The differences between EDI X12 and EDIFACT

 

Question: Hi Roger, we recently got a contract to supply an organization in Germany which will require EDI. This would normally be no problem to us as we have been doing EDI with our North American trading partners for over four years; however, our new German contract requires us to use EDIFACT rather than X12 as their preferred EDI standard. Could you highlight the main differences between X12 and EDIFACT and suggest what I should do?

 

Answer:  In 1979 the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) chartered the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 to develop uniform standards for inter-industry electronic exchange of business transactions – now known commonly as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). These transaction sets, abbreviated to X12, are the predominant EDI standards used by organizations in North America today.

In 1986, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) approved the acronym "UN/EDIFACT," which translates to United Nations Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport. UN/EDIFACT is an international EDI standard designed to meet the needs of both government and private industry. EDIFACT is the most popular worldwide EDI data standard outside of North America.

Here is a brief list of some of the different names given to documents in the X12 and EDIFACT transactions sets. You will notice that X12 assigns numeric values to documents whereas EDIFACT lists names or abbreviations.

TRANSACTION SET/DOCUMENT	X12 SET	EDIFACT
PRODUCT/PRICING TRANSACTIONS
Price Sales Catalog	832	PRICAT
Price Authorization Acknowledgement/Status	845	ATHSTS
Specification/Technical Information	841	PRDSPE
Request For Quotation	840	REQOTE
ORDERING TRANSACTIONS
Purchase Order	850	ORDERS
Purchase Order Acknowledgement	855	ORDRSP
Purchase Order Change	860	ORDCHG
Purchase Order Change Acknowledgement	865	ORDRSP
MATERIALS MANAGEMENT TRANSACTIONS
Planning Schedule/Material Release	830	DELFOR
Shipping Schedule	862	DELJIT
Production Sequence	866	--
Ship Notice/manifest (ASN)	856	DESADV
SHIPPING/RECEIVING TRANSACTIONS
Shipment Information (Bill of Lading)	858	IFTMCS
Receiving Advice	861	RECADV
Non-conformance Information-Disposition Transaction, Cause/Correction	842	NONCON
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT TRANSACTIONS
Inventory Inquiry/Advice	846	INVRPT
Product Transfer and Resale Report	867	SLSRPT
FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS
Invoice	810	INVOIC
Freight Invoice	859	IFTMCS
Payment order/Remittance Advice (EFT)	820	REMADV

There are many differences between an X12 and an EDIFACT document and I would recommend that if you do not have the capabilities to do EDIFACT in house that you outsource to a strong global EDI solution provider who can handle both data formats. At B2BGateway, we have offices located in North America, Europe and Pacific/Asia regions and can handle all internationally recognized EDI data formats including not only X12 and EDIFACT but many, many more (Tradacoms in the UK for example).

For further information on B2Bgateway’s international data standards capabilities please visit www.B2BGateway.Net or call (401) 491 9595. 

Roger Leyden is Director of Global Business Development at B2BGateway.