What is EDIFACT? A practical guide
By SyncBuilder
EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport) is the international EDI standard maintained by the United Nations. It defines how business documents — purchase orders, invoices, despatch advices — are structured so that two companies' systems can exchange them directly, without anyone re-typing the data.
How an EDIFACT message is structured
A message is a list of segments, each ended by a terminator character (usually an apostrophe). A segment starts with a three-letter tag such as BGM, DTM or NAD, followed by data elements separated by a plus sign, and components separated by a colon. Every interchange is wrapped in a UNB/UNZ envelope, and each message inside it in a UNH/UNT envelope.
Common message types
- ORDERS — a purchase order
- ORDRSP — an order response
- DESADV — a despatch advice
- INVOIC — an invoice
- PRICAT — a price/sales catalogue
The trailer segments UNT and UNZ carry control counts and reference numbers. If the segment count in UNT does not match the actual message, your trading partner's system will reject the file — it is the single most common cause of failed EDI.
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