What Is an EDI 870 (Order Status Report)?

An EDI 870 is the X12 Order Status Report, the electronic message that tells a trading partner where an order, part of an order or a forecast stands right now.

X12's purpose statement lists what it can report on:

• Orders: an entire purchase order, selected line items on a purchase order, or selected products or services on a purchase order.
• Customers: purchase orders for a specific customer, in their entirety or on a selection basis.
• Forecasts and requisitions: the current status of a requirement forecast, and of single or multiple requisitions.
• Reasons: the report format allows for the inclusion of reasons relative to the status.
• Dates: it may also be used to update the supplier's scheduled shipment or delivery dates.

An 870 can result from either an inquiry or a prearranged schedule agreed to by the trading partners. The inquiry has its own transaction set: the X12 869 Order Status Inquiry can be used to request all pertinent information relative to an entire purchase order, selected line items on a purchase order, or selected products or services on a purchase order. It can also ask about a customer's ordered items, unshipped items or shipped items.

X12 lists the 869 and the 870 among the transaction sets of its Supply Chain subcommittee (X12M).

Three X12 transaction sets follow a purchase order, and X12 gives each one a different job:

• 855 Purchase Order Acknowledgment: a seller's acknowledgment of a buyer's purchase order.
• 870 Order Status Report: the current status of the order, its lines or a forecast, with reasons, sent on request or on a prearranged schedule.
• 856 Ship Notice/Manifest: lists the contents of a shipment of goods, with information such as order information, product description, packaging, carrier information and configuration of goods.

Compared to the 855, which is the seller's acknowledgment of the order, the 870 reports where the order stands, either in answer to an inquiry or on a schedule the trading partners agree.

A buyer's purchase order has 4 line items. On the prearranged weekly schedule, the supplier sends an 870:

• Lines 1 and 2: shipped.
• Line 3: open, with the scheduled ship date moved from day 5 to day 9 and a reason for the change.
• Line 4: open, on its original date.

That is 2 of 4 lines shipped, or 2 / 4 = 50%, and one date update the buyer can plan around. If lines 1 and 2 are marked fulfilled on Shopify, the order displays as Partially fulfilled: some of the items in the order have been fulfilled.

An integration that builds an 870 for an order placed on Shopify can read the order's fulfillment status through the GraphQL Admin API. The Order object's displayFulfillmentStatus field represents the order's aggregated fulfillment status for display purposes. Its values include:

• Unfulfilled: none of the items in the order have been fulfilled.
• Partially fulfilled: some of the items in the order have been fulfilled.
• Fulfilled: all the items in the order have been fulfilled.
• On hold: all of the unfulfilled items in this order are on hold.
• Scheduled: all of the unfulfilled items in this order are scheduled for fulfillment at later time.

Each fulfillment order also carries its own status, such as open (ready for fulfillment), in progress (being processed) or closed (completed and closed), and a fulfillBy date, the latest date and time by which all its items need to be fulfilled.

Uncap's guide to private order portals on Shopify Plus lists the core data flows to build before go-live, including "fulfillment status sync (ERP fulfillment events back to Shopify order status)."

• EDI 855 (purchase order acknowledgment)
• EDI 856 (advance ship notice)
• EDI 850 (purchase order)
• Purchase order
• Backorder
• Sales order

• X12 Transaction Sets
• Shopify Dev Docs: OrderDisplayFulfillmentStatus
• Shopify Dev Docs: FulfillmentOrderStatus