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What is EDI integration?
EDI integration is the automated exchange of standard business documents — purchase orders, invoices, shipment notices — between a retailer’s systems and your own, without anyone rekeying data. "Integration" is the part that connects EDI to your ERP, ecommerce, or 3PL so orders flow straight through.
EDI, briefly
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a decades-old standard for sending business documents in a structured, machine-readable format. In North American retail, that usually means the X12 standard. Instead of emailing a PDF purchase order, a retailer sends an EDI 850 that your systems can read and act on automatically.
The documents you’ll meet
Most retail relationships use a handful of core documents:
- 850 — Purchase Order (the retailer’s order to you)
- 855 — Purchase Order Acknowledgement
- 856 — Advance Ship Notice (ASN), sent before goods arrive
- 810 — Invoice
- 997 — Functional Acknowledgement (a receipt that a document arrived)
What "integration" adds
Plain EDI just moves documents. Integration connects those documents to the systems you already run — so an inbound 850 becomes a sales order in NetSuite, and shipping an order generates the 856 and 810 automatically. That’s the difference between "doing EDI" and having EDI quietly run in the background.
Managed vs DIY
You can buy translator software and operate EDI yourself, or use a managed provider that runs it for you — mapping, certification, and monitoring included. For most growing suppliers, managed EDI is faster to launch and cheaper to own than building an in-house EDI team.
Interlink Commerce is a managed-EDI provider: we connect your retailers to your systems, certify the connection, and monitor every document. Most suppliers go live within 30 days.