Amazon Vendor Economics · Glossary

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)

Updated October 25, 2026

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is the automated, machine-to-machine exchange of business documents between a first-party (1P) vendor's systems and Amazon, in the ANSI X12 standard (the American National Standards Institute's format for business documents). It replaces typing purchase orders, ship notices and invoices into the Vendor Central portal by hand. Each document is a numbered type, and the numbers name documents, not quantities:

• 846: inventory availability, sent by the vendor to Amazon.
• 850: the purchase order, sent by Amazon to the vendor, with quantities, cost and the ship window.
• 855: the purchase order acknowledgement, in which the vendor accepts, rejects or changes each line.
• 856: the shipment notice, known as the ASN (Advance Shipment Notification).
• 810: the invoice.
• 820: the remittance advice, Amazon's statement of what it paid and deducted, with reason codes.
• 997: the functional acknowledgement, which confirms only that a file arrived. It is not acceptance of the purchase order; the 855 is.

EDI is a pipe, not a penalty. Amazon cross-checks the purchase order (850), the shipment notice (856) and the invoice (810) against each other, and one mismatched field can reject the invoice and delay the whole payment. A late or inaccurate shipment notice is the usual root of a shortage claim that is not a real shortage, and bad data in the same pipe can bring compliance chargebacks. EDI belongs to Vendor Central; Seller Central, Amazon's third-party (3P) side, runs on the Selling Partner API (SP-API), Amazon's application programming interface, not classic EDI.

What does Amazon expect from a vendor on EDI?

A prompt 855 for every purchase order, and invoices that match what was ordered and shipped.

Amazon's developer documentation reads: "Amazon expects the vendor to submit the acknowledgement within 24 hours". Amazon's own 2014 mapping guide for the 855 says an 855 without an acknowledgement segment is rejected, and each line item needs at least one. In practice, Amazon's in-stock teams, which watch whether products stay available to buy, track how vendors confirm their purchase orders to understand how it might affect inventory availability.

A vendor connects in one of three ways: EDI, the Selling Partner API, or manual entry in Vendor Central, which suits only very low purchase-order volume. Amazon says you can mix them, using different routes for different business processes. If you are setting up a new account, ask Amazon which route it will be on. Integrators report 2 to 3 EDI test cycles at onboarding, with each round of corrections adding 3 to 5 business days.

Two consequences follow:

1. Reconciling the 810 invoice to the 820 remittance is how a vendor finds what was short-paid.
2. Chargeback prevention starts in the EDI data, before any charge exists.