Reference > Technical Information > Document Identification

There are three identifiers that uniquely identify defense shipments, the contract, delivery order and shipment number. In addition, MIL-Comply uses a reference number assigned by the user, or one that combines the three identifiers.

Contract Number

Contracts are identified by a "13-position alpha-numeric basic Procurement Instrument Identification Number (PIIN)." DoD contract numbers are of the form AAAAAA-YY-A-AAAA. MIL-Comply allows the contract number to be up to 25 characters in order to support non-DoD contracts.

Delivery Order / PIID

Also referred to as the order number or call order (4 digits), and more recently the Procurement Instrument Identifier (PIID), a 13-digit alphanumeric identifier. It is used without dashes, and must have an 'F' or 'M' in position 9. Increasing the size of call orders allows them to be uniquely identifiable contractual documents. When present, Mil-Std-129 requires use the PIID in place of the contract number. However, the original contract number is still required for other situations, such as WAWF and IUID Registry transactions, so both are required in MIL-Comply. Read more about PIIDs. The Order Number may be up to 19 characters.

Shipment Number

A shipment numbers is a seven-place shipment identifier assigned by the prime contractor. Generally speaking, it has the form AAANNNN, as in "XYZ0001". The final shipment of a contract should have a 'Z' appended to it. The 'Z' is a suffix to the shipment number, rather than part it, and is not always included in transactional data, such as in the PDF417 symbol or a Military Shipment Label. For more information, see Shipment Numbers in Definitions.

Reference Number

The Reference Number is a user-assigned identifier for a shipment/invoice. It can be automatically assigned or something meaningful to the user, such as a sales order number. It must be unique because it is the primary key for all document records. It may be up to 35 characters, and may include spaces, hyphens, underscores, parentheses and brackets.

When automatically assigned by MIL-Comply the reference number defaults to Contract-Order-Shipment, with all but the two intermediate dashes removed. Because this is exactly 35 characters, shipment number 'Z's are not not included by automatic reference numbering. See New Shipment Defaults for other reference number generation methods.