ACES
Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard (ACES)
The North American industry standard for the management and exchange of automotive catalog applications data.
API
Application Programming Interface (API)
a set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications to communicate with each other.
Here’s a simple breakdown:
Interface: Think of an API as a bridge that enables two applications to talk to each other. It defines the methods and data formats that applications can use to request and exchange information.
Requests and Responses: When you use an app on your phone, it might send a request to a server via an API to fetch data (like your social media feed). The server processes this request and sends back the data in a structured format, which the app then displays.
Endpoints: APIs have endpoints, which are specific URLs where requests are sent. Each endpoint corresponds to a different function or data set.
Authentication: Many APIs require authentication to ensure that only authorized users can access certain data or functions. This is often done using API keys or tokens.
Examples: Common examples include weather apps fetching data from a weather service API, or payment gateways like PayPal using APIs to process transactions. APIs are essential for integrating different systems and enabling them to work together seamlessly.
Auto Care Association
The company / body that establishes the guidelines for ACES and PIES format as well as the VCDB/QDB/PDB, formerly AAIAhttp://www.autocare.org/
EDI
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the concept of businesses electronically communicating information that was traditionally communicated on paper, such as purchase orders and invoices. The goal is to maximize productivity, increase efficiency and reduce inaccuracies by automating the sales and procurement processes, and improve the business cycle.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
A standard for sharing files on the internet.
Jobber
A wholesaler or intermediary who buys goods in bulk at a discounted rate and resells them to retailers. This helps to streamline distribution because they can handle many small orders providing a diverse range of products through a single source.
MAP
Market Approved Price (MAP)
Market Approved Price (MAP) is a formal agreement between suppliers and retailers that sets the lowest price an item can be advertised. If you’ve ever shopped around and noticed the same price appearing everywhere, you’ve likely run into that product’s MAP.
This is why you’ll sometimes see promotions like “price too low to advertise” or encounter online listings where the price only appears later in the checkout process. Retailers who ignore MAP contracts risk significant fines or penalties from their suppliers.
At Mecka®, we systematically enforce MAP pricing on a per‑product basis. Any pricing rule that would drop below MAP is automatically adjusted back to the approved minimum.
The same applies to custom pricing: if a custom price is set lower than MAP, it will default to MAP to ensure compliance and consistency.
MeckaPay
This is a service from Mecka through partnership with Fortis that allows payment to be captured on Mecka online websites.
PQ Publishing
Price/Quantity Publishing
Outbound Marketplace EDI feeds that contain Product/Listing Identifier, Price, Quantity and occasionally, Handling information. A PQ file is a specific purpose data file that contains minimal information for things that change often. Our eBay PQ Processing app spins up 100 concurrent threads that call eBay’s API’s for each line in a PQ file and reports back to Mecka with statistics of what was successful and what failed along with descriptions for identifying why things failed.
PIES
Product Information Exchange Standard (PIES)
The industry standard format used to manage and communicate detailed product information—such as part numbers, specifications, packaging, pricing, and digital assets—between manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
It was developed by the Auto Care Association to standardize how product data is shared across the automotive aftermarket.
PIES is the backbone of product data in the automotive aftermarket, ensuring that every part—from brake pads to performance upgrades—is described, priced, and packaged consistently across the supply chain.
The European equivalent is the TecDoc standard, developed and maintained by TecAlliance.
SUBNOPS
Sub-Part Numbers (SUBNOPS)
We have found that on marketplaces, despite vehicle names being searchable in the buyers guide, people tend to click through to item details when they can see from the title and sub-title that the part matches their vehicle. We've experienced sellers creating duplicate part numbers with different titles and sub-titles to accomplish this but they assign all vehicles to each duplicate part number, making it a true duplicate of information. eBay prefers us to publish only unique part numbers with all vehicle fitments but the challenge is that when a parts fit a multitude of vehicles, the limited amount of characters available for a title and sub-title make it impossible to list all fitments and their years in the titles. Furthermore, sellers tend to want to list all years (Catalytic Converter Fits: 2000 2001 2002 2003 Honda Civic DX) instead of a year range since searching for a year in between the from/to years won't pull up the part. (ie. 2000-2003, searching for 2002 won't bring the part up) SolutionOur solution to this is to create a job that will clean up the data by consolidating duplicate part numbers and their vehicle fitment into a master part number, then, create additional Sub-PartNumbers per vehicle grouping. The Sub-PartNumbers will have a relationship to the parent product as well as Aces vehicle details for the vehicle grouping in question and a from year and to year value. Lastly the sub-part number will have fields for text values for the vehicle grouping segments which will be full-text indexed to allow the sub-part numbers to be text-searchable from B2C and B2B searches and each of the years for the grouping. With Sub-PartNumbers grouped by vehicle, this will allow for generation of an ideal Title and Sub-Title while having a true unique PN to publish to marketplaces. This should give the best of all worlds as when a sale is made, users can lookup the Master PN or Sub-PartNumber and see which product they need to ship.
TecDoc
This was created by TecAlliance, a consortium of European aftermarket stakeholders. It standardizes product information (part numbers, specifications, pricing, packaging, digital assets) across manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in Europe. TecDoc covers passenger cars, commercial vehicles, and heavy-duty applications.
It is often paired with VIO (Vehicles in Operation) & OE data.