EDI integration when a customer needs orders and invoices electronically.
A major customer sets a date: orders and invoices must arrive electronically, in its format. Miss it and the account is at risk. We build the connection between your systems and theirs, so documents are produced, checked and sent without anyone rebuilding them by hand.
When a customer sets an electronic deadline
A buyer’s specification sets the document formats, required fields and go-live date. We work from those requirements and the systems you already use to handle orders and accounts.
The work is rarely one document. Order acknowledgements, despatch notes, invoices and credit notes each carry their own rules. We start with the flow the deadline depends on and add the rest in later releases.
Specifications, validation and acceptance tests
We read the trading partner’s specification and map each field to the data you already hold. Where the two do not line up, the exception is written down and agreed before anything is built.
Documents are checked before transmission: file structure, mandatory fields, codes and totals. We agree how amounts and VAT must be calculated and test them against the trading partner’s examples.
Before go-live we test against the customer’s own samples, including the failures: a missing field, an unknown product code, a dropped connection. Acceptance is agreed with the partner in advance.
Queues, exceptions and visible failures
A connection that fails silently is worse than no connection. If the network is down or a document fails validation, it waits in a queue with the reason recorded and appears on a screen your team can act on.
Document identifiers and processing records prevent repeat processing. Your team can follow a document from receipt through validation and transmission when a customer queries it.
| What the customer required | What we delivered | Proof |
|---|---|---|
| Digital orders and invoices by a fixed deadline, in the customer’s format | Received, checked and shown to the operations team, with invoices returned in the required format | Everything Boxed |
| Invoices to a national builders’ merchant in its required TRADACOMS format | TRADACOMS 0700 invoices generated from sales data and sent over the trading network | TRADACOMS invoicing |
| Order processing and electronic invoicing to protect a contract | Orders and invoices exchanged in both directions, with schema validation on every document | Miranda |
Source: Everything Boxed, TRADACOMS EDI and Miranda case studies.
Documents that arrive, and get paid
Electronic trading only works when a rejected file and a dropped connection are treated as ordinary events that someone expects.
Everything Boxed
Orders arrive over EDI or a REST API and are normalised into one internal format. Three layers of validation check the schema, the business rules, and each invoice against its purchase order. Invoices wait in a queue if the transport is down.
Miranda
TRADACOMS 0700 invoices are built from sales data in the exact format the merchant requires, with GS1 location numbers, EAN-13 product codes and exact decimal arithmetic.
How an EDI project runs
- 1
Read the specification
We map the customer’s document rules to your data, list every field that needs translating and confirm the deadline.
- 2
Build the flow that matters
The first release covers the documents the deadline depends on, tested against the customer’s samples and failure cases.
- 3
Go live and watch it
Documents run through a queue with a status each, and we monitor the link and fix failures under an agreed care plan.
Questions
- Which standards do you work with?
- TRADACOMS, EDIFACT and other formats, plus REST APIs and file drops. The customer’s specification decides the format.
- Do we need to change our ERP or accounts package?
- Usually not. We read from the systems you already run and produce the files from that data.
- What if the connection drops?
- Documents wait in a queue and are retried when the connection returns. The processing record shows what has been sent and what still needs attention.
Has a customer set an electronic deadline?
Send us the specification and the date. We will scope the first release and quote a fixed price for it, separately from any later additions.
Max RevittFounder and Director
Tell us about the job
These details help us assess the work and come back with a useful first step. You do not need a finished specification.
Prefer to talk? Book a free call.