The EDI 810 is your invoice — the document that turns a shipment into money. It's also where suppliers quietly lose margin, because retail AP systems don't negotiate. They match, and when the match fails, they short-pay.
The three-way match
Large retailers pay invoices by machine. Your 810 is compared against the 850 purchase order (did we order this, at this price?) and the 856 ship notice (did they say they shipped this?), and increasingly against actual receiving counts. Three documents, one rule: they must agree.
That rule has a subtle consequence: invoice as shipped, not as ordered. If the PO asked for 100 units and you shipped 96, the 810 must bill 96 — the 96 your ASN declared. Bill 100 and the match fails; Walmart short-pays the difference and the reconciliation lands on your AR team. The IT1 lines should be generated from the same shipment data that built the 856, never from the original order.
What's inside an 810
- BIG — invoice number, invoice date, and the original PO number. The PO reference must be exact.
- REF — echoed references: department number, vendor number, bill of lading. Retailers like Target require the department number from the 850 to reappear here.
- N1 — remit-to, ship-to, bill-to parties.
- IT1 — the lines: quantity, unit price, item identifiers — as shipped.
- SAC — allowances and charges, itemized. Program allowances belong here as explicit SAC segments, not silently netted into unit prices. Walmart enforces this; buried allowances fail audit.
- TDS — the total. It must reconcile to the penny against the lines and allowances. "Close" is a mismatch.
Deductions: the feedback loop
The retailer's answer to your 810 is the 820 remittance advice — what they paid and, more importantly, what they deducted and why. Compliance deductions, shortage claims, allowance disputes all arrive itemized on the 820.
Suppliers who treat the 820 as a PDF to file discover their real margin at year-end. Suppliers who map it into AR see every deduction within days — while the dispute window is still open. Grocery adds its own wrinkle: at Albertsons, invoices match at division level, and DSD programs pair the 880 grocery invoice with the 875 order instead of the 810. The certified map per partner handles which dialect applies.
Getting the 810 right, structurally
Three design rules prevent nearly all invoice short-pays:
- One data lineage. 850 → 856 → 810 should be one chain in one system. Every manual re-key between order, shipment, and invoice is a future variance.
- Price from the governing source. Distributors like Sysco validate invoice prices against the current catalog; retailers validate against the PO. Know which source governs and validate before transmission.
- Allowances explicit, always. SAC segments, itemized, matching the program terms your buyer set up.
EDISQ generates the 810 from the same shipment record that produced your ASN, validates it against the partner's matching rules, and transmits it the moment the shipment confirms — from NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Dynamics, or whatever runs your back office. Faster invoice, faster payment, no variance surprises.
And the cost follows the per-document ladder: first 25 documents each month free, then from $0.50. An invoice is one document — whether it has three lines or three hundred.
FAQ
What's the difference between an 810 and a regular invoice?
Business meaning is identical; the 810 is the X12 electronic form. It flows straight into the retailer's AP matching engine, which means it gets checked — and short-paid — by software, not people.
Why did my invoice get short-paid?
Almost always a match failure: invoice doesn't equal the PO price, or doesn't equal what the ASN said shipped, or a required reference number is missing. The retailer pays the matched amount and deducts the rest.
What is the 820 and how does it relate?
The 820 remittance advice is the retailer's answer to your 810 — what was paid and what was deducted, itemized. Mapping 820s into your AR is how deductions surface fast enough to dispute.
What does sending 810s cost with EDISQ?
Per document only: first 25/month free, then from $0.50, decreasing with volume. No per-invoice or per-partner fees.