You run a small business, let's say an online store on Shopify. Several of your suppliers have EDI capabilities, and it's obvious to you that some of your processes can be automated if you just knew what EDI is.

EDI is short for "Electronic Document Interface", and it's an accurate description. EDI is a system for exchanging documents between companies in a clear, precise format that eliminates errors and misunderstandings. EDI can be easily automated. However, EDI must be done correctly, or it can be a nightmare.

Imagine you have a small company that sells custom laptops to consumers. Amazon does your shipping for you, so everyday you send dozens of laptops to the Amazon warehouse, and you take orders on your Amazon store and website. Currently, everytime you sell a laptop, you have to enter the information into a form to send it to Amazon. Not only is this system prone to data entry errors, it's time consuming. You decide to automate this, so you hire someone to create an EDI file and send it to Amazon. What you have to realize about EDI is it's automated. Nobody is looking to make sure the data is correct before it's sent to your trading partner. In this case, what if every order gets tripled? What if some orders are never sent? If the orders get tripled, how long can you stay in business if Amazon ships 3 of every laptop you've sold? how many customers will you lose if the order gets lost? When you setup EDI, your system needs to have a mechanism to be 100% sure every order is sent once, and only once. Amazon will of course send back a 997 for every order in an EDI file, but your system has to be capable of matching the

Although an EDI document is simply a text file in EDI format, EDI is MUCH, MUCH MORE than that. EDI is a document management system that specifies how to manage your files, keep track of which documents were received by your trading partner, whether the data was successfully extracted by the EDI system, and whether the data was successfully used. No other document does all that. If you combined a very good document management system and then integrated a file format into it, and then consulted with every major industry on what information they need to share, that's what EDI is.

The EDI file format has wrappers that if properly used, keeps track of not only the file in question, but the files that came before it.

Here's a small checklist of what your EDI system has to do (using the example above). Note that creating the actual EDI file is only a small part of the total.

• Pull the data for all new orders once an hour, or once a day (whatever your timeline is)
• make sure to ONLY pull the information for paid orders
• check for missing information. EDI should NEVER send incomplete information
• notify staff if there are orders completed, but still missing information
• using the data pulled, format it into EDI formats
• Compose the EDI file
• Store the EDI file in long term storage
• put a copy of the EDI file in a directory you will send from
• Start the sending system so the file gets sent to your trading partner
• Verify the file was sent properly, AND received by the trading partner
• Check to see if there are any reply files that need to be read
• for every reply file, match the data to your data and update the entries
• Close down properly without any memory leaks

Note that composing the EDI file is about halfway in the total process and there are a lot of things to be done BEFORE and AFTER the file is actually composed

EDI Shack makes EDI easy

EDI Shack was founded to work with small and mid-sized companies and EDI enable them even if they don't have a full-time tech department. it's easy to get fleeced by VAN's and big EDI technology companies, and also easy to hire EDI developers who put together substandard systems for you that appear to work, but fall apart easily with small changes in your data.

We can handle big or small EDI projects, and if your current EDI system is broken, we can usually fix it without a whole new system.

Consulting Services

• We can work with your team and provide the experience and knowledge needed for EDI.
• we can support Bots open source EDI translator.
• have been working with EDI since 2000.
• founded Jan, 2008.
• We built the EDI Magic framework which provides EDI implementation services at a reasonable price.
• Also have HIPAA Magic framework for Health Care EDI.

Affordable EDI for Micro, Small and Mid-Sized Business

At EDI Shack we believe every company with some technology knowledge should be able to do EDI. As Such, we supply some Open-Source and FREE (MIT License) libraries you can use to get started with EDI. We'll also try very hard to keep you from making the most common EDI mistakes.

What is the Number 1 EDI Mistake? Thinking EDI is just creating a strangely formatted file and sending it to your trading partner. In reality, what you're doing is pulling some data from your system, and putting it into your trading partners' system, using a strangely formatted file, or even scarier for you, you're taking data from your trading partner and putting it directly into your system using a strangely formatted file. If that doesn't scare you, it should. Any mistake in your, or your partners' EDI implementation is going straight into your data.

In fact, managing your EDI files and keeping track of what's in them is just as important as creating the file.

The EDI-Laravel framework is designed to give smaller companies a complete, easy to use EDI system. With a little basic EDI knowledge, you can create new transaction sets, and link them to transmission objects to send the files via FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTPS, or AS2 without any programming whatsoever. If you can program in PHP, you can do anything, quickly and easily.

Let's face it. EDI is expensive and confusing. EDI is also one of the simplest technologies there is, but it can also be incredibly pricy and complex. EDI Shack is dedicated to make EDI simple for small and mid-sized companies.