Tired of EDI Chargebacks? Orderful’s EDI system has you covered

Orderful’s modern EDI platform helps you stay compliant, eliminate chargebacks, and improve how you trade with retailers like Walmart and Target. Our system validates transactions in real time and prevents failed documents from ever being sent.

What Does EDI Compliant Mean?

To be EDI compliant means your business is capable of sending and receiving EDI transactions that follow the exact specifications outlined by your trading partners. These guidelines are often found in routing guides, vendor manuals, or shared through SLAs.

Being EDI compliant ensures your electronic documents—like purchase orders (EDI 850), invoices (EDI 810), and ASNs (EDI 856)—are formatted correctly and delivered on time.

If your EDI transactions don’t meet these requirements, you’re likely to face penalties known as EDI chargebacks. These chargebacks are often triggered by:

• Late or missing documents
• Incorrect data formatting
• Routing or shipping errors

What Is an EDI Chargeback?

An EDI chargeback is a fee retailers deduct from your payments when your EDI documents don’t meet their compliance rules. For example, sending a late Advance Shipping Notice to Walmart could result in a $100+ fine per shipment.

Multiply that across dozens of transactions per day, and chargebacks can quickly become a major cost center.

Common Reasons for EDI Chargebacks

The Complexity of Retailer Guidelines

Each retailer has their own compliance playbook. Walmart, Target, and other large trading partners issue detailed rules in their vendor guides. These include:

• EDI format and structure
• Routing instructions
• Delivery deadlines
• Labeling requirements

Manually implementing these guidelines across your systems—especially if you have dozens of partners—means writing and maintaining custom code for every connection.

Orderful simplifies that. Our platform digitizes retailer guidelines and applies them at the transaction level so you don’t have to.

How Orderful Prevents EDI Chargebacks

Real-Time Data Validation

Before a transaction leaves your system, it’s automatically validated against your trading partner’s rules. If something doesn’t match—like a formatting error or missing field—you’ll be alerted instantly, and the document won’t be sent.

Built-In Error Resolution

Orderful pinpoints the exact issue and lets your team resolve it without disrupting other transactions. This means one failed document won’t freeze your entire EDI process.

Faster Testing and Onboarding

Most EDI providers require weeks of back-and-forth testing with retailers. With Orderful, you can test against digitized retailer guidelines before going live—no retailer involvement required.

How EDI Compliance Impacts Retail Relationships

Achieving and maintaining EDI compliance helps you:

• Avoid financial penalties from chargebacks
• Meet SLAs and maintain vendor performance scores
• Improve customer satisfaction with accurate and timely fulfillment
• Gain credibility with retailers and streamline onboarding for new partners

Failing to meet these standards creates ripple effects across your operations, from delayed payments to lost shelf space.

Why Cloud-Based EDI Makes a Difference

Legacy EDI systems are rigid, slow to update, and often lack visibility into errors. Cloud-based platforms like Orderful offer:

• Real-time updates and validation
• Centralized compliance rules across all trading partners
• No custom point-to-point integrations
• Automated routing requests and ASN formatting

This helps businesses of all sizes—from emerging DTC brands to enterprise manufacturers—become and stay EDI compliant without additional overhead.

Walmart and Target Vendor Chargebacks

Retailers like Walmart and Target are known for strict compliance policies. Common chargebacks include:

• ASN errors (EDI 856)
• Incorrect PO acknowledgments (EDI 855)
• Late invoices (EDI 810)

With Orderful, your team can apply rules to fix these issues proactively. For example, you can create a rule to automatically reformat a date field or insert a required tracking ID.

This eliminates manual work and helps you stay compliant at scale.

Achieve Supplier EDI Compliance Without the Headaches

Staying EDI compliant shouldn’t require a team of developers or expensive consultants. Orderful’s cloud API platform makes it easy to:

• Onboard new trading partners fast
• Digitize and manage retailer-specific rules
• Prevent failed transactions before they happen
• Reduce costly chargebacks and manual rework

We make sure your EDI transactions meet your partners’ exact specifications—every time.

Final Thoughts

Chargebacks aren’t just annoying—they’re expensive. By improving your EDI compliance with Orderful, you protect your bottom line, strengthen your retail relationships, and streamline every document you send.

Want to see how we do it? Talk to an expert today.

FAQs

What is EDI compliance?

To be EDI compliant means your business can send and receive EDI documents that match the technical and operational requirements of your trading partners.

What is an EDI chargeback?

An EDI chargeback is a fee imposed by a retailer when your EDI transaction violates their compliance guidelines—such as sending an incorrect or late ASN.

How can I reduce Walmart chargebacks?

Use an EDI system like Orderful that validates transactions before they’re sent and applies rules to ensure Walmart’s formatting, timing, and content requirements are met.

What are the most common causes of vendor chargebacks?

Common causes include missing or incorrect fields, wrong data formats, late submissions, and violations of shipping or routing guidelines.

How do I become EDI compliant?

You need a system that translates, validates, and delivers your transactions in accordance with each trading partner’s standards. Orderful automates this entire process so you don’t have to build and maintain custom integrations.