EDI

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is how businesses communicate with each other to complete B2B (Business-to-Business) transactions. Acctivate imports and exports transaction files that are processed by your VAN (Value Added Network) and transmitted electronically to your Trading Partners.

Note

An EDI Provider/VAN is required for sales EDI Transactions (850,940, 945). In some cases, Warehouse/3PL trading partners may not require the use of an EDI Provider/VAN for the transmission of 940/945 transaction files. Instead, they may have the technology capabilities to map to our transaction file specifications. Our transaction file structure cannot be altered, so check with your 3PL to see if they are able to work within our specifications or if a VAN is required.

Once you have configured your Trading Partners in Acctivate, the importing and exporting of Acctivate can be done quickly using the Process EDI window.

Import/Export EDI Files

When you open the Process EDI window, Acctivate will download any available transaction files from any FTP folders (if your VAN or Warehouse Trading Partner using FTP) into a local folder on your network. Then, the files are imported into Acctivate from the local folder. If not using FTP, you may need to first export any available files from your VAN's inbox into the local inbox configured for Acctivate.

  1. In Acctivate, go EDI → Process EDI
  2. Immediately upon opening, Acctivate will attempt to download files (if using FTP). Acctivate will then display which files it has found for import/export.
  3. You will see a section for each transaction type and below the transaction type will be the trading partners that an import or export file has been found for. These will be checked if there is something to import or export. If you want to import and export everything you can, leave them checked. Otherwise, you can uncheck any files that you aren't ready to import or export.
  4. Click Process. Import files (850, 945) will be processed first, then export files processed after (856, 810, 940).
  5. Once the processing of files is complete, you will see a summary of the processed transactions. To save these to a log, click the Save Results button above the Process button.
Tip

Instead of saving you can right click in the Process EDI window and select Copy Node to Clipboard or Copy Tree to Clipboard. This will allow you to paste the results in a text editor or word processor.

Tip

Use the EDI Resource guide to locate and view EDI transaction files.

Resubmit EDI Files

If you need to resubmit an EDI transaction file for some reason, you can select a node and check the Use Filter to view the filter options for resubmitting the transactions:

  1. Open the Process EDI window.
  2. Click on the EDI Partner's name below the Transaction Type that you'd like to resubmit. The row/node will become highlighted.
  3. Check the Use Filter checkbox.
  4. There are three options available:
    • New, created on: This is the default and used to submit new transactions, not used for resubmitting.
    • Re-submit date: When this is selected, you can select a specific date to resubmit transactions.
    • Re-submit range: When this option is selected, you can enter the range of document numbers (e.g., Shipment Number, Invoice Number, Order Number) that you want to resubmit. Both values must be supplied, so if you only want to resubmit one document, enter the document number for both the From and To fields.
  5. Click Process
  6. Once the processing of files is complete, you will see a summary of the processed transactions. To save these to a log, click the Save Results button above the Process button.