Connect Email CSV to EDI instantly
Join thousands of businesses moving EDI orders, invoices and fulfilment updates between Email CSV and their trading partners on XEDI, no manual re-keying.
No credit card needed ✦ Free EDI mailbox included
Getting started with Email CSV EDI
XEDI can send and receive trading data as CSV attachments over email, which remains a practical route for businesses and partners whose systems produce a file and nothing more.
One managed platform, no custom code
XEDI maps Email CSV to your trading partners and validates every document, so data flows straight into the systems your teams already use.
Email is not a good transport, and it is still sometimes the right one
It is worth being honest about this. Email has no delivery guarantee you can rely on, no natural ordering, no way to know a file was processed, and attachments get stripped, rewritten or quarantined by systems nobody controls.
Despite that, it remains the only route some systems and some partners will offer. When the alternative is a person exporting a file and attaching it by hand, email with validation and monitoring behind it is a substantial improvement, even though it is not the ideal.
The layout is the contract, so it has to be fixed
CSV has no schema. Nothing stops a column being added, a delimiter changing, a date format shifting between British and American, or a leading zero being eaten by a spreadsheet somewhere upstream.
So the layout is agreed and enforced rather than inferred. A file that does not match raises an exception instead of being interpreted optimistically, because an optimistic interpretation of a quantity column is how a retailer receives the wrong delivery.
What your team sees day to day
You get an EDI mailbox and a portal that behaves like an inbox, so the state of every exchange is visible rather than living in somebody's sent items.
Orders arrive and become the despatch advice built from what is actually going, adjusted where quantities differ, with SSCC pallet labels where the retailer requires them, and the invoice follows delivery with its arrival confirmed in the dashboard.
Email carries the file; the platform does the validating, the chasing and the record keeping. If a better route becomes available on either side, moving to it changes nothing the retailer sees. Nothing on your side changes; EDI is bolted onto a mailbox and a file export you already have.
Documents you can exchange
- Order data delivered as a CSV attachment
- Despatch and quantity files returned by email
- Invoice data exported for your finance system
- Stock or price files exchanged with partners
- Exception reports for correction
Built for Email CSV teams
Whoever owns Email CSV in your business, XEDI keeps EDI accurate and hands-off.
- Businesses with older systems
- Teams whose partners insist on email
- Finance and operations staff
- Smaller suppliers and distributors
- Anyone whose current process is an attachment and a reminder
Email CSV EDI document types
A CSV carries data rather than a formatted document; these are the exchanges it usually serves.
| Document | What it carries | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Order files | Retailer demand delivered as a file for a system that cannot receive it any other way. | XEDI to you |
| Despatch files | What is actually being sent, returned by email and validated before it becomes a despatch advice. | You to XEDI |
| Invoice data | Invoice detail exported for a finance system that imports rather than integrates. | XEDI to you |
| Stock and price files | Availability or catalogue data exchanged where a partner expects a periodic file. | Either direction |
| Exception reports | Files that failed validation, with the reason, so they can be corrected and resent. | XEDI to you |
| Acknowledgement data | Confirmation that a file was received and what became of it, since email will not tell you. | XEDI to you |
How to connect Email CSV with EDI using XEDI
Most of the effort goes into making an unreliable transport behave predictably. The sequence below is what onboarding looks like from your side.
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01
We agree which documents move by email and in what direction.
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02
We fix the file layout, because an unversioned CSV is where these arrangements usually fail.
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03
We set up the mailbox and routing so files are picked up reliably rather than by somebody watching.
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04
We prove the flows, including what happens when a file is late, empty or malformed.
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05
You get a working route with validation, rather than an attachment somebody has to remember to process.
Ready to connect Email CSV?
Talk through documents, mapping, testing and go-live with XEDI.
Everything about Email CSV EDI
Common requirements
- The mailbox used for exchange
- File layout and encoding
- Timing expectations
- What to do with a bad or missing file
- The trading partners involved
What we need from you to build it
Only what we cannot decide for you. Partner requirements are ours; the file layout is agreed between us.
- The mailbox
- Which address is used, and access to it, since a shared mailbox that people also read is a common source of trouble.
- File layout and encoding
- Columns, delimiter, date format and character encoding, fixed rather than inferred from the first file that arrives.
- Timing expectations
- When files are expected, so a missing one is noticed rather than assumed to be a quiet day.
- Bad file handling
- What should happen when a file is malformed, empty or duplicated, because email makes all three likely.
- The trading partners involved
- Which relationships this serves. What each requires is already held by us.
Why suppliers choose XEDI for Email CSV
- Partners are usually connected already, so an email route can be live quickly even where their systems are old.
- A missing file is noticed, rather than being mistaken for a quiet day.
- File layout is enforced, so a changed column raises an exception instead of shifting every value by one.
- Duplicates are recognised, which matters because email delivers the same message twice more often than people expect.
- The whole exchange is visible in the platform rather than in somebody's mailbox.
- If a retailer raises a problem with a file, it comes to us and we sort it out.
Is email a sensible way to exchange EDI data?
It is rarely the best route and sometimes the only one available. With validation, duplicate detection and monitoring behind it, it works acceptably; without those it fails silently, which is the usual experience.
What happens if a file does not arrive?
Expected timing is agreed, so a missing file raises an exception rather than passing unnoticed. That alone is usually the biggest improvement over the arrangement it replaces.
Can we move to something better later?
Yes, and it changes nothing on the retailer's side. Their documents continue exactly as before while the route between us improves.
Plan your Email CSV EDI setup
Everything you need to scope, map and go live with Email CSV, in one place.