Connect Sage X3 to EDI instantly
Join thousands of businesses moving EDI orders, invoices and fulfilment updates between Sage X3 and their trading partners on XEDI, no manual re-keying.
No credit card needed ✦ Free EDI mailbox included
Getting started with Sage X3 EDI
XEDI connects Sage X3 with retailers, wholesalers and logistics providers so EDI orders, acknowledgements, despatch advice and invoices move between X3 and your trading partners without manual entry or hand-built import routines.
One managed platform, no custom code
XEDI maps Sage X3 to your trading partners and validates every document, so data flows straight into the systems your teams already use.
X3 takes structured data well, which is the opportunity
Sage X3 is built to be loaded. Import and export templates define how a record is read or written, and web services expose the same objects to an outside system. An EDI integration uses that: the partner's order becomes a sales order through a defined route rather than through a screen, and a despatch or invoice leaves the same way.
What that buys you is repeatability. Once the template or service call is agreed for a document type, every partner sending that document uses the same path into X3, and the differences between retailers are handled before the data arrives rather than by a variant of the import.
The pressure is to fork the route, and that is the trap
X3 installations are rarely one company in one country. Folders, legislations, sites and sequence number definitions differ, and a document that loads cleanly in one folder can fail in another for reasons that have nothing to do with the trading partner. That is where a self-built integration starts to drift: a retailer asks for something slightly different, and the quickest answer is a second version of the import definition.
Four or five retailers in and it is no longer one route into X3, it is a set of near-identical routes nobody can safely change. We keep the retailer-specific handling upstream instead, so X3 sees one consistent document per type whichever partner it came from and whichever folder it lands in.
What your team sees day to day
You get an EDI mailbox and a portal that behaves like an inbox: orders arrive from the retailer, your team is notified and can act on them straight away, whether or not the X3 route is finished.
The documents then carry forward. The order becomes the despatch advice, amended if you are sending more or less than ordered, with SSCC labels for the pallets, and becomes the invoice once delivered. X3 receives the same documents through the integration rather than a parallel version of them. Delivery of that invoice is confirmed in the dashboard, so a payment query does not begin with wondering whether it arrived.
The integration sits over that workflow and automates it, so orders land as X3 sales orders, deliveries raise the despatch advice and invoices leave from X3 rather than being confirmed by hand. The portal suits smaller teams and our API suits enterprises needing finer granularity; an integration sits between them, keeping X3 and your partners in step automatically.
Documents you can exchange
- Purchase orders imported as X3 sales orders
- Order acknowledgements returned to trading partners
- Despatch advice and ASN messages from X3 deliveries
- Invoices exported from X3 finance workflows
- Product, price and stock data where a partner requires it
Built for Sage X3 teams
Whoever owns Sage X3 in your business, XEDI keeps EDI accurate and hands-off.
- Sage X3 administrators and partners
- Manufacturers and distributors supplying retail
- Operations and despatch teams
- Finance teams managing invoice automation
- Businesses outgrowing manual order entry
Sage X3 EDI document types
The document set varies by trading partner, but a Sage X3 supplier programme is usually built from these flows.
| Document | What it carries | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase orders | Partner demand landing as an X3 sales order against the right customer, products, price and delivery site. | Partner to Sage X3 |
| Order acknowledgements | What X3 confirms against the order, including lines amended on allocation and lines refused. | Sage X3 to partner |
| Advanced shipping notices | Despatch and pack detail raised from an X3 delivery, to carton or pallet level where the partner requires it. | Sage X3 to partner |
| Invoices | Invoices raised in X3, referenced back to the order and delivery so the partner can match them automatically. | Sage X3 to partner |
| Credit notes | Credits raised in X3 against the original invoice, sent with a credit document code. | Sage X3 to partner |
| Product and price data | Product, pack and price data published to partners that maintain a catalogue against your range. | Sage X3 to partner |
How to connect Sage X3 with EDI using XEDI
A Sage X3 EDI connection is normally configured rather than developed, because the routes into and out of X3 already exist. The sequence below is what a typical onboarding looks like.
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01
We scope which X3 folder, sites and sales order workflows the EDI documents belong in.
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02
We build the route into and out of X3, whether that is import and export templates or web services, and the mapping behind it.
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03
We configure validation against each partner's rules so a document is checked before it is submitted to X3.
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04
We prove order, acknowledgement, delivery and invoice flows in a non-production folder against what the partner requires.
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05
You get one route into X3 that stays one route, whatever a retailer asks for next.
Ready to connect Sage X3?
Talk through documents, mapping, testing and go-live with XEDI.
Everything about Sage X3 EDI
Common requirements
- Sage X3 folder access and integration credentials
- Customer, product, site and tax mappings
- The trading partners you deal with, or plan to
- Rules for partial delivery, back orders and substitutions
- How we should reach X3, and who owns that access
What we need from you to build it
Only the things we cannot hold for you. Each retailer's requirements are already ours, so this list is access and reference data rather than research.
- X3 folder and access
- The folder EDI documents should land in, credentials for the integration route, and a non-production folder to test against.
- Customer and site records
- Each partner mapped to an X3 customer, with their delivery points resolvable to a ship-to site, and a decision on which folder and legislation each partner's documents belong to.
- Product and unit data
- The unit a partner orders in and its conversion to how the product is stocked and priced in X3, plus GTINs at each packaging level held against the product record.
- Document routes
- Whether each document type moves through import and export templates or web services, and who owns changes to those definitions.
- Which partners you trade with
- The retailers in scope, now and next. What each one requires is already held on our side.
Common Sage X3 EDI problems, and how XEDI handles them
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A sales order created through a web service using an import template silently drops lines. One reported case passed eight products and found six on the order, with all eight returned in the XML response and no error raised. Sales kits that need exploding are the common trigger.
XEDI reconciles what was sent against what the order actually contains and raises a mismatch as an exception, so a short order is caught at the boundary instead of at despatch. Kit handling is decided once in the mapping rather than per import.
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A failed import still consumes the sequence number, so the numbering develops gaps. If the next sequence is 10 and an import fails once, the order that succeeds is numbered 12 rather than 11, which makes reconciliation against a partner's references harder than it should be.
XEDI retries on its own schedule and only submits a document once it has passed validation, so failed attempts do not reach X3 and burn a number. Every message keeps the partner's own reference end to end for reconciliation.
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An inbound EDI message carrying a Function code of 7, meaning duplication, can be treated as a new order depending on how the parameter is set. A partner resending a document for their own reasons then becomes a second order nobody placed.
XEDI reads the message function and matches on the partner's order reference, so a resend is recognised as the same order rather than creating another one in X3.
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The import log reports missing or invalid values, but it reports them after the attempt, and only to whoever thinks to look. An EDI flow running to a schedule can fail quietly for a day before anyone opens the log.
Validation happens in XEDI before the document is submitted to X3, and failures raise an alert against the partner and document rather than waiting in a log file.
Why suppliers choose XEDI for Sage X3
- Retailers are usually connected already, so trading begins before the X3 route is agreed.
- Partner rules live with us rather than in a variant of your X3 import, so a new retailer touches neither the ERP route nor your backlog.
- Documents are validated against the partner's rules before they are sent, so rejections surface while the order is still actionable.
- One connection covers the partners you trade with now and every one you take on later, each built and verified by us rather than rebuilt per retailer.
- Every message is traceable end to end, which is what finance needs when an invoice is disputed after despatch.
- If a retailer flags something, we hear about it first. We are notified on your behalf and fix it, rather than it arriving as a question nobody in your team can answer.
Can XEDI integrate EDI orders with Sage X3?
Yes. XEDI maps trading partner EDI purchase orders into X3 sales order workflows and returns acknowledgements, despatch advice and invoices in the format each partner requires, using the import and web service routes X3 already provides.
Does Sage X3 EDI need custom development?
Usually not. X3 already exposes its objects through import and export templates and web services, so the work is agreeing which route each document uses and mapping partner identifiers and units to X3 records.
Can XEDI handle different requirements per retailer?
Yes, and that is normally the reason for using it. Each partner has its own document set, identifiers and validation rules, and those differences are resolved in XEDI so a single consistent document reaches X3.
Plan your Sage X3 EDI setup
Everything you need to scope, map and go live with Sage X3, in one place.