Before a supplier or customer exchanges live EDI with you, it has to prove its documents work. Testing usually happens at three levels:
- Structure: the document follows the ANSI X12 or EDIFACT standard and your version, and passes syntax checks reported in a functional acknowledgment (EDI 997)
- Content: required fields, valid codes and identifiers, and correct values for your business
- Scenarios: real situations such as a partial shipment, a backorder or a changed order, including whether an ASN matches its purchase order
Certification is the decision that a trading partner has passed every required test and is ready for production. Traditionally, both steps run over email: the EDI team sends a specification, waits for test files, reads the errors, writes back and repeats. Each transaction set adds another round.
When testing is rushed or incomplete, the errors move into production as rejected documents, manual fixes and chargebacks. Thorough certification is what makes vendor compliance achievable from the first live order.