EDI frequently asked questions

EDI (electronic data interchange) is the computer-to-computer exchange of business documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, in a standard format that trading partners can process automatically.

Large retailers, manufacturers and carriers exchange huge volumes of documents. EDI lets them process orders, shipments and invoices quickly and accurately across thousands of partners.

In X12, the most common are the 850 purchase order, 855 acknowledgment, 856 ship notice, 810 invoice, 820 remittance and 997 functional acknowledgment.

X12 is the dominant EDI standard in North America and numbers its documents, such as 850. EDIFACT is the international UN standard used widely in Europe and Asia and names its messages, such as ORDERS.

Common causes include missing item or location cross-references, maps that do not follow a partner's current guide, late documents, and failures nobody notices because acknowledgments are not monitored.

A chargeback is a deduction a retailer applies when a supplier does not meet requirements, such as sending late or inaccurate ship notices or incorrect carton labels.

It depends on your skills, volumes and need for control. Options range from running a platform yourself to EDI Team as a Service, where specialists work alongside you, to fully managed EDI.

Yes. EDI can run as cloud iPaaS or SaaS, in a private cloud, on premises, or in a hybrid model that combines cloud connectivity with on-premises systems.