EDI for retail
Receive purchase orders, send ship notices and invoice every order, with EDI integrations you build with AI. Connect to unlimited retailers, marketplaces and 3PLs. You're in charge.
30 minutes With the founder Pretty fun actually
Prefer to try it yourself? Start free.
ORA moved its Petco ship-to-store and dropship programs onto Tediware and cut its monthly EDI costs by at least 10x. Read more
Built for suppliers who already sell to retailers
Tediware is for brands, manufacturers, distributors and 3PLs that exchange EDI with retailers, marketplaces and dropship programs. It's for teams that want to build and own their integrations rather than wait on a provider.
You already know how your retailers work: how they order, what they expect in a ship notice, when they want the invoice. To work with Tediware, you need one more thing: a coding agent and the willingness to use it. We give you an API, webhooks and an MCP server to build with, and complete visibility into every transaction once they start flowing.
Our first retail customer ran EDI with the same provider for over 20 years. Its president rebuilt the integration himself, with Claude Code, straight against the Tediware API, and now runs both a ship-to-store and a dropship program on it.
Why suppliers look for a new EDI provider
A retailer adds a program your provider can't support.
A new dropship program means a ship notice and an invoice for every consumer order. When your provider's answer is manual entry, every order the program brings in is more work.
With Tediware, each order reaches your system as JSON by webhook, and your system sends the 856 and 810 back through the API. You upload the retailer's spec and the mapping assistant writes and validates the mapping. Adding the next program works the same way.
Your bill grows with every retailer.
Kilocharacter billing charges by the size of your documents, so a large order costs more to receive than a small one. Per-partner and per-connection fees add a charge every time you win a new account.
With Tediware, every plan includes unlimited trading partners, including the free Developer plan. You pay per transaction, at published prices, whatever the size of the document.
Every change waits on a support ticket.
A retailer updates its spec or moves to a new EDI provider, and you're back in the queue, sometimes paying for the change.
With Tediware, you change mappings and partner setup yourself, and every document has a trace you can read. When a retailer asks what you sent and when, you can show them.
You're building your own systems.
Suppliers are replacing rigid ERP and order tools with software they build themselves using AI. Then they ask their EDI provider for API access and get a quote for a custom project, or no answer at all.
With Tediware, your system sends and receives JSON, never raw X12. The API, webhooks and MCP server come with every plan. Your coding agent connects through the MCP server and can read your configuration, traces and documents while it builds the integration.
What you get with Tediware
Production EDI for free
Tediware is the only general-purpose EDI platform where you can run production traffic for free. The Developer plan includes 800 transactions a month and needs no credit card.
Onboarding with AI
Tediware reads your partner's spec and builds a machine-readable implementation guide. Mappings are generated by AI and validated against that guide before you apply them.
Built for your agent
The Tediware MCP server is available on every plan. Your coding agent can read your setup, diagnose a failed delivery and send or resend documents, but only if you've granted it the required permissions.
You're in charge
No contracts. No per-partner fees. If you leave, you can export your implementations, mappings and transactions through the API.
How EDI works in retail
Every retail order is a short exchange of documents between you and the retailer: the order, your acknowledgment, the ship notice and the invoice. Retailers check each one against their own requirements, and mistakes can come back as chargebacks.
- 850 Purchase Order
- The retailer orders from you. It starts the whole flow.
- 855 Purchase Order Acknowledgment
- You confirm the order, line by line: accepted, changed or rejected.
- 860 Purchase Order Change
- The retailer changes an order it already placed.
- 856 Advance Ship Notice
- What's in the shipment, how it's packed and when it ships. Retailers use it to receive the goods, so errors here are the most common cause of chargebacks.
- 810 Invoice
- You bill for what you shipped. It has to match the order and the ship notice.
- 846 Inventory Inquiry/Advice
- Your stock levels, sent to the retailer. Dropship programs usually want it daily, so they don't sell what you don't have.
- 997 Functional Acknowledgment
- Confirms a transaction was received and structurally valid.
For ship-to-store and warehouse orders, one purchase order can cover many stores, and the 856 describes how the shipment is packed: pallets, cartons and the label on each.
For dropship, each consumer order is its own 850, 856 and 810, and you ship straight to the customer's door.
Retailers also send the 852 Product Activity Data with store sales and the 820 Payment Order/Remittance Advice with payment and deduction detail. Suppliers that ship through a 3PL add the 940 Warehouse Shipping Order and 945 Warehouse Shipping Advice.
Tediware sends each inbound 850 to your system by webhook, as JSON, as soon as it's processed, so your system can acknowledge and fulfill the order without polling.
Production retail EDI runs on Tediware
“With Tediware, and a bit of help from Adrian, we were re-certified with our trading partner and running in a fraction of that time. The platform is genuinely easy to build against if you're writing your own software — we built our EDI integration in-house with Claude Code, straight against Tediware's API. We have complete visibility into the “movements” of EDI documents. Hours and hours of tedious manual work have been eliminated. Perhaps best of all, our monthly EDI costs have dropped at least 10x!”
ORA farm-raises saltwater aquarium fish and sells them through Petco's stores and its online dropship program. ORA moved both programs from two EDI providers onto Tediware, re-certified them, and cut its monthly EDI costs by at least 10x while sending more documents than before.
ORA's own shipping software now sends the invoice. When a package gets its first carrier scan, the 810 goes to the retailer through Tediware, so every shipment is invoiced the same day. Before, invoices went out by hand at the end of the day.
Pricing that fits retail margins
| Plan | Per month | Transactions included | After that | Covers about |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Developer | Free | 800 | Upgrade | 100 orders |
| Growth | $100 | 6,000 | $0.0150 each | 750 orders |
| Scale | $300 | 20,000 | $0.0125 each | 2,500 orders |
| Platform | $1,250 | 100,000 | $0.0125 each | 12,500 orders |
Order counts assume the order below.
What one order adds up to
You pay per transaction. A transaction is one X12 transaction set, such as an 850 or an 856, and that includes the 997 acknowledgments that confirm each one arrived. Here's a typical retail order:
| Set | What happens | Transactions |
|---|---|---|
| 850 | The retailer sends the purchase order | 1 |
| 855 | You acknowledge it Not every retailer requires the 855. Without it, an order is 6 transactions. | 1 |
| 856 | You send the ship notice | 1 |
| 810 | You invoice for the order | 1 |
| 997 | One acknowledgment for each document above | 4 |
| Total for one order | 8 | |
On the Growth and Scale plans, that comes to 10 to 12 cents an order. A daily 846 inventory update to one retailer adds about 60 transactions a month, however many products it lists.
Every plan includes unlimited trading partners. There's no kilocharacter billing and no contract. The Developer plan runs production traffic and needs no credit card.
If a retailer requires a VAN, the Commport VAN add-on connects you to partners on every major VAN, for $250 a month plus $0.04 per VAN transaction.
Paid plans can check partner SFTP mailboxes every 5 minutes instead of every 60, so orders reach your system sooner.
Frequently asked questions
Does Tediware integrate with my ERP or ecommerce platform?
If your system is custom, yes. If it has an API, your coding agent can connect the two through the Tediware MCP server. Give it the coding agent instructions and ask it to evaluate if your system will work with Tediware.
Which transaction sets does Tediware support for retail?
Tediware supports every X12 transaction set, including 850, 855, 860, 856, 810, 846 and 997, in every X12 release, on every plan.
Does Tediware support dropship?
Yes. Each dropship order reaches your system as JSON by webhook, and your system sends the 856 and 810 back through the API. ORA runs a national retailer's dropship program on Tediware.
My retailer uses a hub or an EDI network. Can I still use Tediware?
Usually, yes. Many retailers route EDI through a provider or hub. Tediware connects over AS2 or SFTP, or through the Commport VAN add-on. ORA trades with a retailer that runs its EDI through a network provider. Some hubs charge suppliers their own fees, and Tediware can't remove those.
Does Tediware print GS1-128 labels?
No. Your shipping or warehouse system prints the labels. Tediware sends each label's SSCC, along with the pallet and carton detail, to the retailer in the 856.
Can Tediware help with chargebacks?
Tediware keeps a trace of every document you send: what it contained, when it went out and the 997 that came back. That's the evidence a chargeback dispute needs, and your coding agent can pull it through the MCP server.
What does it cost to add a new retailer?
Nothing extra. Every plan includes unlimited trading partners. You pay only for transactions. If a retailer requires a hub or a VAN, that provider's fees are separate.
Will I have to re-certify with my retailers?
Usually. Most retailers test a new connection before they send production orders. You can move one retailer at a time and keep your current provider running for the rest. ORA re-certified both its ship-to-store and dropship programs on Tediware.
Do I need a developer?
You need someone comfortable building with an AI coding tool, or willing to try it. ORA's president built its integration himself with Claude Code. The most important thing is understanding what your retailers expect in terms of EDI.
How reliable is Tediware?
Transervice and Lily Transportation run 25,000 EDI transactions a month on Tediware at 100% uptime. Current system status is public on the status page.
What happens to my data if I leave?
You can export implementations as portable JSON and pull transactions, payloads and mapping versions through the API at any time.
Ship your next retail order on Tediware
Start on the free Developer plan, prove it with one of your retailers, and scale on published pricing when you're ready.
30 minutes With the founder Pretty fun actually
Prefer to try it yourself? Start free.