and prices.

Once the data is in the central repository it can easily be used to provide a dynamic on-line catalogue in your own web site. This has been done by a number of suppliers already.

And once the repository is up to date it provided for accurate up-to-date data that buyers can use to populate their procurement systems and so set the platform for accurate electronic orders

Suppliers can either use easy online tools to manage data, or they can send the product information in excel spreadsheet or other forms to the T&HE and we will standardise and upload the data for them.

Also, the Timber & Hardware Exchange automates the process of sending updated product data to industry buyers. When a supplier updates their product data, we can send a Pricat (price catalogue) file to a buying group, e.g. mitre 10, for them to automatically update their systems. Thus enabling you to provide buyers with accurate information.

You can perform searches for products in number of different ways.

  • By product Description

  • By manufacturer's code

  • By EAN or GTIN number

  • Or by Supplier

Once you select a Supplier then all of their available product will bee displayed.

By selecting one of the products from previous screen a full web page describing the product with the product image will be displayed.

Another way to search is by drilldown.

You can start with a category.

From a category you can select a sub category.

And then all products within that sub category will be displayed.

The T&HE can also produce a PDF of a product on the fly so that it can be emailed to a buyer or interested person.

Updating prices can be made with relative ease, as data can be exported to Excel. Prices and other descriptive information can be updated on your desktop before transferring it back to the centralised repository.

This is just en example of a report that you can create from product catalogue repository.

In this example Iplex produce a pipe Dimension report, which they can convert to PDF on the fly and email it to the buyers.