EDI 850/855/856/810/820 with SAP, Oracle, Plex, what broker we use (SPS, TrueCommerce, OpenText)

Industrial customers don’t place orders through a web form. They cut a PO in their ERP (SAP, Oracle, Plex, IFS, Epicor, NetSuite), and the ERP emits an EDI X12 document (or EDIFACT in Europe).

The five docs that cover 95% of B2B industrial trade:

• EDI 850, Purchase Order. Customer ERP → you. Becomes a Magento order.
• EDI 855, PO Acknowledgement. You → customer ERP, within minutes. Confirms accept / change / reject.
• EDI 856, Advance Ship Notice (ASN). You → customer ERP, when the pallet ships. Includes tracking, weight, pallet structure.
• EDI 810, Invoice. You → customer ERP. Triggers their AP workflow.
• EDI 820, Remittance Advice. Customer ERP → you, when they cut you a payment.

Brokers I’ve integrated:

• SPS Commerce, biggest network, best for distributors selling to retail/big-box. ~$500, $3k/mo + per-doc fees. Easiest onboarding for new trading partners.
• TrueCommerce, strong in industrial + manufacturing. Better self-service mapping than SPS. ~$300, $2k/mo.
• OpenText (formerly GXS), enterprise pick, deep ERP integrations, best for SAP-heavy customer bases. $2k, $10k/mo+.

Magento integration pattern: a custom module that watches the broker’s SFTP / AS2 / API endpoint, ingests 850 documents as Magento orders (mapping the customer’s PO number, line-item SKUs, requested ship date, special instructions), generates 855 / 856 / 810 outbound, and runs a daily reconciliation script to catch any mismatches before they become AR disputes. Real-time is not necessary; daily batch is the industry norm.