What Is an EDI 852 (Product Activity Data)?

An EDI 852 is the X12 Product Activity Data transaction set, used to advise a trading partner of inventory, sales and other product activity information. X12's description of the 852 sets out three roles:

• The sender is the distributor, warehouse or retailer whose inventory and sales the data describes.
• The receiver maintains some type of inventory or product movement records for its trading partners, so it can run replenishment calculations from the data provided.
• The result is a plan: the receiver can plan and ship, or propose replenishment quantities, for distribution centers, warehouses or retail outlets.

X12's supply chain overview lists product activity among the additional processes and transaction sets that support the basic flow of order, delivery, invoice and payment, alongside planning schedule, procurement, request for quote and inventory inquiry.

Three X12 transaction sets report on stock or sales, each from a different angle:

• 852 Product Activity Data: inventory, sales and other product activity, sent so the receiving partner can plan replenishment.
• 846 Inventory Inquiry/Advice: inventory information from a seller to a prospective purchaser, from a seller's representative to the seller, or between locations, or an inquiry about availability.
• 867 Product Transfer and Resale Report: product transferred from one location to another, or sales of product to an end customer, including demand beyond actual sales. Either the buyer or the seller can issue it.

X12's published 852 example (implementation guide 008010X369) is a pharmacy reporting to its manufacturer on one product stocked at three locations, with quantity on hand and total quantity sold:

• XQ: the type of report and its date. The example is a seller inventory report as of the report date, with a unique report identifier, sent as an original.
• N9 and PER: the reporting party's identifier and a technical contact.
• LIN: the product, identified in the example by a National Drug Code.
• CTP: a price the sender chose to include. The example carries the retail price.
• ZA: an activity type and its quantity. The example uses one ZA loop for gross quantity on hand and a second for total sales quantity.
• SDQ: the split of each ZA quantity across the reporting locations.
• CTT: the number of line items in the transaction.

A distributor reports one SKU at two warehouses for the week. Warehouse A has 40 units on hand and sold 30. Warehouse B has 25 on hand and sold 45. The 852 carries 40 + 25 = 65 units on hand and 30 + 45 = 75 units sold, each split by warehouse.

Applied to those figures, the sell-through formula Shopify uses in its reports gives 75 / (75 + 65) = 75 / 140 = 0.536, a 53.6% sell-through for the week. If the supplier's rule is to cover two weeks of sales, it proposes 2 x 75 = 150 units minus the 65 on hand, or 85 units to ship.

If the company reporting activity runs on Shopify, the figures an 852 carries are already recorded there:

• Inventory by location: an inventory item has an inventory level for each location where it is stocked. Through the GraphQL Admin API, an integration can query those quantities by state, including available, on_hand, committed and incoming.
• Sell-through: Shopify's Products by sell-through rate report divides the total quantity of items sold by the total quantity sold plus the quantity still in inventory. It uses the most recent 30-day period available, and the most recent data is about two days old.
• Inventory remaining: the Inventory remaining per product report divides the ending quantity by the average quantity sold per day, based on each variant's sales over the last 28 days.
• On hand from October 2026: starting October 1, 2026, inventory reports measure stock by on hand quantity instead of available quantity. Data before that date still shows available quantity.

An 852 reports what the sender's systems say is on hand and sold. Uncap Connect is the real-time data layer between Shopify, your ERP, and the warehouse floor: inventory, orders, customers, and pricing move the moment they change, not in an overnight batch.

• EDI (electronic data interchange)
• EDI 846
• Vendor-managed inventory (VMI)
• Sell-through rate
• Consignment inventory
• EDI 832

• X12: 852 Product Activity Data
• X12 EDI Examples: 852 Product Activity Data
• Shopify Help Center: Inventory reports