United States
EDI compliance, as US retailers enforce it
At Walmart, Target, Kroger, Amazon and Costco, EDI is assumed. The vendor agreement writes it in, the onboarding packet schedules it, and the scorecard and the deduction line enforce it.
Compliance is specific: named documents, in named windows, structured the way that retailer's guideline says. This page walks it one document at a time, and then the half that happens inside Odoo.
What the mandate asks for, document by document
The order, acknowledged in a window
The purchase order arrives as an 850 and the retailer expects an 855 back inside their window, confirming what you will actually ship. Walmart, Kroger and Target each set their own clock, and the clock starts when their system sends, whether or not anyone on your side was watching.
The ship notice, before the truck
The 856 announces the shipment, structured the way the guideline demands, down to the pallet or the carton, and it has to arrive before the freight does. Arrive late or malformed and the guideline's deduction schedule applies.
The invoice, matching the order
The 810 has to reconcile against the order and the receipt. Quantity and price disagreements come back as short payments on the remittance advice, weeks after the shipment.
Where the money leaks
Enforcement is financial and it is quiet. A missed window becomes a chargeback code on a remittance advice weeks later, and accounts receivable writes it off as noise until somebody adds up three months of deduction lines.
Counting yours is a half-day exercise with the statements you already have, and it is the number that tells you whether this project pays for itself.
The codes, the causes and the counting method are laid out in the chargebacks and deductions guide.
We also maintain customer-specific pages for Walmart EDI requirements and Kroger EDI requirements. The Kroger page links to the programme material behind its claims.
Platform or direct
Most US mandates name a platform the retailer already trades through. If yours names one, that decision is made and the remaining work is the Odoo half.
A large enough volume with a single customer can justify trading directly over AS2 or SFTP instead, with no fee per document and the whole transport yours to run.
What each route involves: SPS Commerce, TrueCommerce, Rithum, or direct over AS2 or SFTP.
What changes inside Odoo
The network moves the file. Inside Odoo, somebody decides which warehouse the order lands on, how the retailer's item numbers cross-reference to yours, what a consumer-level drop-ship order should become, and how a delivery turns into an 856 with the structure their guideline demands, before the truck leaves.
No platform sells that half. We do.
Start with the letter
The Requirement Check takes two answers: who mandated you and where you stand today. You get back a plain readout of which documents that customer asks for and what has to change inside your Odoo. It is free and it commits you to nothing.
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