Within each partnership, you can specify the EDI transaction sets that you plan to exchange with that trading partner.

For example, you may want to receive inbound 850 Purchase Orders from a retailer and send outbound 810 Invoices to them. This would involve creating an inbound transaction setting for 850 Purchase Orders and an outbound transaction setting for 810 Invoices.

Create transaction settings

To create a transaction setting, navigate to the partnership and click either:

  • Create inbound transaction setting to configure a transaction set you plan to receive from your trading partners
  • Create outbound transaction setting to configure a transaction set you plan to send to your trading partner.

Choose a transaction set

When you configure a transaction setting, you must select a machine-readable EDI specification (Stedi guide) for the transaction set.

Guides allow Stedi to validate and parse (inbound) or validate and generate (outbound) EDI data according to your and your trading partner’s specific requirements.

  • Import from network (recommended): Search for your trading partner and click Select to import a local copy of the guide into your account.

    If you can’t find your partner or guide listed in the network, you can submit a request and we’ll build it for you for free within 1-2 business days using our best practices. If you’re an EDI expert with experience building EDI guides already, you can create a guide yourself using the self-service guide builder.

  • My account: Select an existing guide from your account.
  • Base guide: Stedi validates the transaction against the generic X12 specification. This option is useful for testing inbound flows when your partner hasn’t yet provided a guide. We do not recommend using it for outbound flows except in rare, advanced use cases.
    • Select the X12 Release. The release is present in the GS segment of every EDI file, and also should be specified in your partner’s documentation.
    • Select the Transaction set. The transaction set is the EDI transaction you are receiving from your partner.

(Inbound) Configure fragments

If the guide you choose is set up to use fragments, you can enable fragments for the transaction setting. Fragments allow you to split large transactions from Stedi into smaller chunks for downstream ingestion.

(Outbound) Application IDs

Stedi automatically suggests the default Application IDs that were assigned to the local and partner profiles. You can override these values if needed. For example, some trading partners may assign a specific GS ID to you during the onboarding process. Since this GS ID is used only for this partnership, you would not want to put it in your local profile.

(Outbound) Connection

Specify the Connection to deliver generated EDI files. If no connection is specified, you can’t generate outbound EDI files for this transaction.

For SFTP/FTPS, You can optionally add a subdirectory that Stedi uses for this transaction set only. For example, your trading partner may require that you place all 810 Invoices in an /810 subdirectory. We don’t recommend specifying a subdirectory unless your trading partner has instructed you to do so.

Control numbers

Control numbers are used in the ISA Interchange Control Header and GS Functional Group Header of X12 EDI files. You and your trading partners can use them reference EDI files and to detect duplicates and missing data. Control numbers must be unique within a partnership.

Stedi handles control numbers automatically for you. When you create a partnership, Stedi sets the control number counters to 0 for both the Interchange (ISA) and Group (GS) levels. Each time you send an outbound EDI file, Stedi increments the control numbers to ensure uniqueness.

Reset control numbers

In rare circumstances, you may need to reset the control numbers for a partnership. For example, if you’re migrating from another EDI system, you may need to reset the control numbers to match the last control numbers used in your previous system.

To reset control numbers for outbound documents:

  1. Go to the partnership where you want to adjust the control numbers.
  2. Open the Advanced settings menu.
  3. Update the Interchange or Group control numbers as needed.

Non-numeric control numbers

Stedi can translate EDI files containing non-numeric control numbers, if required for your use case.

Successful processing requires that you set the ST-02 and SE-02 control number elements in the associated Stedi guide to type String.

Timezone and time format

Stedi uses the following default values:

  • Timezone: UTC | Used in the ISA and GS segments
  • Time format: HHMMSS | The GS-05 time element

You can change these values in the partnership’s Advanced settings menu.

Next steps

We recommend configuring Acknowledgments for inbound transactions within the partnership.

We also recommend configuring one or more Destination webhooks to automatically send events and processed transaction data from Stedi to your internal systems and business applications.

Was this page helpful?