The documents, deadlines, and compliance rules behind trading with a national retailer.

Retail EDI decides whether a wholesale relationship runs on schedule or accumulates penalties. Start with the transaction sets a retailer will ask for, who is responsible for each one, and what happens when a document arrives late or wrong.

24 questions answered

• What is an EDI 850?→

  An EDI 850 is the purchase order a retailer sends its supplier electronically. It carries everything the supplier needs to fill the order: line items by UPC or vendor part number, quantities, unit prices, the ship-to location, the requested delivery window, and the terms. It is the document that starts the retail order cycle, and every downstream document references its PO number.

• What is an EDI 856 (ASN)?→

  An EDI 856 is the Advance Ship Notice, sent by the supplier before a shipment arrives. It describes the shipment hierarchically — shipment, order, pack, item — so the receiving dock knows what is on the truck, which carton holds which SKU, and how each carton maps back to the purchase order. Each carton is identified by the SSCC encoded in its GS1-128 label.

• What is an EDI 810?→

  An EDI 810 is the electronic invoice a supplier sends a retailer after shipping. It references the original purchase order and the shipment, and it itemizes quantities, prices, allowances, and terms. Retailers match it against the 850 they sent and the goods their dock actually received, and a discrepancy in any of the three usually results in a short-pay rather than a query.

• What is an EDI 997?→

  An EDI 997 is the Functional Acknowledgment, a receipt confirming that a document arrived and was syntactically valid. It says nothing about whether the business content was accepted — only that the file parsed. Trading partners expect a 997 back within a defined window, often an hour, and a missing one is treated as a transmission failure.

• What is an EDI 855 and do I have to send one?→

  An EDI 855 is the Purchase Order Acknowledgment, the supplier’s business reply to an 850. It confirms the order line by line: accepted as written, accepted with changes, backordered, or rejected. Most large retailers require one within 24 to 48 hours of the purchase order, and some treat a missing acknowledgment as a compliance failure with its own chargeback code.

• What is an EDI 860?→

  An EDI 860 is a Purchase Order Change Request, sent by the retailer to modify an order it has already placed. It can change quantities, add or cancel lines, move the delivery window, or redirect the ship-to location. The supplier is expected to acknowledge the change, and the revised terms replace the original for compliance scoring.

• What is an EDI 846?→

  An EDI 846 is the Inventory Inquiry or Advice, used to tell a trading partner what stock is available. Suppliers send it to retailers and marketplaces so buyers can see on-hand quantities before ordering, and dropship programs usually require it on a fixed cadence — often hourly or several times a day.

• What is an EDI 852?→

  An EDI 852 is the Product Activity Data document, sent by a retailer to a supplier reporting what sold and what remains on hand, usually by store or distribution centre. It is the closest thing a wholesale supplier gets to point-of-sale visibility, and it is the raw material for replenishment planning and sell-through analysis.

• What is an EDI 820?→

  An EDI 820 is the Payment Order or Remittance Advice, sent by a retailer to explain a payment. It lists the invoices being paid, the amounts applied to each, and any deductions taken, with a reason code for every deduction. It is the document that tells a supplier why a payment arrived smaller than the invoice.

• Who sends the ASN when a 3PL ships the order?→

  Responsibility for the 856 sits with whoever holds the carton-level packing data, which is normally the 3PL, but accountability for it stays with the supplier whose name is on the purchase order. The workable arrangement is that the 3PL reports what it packed and the supplier’s system builds and transmits the ASN, so one party owns the data and one party owns the timing.

• What happens if an ASN is late or wrong?→

  The retailer charges for it. A late, missing, or inaccurate ASN is one of the most commonly penalised compliance failures, typically billed as a flat fee per purchase order or a percentage of invoice value, and deducted from payment, never invoiced separately. The goods still arrive; the margin on them does not survive intact.

• What is a routing guide?→

  A routing guide is the retailer’s rulebook for how suppliers must ship to it. It specifies approved carriers, how freight is booked and paid, labelling and palletisation standards, delivery appointment procedures, packing rules, and the documents required at each step. Every rule in it is enforceable, and most carry a named penalty for breaking it.

• What is a GS1-128 label and why does the retailer care?→

  A GS1-128 label is the barcode label applied to each shipping carton, encoding an SSCC — a globally unique 18-digit serial number for that specific carton. The receiving dock scans it once and the ASN tells the system everything inside. The label is what lets a retailer receive a pallet in seconds without opening it.

• EDI or API — which should we use with a trading partner?→

  Use whichever the partner supports, because the choice is rarely the supplier’s to make. National retailers run on EDI and will not take an API integration; marketplaces and modern dropship platforms usually offer REST APIs and no EDI at all. A brand selling into both ends up running both, which is an argument for a system that speaks each natively.

• Do I need a VAN, or can I use AS2?→

  Either works; the trading partner decides what it accepts. A VAN is a managed network that routes EDI between partners and charges by document or kilocharacter. AS2 is a direct point-to-point protocol over the internet with no per-document fee, but it requires certificate management and a connection configured per partner.

• What does EDI cost for a small brand?→

  Traditional EDI is priced in layers: a setup fee per trading partner, a recurring platform or VAN fee, and per-document or per-kilocharacter transaction charges. Mapping each new partner is usually billed separately. The cost that hurts is rarely the subscription, though — it is the chargebacks that follow when documents are wrong, which routinely exceed the software.

• How long does EDI onboarding with a retailer take?→

  With a traditional EDI vendor, six to twelve weeks per trading partner is normal: mapping the partner’s document specification, exchanging test files, correcting rejections, and passing certification before production traffic is allowed. The retailer’s own testing queue often sets the pace, and a first purchase order can land before the connection is certified.

• Do I need EDI to sell to a major retailer?→

  Almost always, yes. National retailers and grocery distributors mandate EDI in their supplier agreements and will not onboard a vendor without it. Some smaller chains accept a supplier portal for low volumes, but a portal means rekeying every order by hand, and most retailers charge a fee for vendors who stay on one.

• Can Shopify do retail EDI?→

  Not natively. Shopify handles DTC and, through Shopify B2B, wholesale ordering on your own storefront, which is a different job from trading EDI documents with a retailer’s system. Retail EDI needs X12 transaction sets, a routing-guide compliance layer, and carton-level ASNs, none of which Shopify B2B produces. Brands add an EDI platform alongside Shopify.

• What is the difference between X12 and EDIFACT?→

  They are two EDI standards for the same purpose, split by geography. ANSI X12 is used across North America and numbers its documents — 850 for a purchase order, 856 for a shipping notice. UN/EDIFACT is the international standard and names them instead, so a purchase order is an ORDERS and a despatch advice is a DESADV.

• What is a trading partner in EDI?→

  A trading partner is any business you exchange EDI documents with — a retailer, a distributor, a 3PL, or a carrier. Each one publishes its own specification: which transaction sets it uses, which optional fields it requires, how it formats identifiers, and what its acknowledgment deadlines are. Two retailers using the same 850 standard will still need separate maps.

• What are the EDI 940 and 945?→

  They are the pair that instructs a warehouse and reports back. A 940 is the Warehouse Shipping Order, sent to a 3PL or warehouse telling it what to pick and ship. A 945 is the Warehouse Shipping Advice returned once the shipment goes out, confirming what was actually picked, packed, and dispatched.

• What is EDI testing and certification?→

  Certification is the retailer’s approval process before it lets a supplier trade live. The supplier sends sample documents against the partner specification, the retailer checks structure and content, and errors come back for correction. Only once each required transaction set passes does the connection move to production. Timelines depend on the retailer’s testing queue.

• How do I get EDI-ready before my first retail purchase order?→

  Work backwards from the retailer’s routing guide. Confirm which transaction sets it requires and their deadlines, get GTINs assigned and a GS1 company prefix in place for SSCC labels, agree with your 3PL who builds the ASN from the pick data, and run test documents through certification before the first order lands.

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