EDI for distributors, on both sides of the business
Your customers send orders and expect acknowledgments, ship notices and invoices in their format. Your suppliers want purchase orders the same way. Comparatio runs both sides, posts every document into your ERP, and our engineers build and run every map.
- Customer and supplier side
- Prophet 21, NetSuite and more
- Maps run by our engineers
Your customers
- Received: 850 · 860 orders
- Sent: 855 · 856 · 810 · 846
Your suppliers
- Sent: 850 purchase orders
- Received: 855 · 856 · 810
Comparatio
Translates, checks and monitors your documents
Your ERP
- Sales orders
- Purchase orders
- Receipts
- AP vouchers
- 170+
- Customers
- Nearly 8,000
- Live partner connections
- 355
- Supplier maps for purchasing
- 79 min
- Median first response, Oct 2025–Oct 2026
Documents
Every distributor document, and what happens to it
Most EDI providers lead with the selling side. A distributor also buys: purchase orders go to suppliers, and their acknowledgments, ship notices and invoices come back into your ERP.
| Document | Direction | What happens | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 850 Purchase order | From customer | Sales order created | In production |
| 860 PO change | From customer | Sales order updated | In production |
| 855 PO acknowledgment | To customer | Built from the sales order | In production |
| 856 Ship notice | To customer | Built from the shipment, with GS1 carton labels where the customer requires them | In production |
| 810 Invoice | To customer | Built from the invoice | In production |
| 846 Inventory advice | To customer | Stock on hand, by location | In production |
| 832 Price catalog | To customer | Items and prices | In production |
| 820 Remittance advice | From customer | Customer payments imported as cash receipts (Prophet 21) | In production |
| 850 Purchase order | To supplier | Built from your purchase order | In production |
| 855 PO acknowledgment | From supplier | Compared line by line with the PO; differences e-mailed to the buyer | In production |
| 856 Ship notice | From supplier | Received against what the supplier shipped (Prophet 21) | In production |
| 810 Invoice | From supplier | Matched to the PO and posted as an AP voucher (Prophet 21) | In production |
| 844 Rebate / ship-and-debit claim | To supplier | Ship-and-debit claims to the supplier | In production at a few suppliers, set up per program |
| 849 Response to a claim | From supplier | The supplier’s answer to each claim | Available |
In production: on our production list of X12 sets (see Transaction types). Available: built and switched on per supplier during setup. Inbound X12 documents are acknowledged with a 997 as your partners require.
Who you sell to
The partners distributors sell to, already mapped
87 maps cover the national and regional distributors our customers sell through, from Grainger and Fastenal to electrical, plumbing and waterworks wholesalers. The most-connected run at many of our customers at once: Vallen at 16 customer sites, Grainger at 13, Zoro at 11, Fastenal at 9, MSC and Wesco at 8 each.
Industrial and MRO
Stocking orders and supplier drop-ship, where the order ships straight to the distributor’s customer, with branded packing slips for Grainger, Zoro, Fastenal and Vallen.
Retail and marketplaces
Amazon, Walmart, Target, Home Depot and farm & ranch chains, with the ship-notice and label rules each one enforces.
Canadian distribution
Tenaquip, Wajax, Guillevin and EECOL are in the library, with Canadian GST, HST, PST and QST handled in the maps that need it.
Buying from manufacturers
The supplier side most EDI pages leave out
355 supplier maps send purchase orders in each manufacturer’s format and bring back their acknowledgments, ship notices and invoices: 3,117 live supplier connections across our customers. Parker Hannifin alone runs at 16 customer sites and Honeywell at 13.
Acknowledgments checked
Each supplier 855 is compared line by line with your PO. Price, quantity or unit differences beyond the supplier’s tolerance are e-mailed to the buyer.
Receipts from ship notices
In Prophet 21, supplier 856s can become vessel receipts, so the warehouse receives against what the supplier says it shipped.
Invoices to AP vouchers
Supplier 810s are matched to the purchase order and posted as AP vouchers in Prophet 21.
Run for you
Managed EDI: the work our team does every day
Missing documents flagged
Daily checks flag documents a partner never acknowledged, POs a supplier never confirmed or shipped, and invoices without a matching ship notice. Switched on per partner.
Partners who won’t do EDI
PDF Import reads the purchase orders and invoices they e-mail. Orders can also arrive as e-mail, CSV or Excel files.
Measured response times
Median first response 79 minutes (Oct 2025–Oct 2026). Map changes took a median of 103 minutes in the 90 days to 28 October 2026.
Comparatio connects to Prophet 21, NetSuite, Infor CloudSuite Distribution and other distribution ERPs. ERP integrations →
FAQ
Distribution EDI questions, answered
Which EDI documents does a distributor need?
With customers, usually the 850 purchase order in, and the 855 acknowledgment, 856 ship notice and 810 invoice out. With suppliers, the same set in the other direction: your 850 out, their 855, 856 and 810 back. Partners then add 860 changes, 846 inventory, 832 catalogs or 820 remittances as they need them. Comparatio runs all of them.
Every document we runCan you check supplier acknowledgments against our purchase orders?
Yes. Each supplier 855 is compared line by line with your PO for price, quantity and unit of measure. Differences beyond the tolerance you set for that supplier are e-mailed to the buyer, so a price change is caught before the invoice arrives.
Procure-to-pay EDIDo you handle drop-ship orders for Grainger, Zoro and Fastenal?
Yes. Supplier drop-ship programs at the national MRO distributors are covered, where the order ships straight to the distributor’s customer, with branded packing slips for Grainger, Zoro, Fastenal and Vallen where the program requires them.
Do you connect to buying groups such as Affiliated Distributors?
Yes. Buying-group links for Affiliated Distributors already run at our customers, alongside the direct supplier connections.
Buying groupsWhat about customers and suppliers who won’t do EDI?
PDF Import reads the purchase orders and invoices they e-mail and posts them alongside your EDI traffic. Orders can also come in from e-mail, CSV or Excel files.
PDF ImportHow quickly do you respond when something goes wrong?
Our median first response was 79 minutes from October 2025 to October 2026. Map changes took a median of 103 minutes in the 90 days to 28 October 2026, and 61% of tickets in that period were opened by our own monitoring, not by a customer.
How monitoring worksHow long does it take to add a trading partner?
A new trading partner typically goes live in 4–8 weeks, paced mostly by how quickly the partner tests. With 1,000+ maps already built, most partners start from a proven map.
Other industries we run EDI for
Talk through both sides of your EDI
Bring your list of customers and suppliers that want EDI, and we’ll show you which maps already exist.