Connect SAP HANA to EDI instantly
Join thousands of businesses moving EDI orders, invoices and fulfilment updates between SAP HANA and their trading partners on XEDI, no manual re-keying.
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Getting started with SAP HANA EDI
XEDI connects SAP S/4HANA environments with EDI trading partners, translating each partner's message standard into the IDoc types S/4HANA expects so orders, despatch advice and invoices move without a separate build for every retailer.
One managed platform, no custom code
XEDI maps SAP HANA to your trading partners and validates every document, so data flows straight into the systems your teams already use.
IDoc survived the move to S/4HANA, but it did not stay still
EDI into S/4HANA still lands as an IDoc, so the shape of the integration is familiar. What changed underneath is enough to break mappings carried over from ECC. The material number field was extended from 18 to 40 characters, and IDoc segments gained the longer fields to carry it, so a mapping that assumed the old length will truncate or reject real material numbers.
Output determination moved too. S/4HANA introduces BRF+ in place of classic NAST message control for triggering output, and the configuration is not a like-for-like translation of what came before. A flow that worked for years can be correct in every respect except that nothing triggers it.
A migration is where EDI problems surface, not where they start
Most S/4HANA EDI trouble is inherited. Partner profiles, process codes and segment mappings built up over years are moved across, and the ones that relied on assumptions nobody wrote down are the ones that fail. The symptom is rarely an error at the boundary; it is an IDoc created and sitting in an error status with no one watching the queue.
Keeping the partner-specific half outside S/4HANA limits how much of that travels with you. The retailer's dialect, validation rules and connection stay in XEDI, so what reaches SAP is a consistent document and a migration is a change to one interface rather than to every partner arrangement you have.
What your team sees day to day
You get an EDI mailbox and a portal that works like an inbox, so orders can be received and worked without waiting for the S/4HANA flows to be signed off.
Each document is built from the last: the order becomes the despatch advice, amended where the delivery differs, with SSCC labels for the pallets, then the invoice once goods are delivered. The same documents reach S/4HANA as IDocs through the integration. Delivery of that invoice is confirmed in the dashboard, independently of what the IDoc queue says.
The integration sits over that workflow and automates it, so orders post as sales orders, delivery processing raises the despatch advice and billing sends the invoice without a manual step. The portal suits smaller teams and our API suits enterprises needing finer granularity; for an SAP estate the integration is usually the right middle ground.
Documents you can exchange
- Purchase orders inbound as ORDERS IDocs
- Order acknowledgements returned to trading partners
- Despatch advice and ASN messages from delivery processing
- Invoices from billing, outbound as INVOIC
- Delivery forecasts and catalogue data where a partner requires them
Built for SAP HANA teams
Whoever owns SAP HANA in your business, XEDI keeps EDI accurate and hands-off.
- SAP functional and integration consultants
- Enterprise suppliers trading with large retailers
- Supply chain and despatch teams
- Finance teams running billing automation
- Businesses migrating EDI flows onto S/4HANA
SAP HANA EDI document types
The document set varies by partner and by which S/4HANA modules are in scope, but a supplier programme is usually built from these flows.
| Document | What it carries | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase orders | Retailer demand arriving as an inbound ORDERS IDoc and creating a sales order against the right customer, materials and ship-to. | Partner to SAP HANA |
| Order acknowledgements | What SAP confirms after availability and credit checks, including amended and rejected lines. | SAP HANA to partner |
| Advanced shipping notices | Despatch and pack detail raised from delivery processing, to handling unit level where the partner requires it. | SAP HANA to partner |
| Invoices | Billing documents outbound as INVOIC, referenced to the order and delivery so the partner can match them automatically. | SAP HANA to partner |
| Credit notes | Credit memos from billing, referenced to the invoice they correct. | SAP HANA to partner |
| Delivery forecasts | Scheduled requirements from partners that plan against a forecast rather than discrete orders. | Partner to SAP HANA |
How to connect SAP HANA with EDI using XEDI
An S/4HANA EDI connection is largely configuration, but the configuration is spread across partner profiles, output determination and segment mapping. The sequence below is what a typical onboarding looks like.
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01
We scope the S/4HANA release, the IDoc types in play and how outbound documents are triggered.
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02
We build the mapping between each partner's message and the IDoc segments S/4HANA expects, including the longer material number fields.
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03
We configure the partner profiles, ports and process codes S/4HANA needs, with validation running before any IDoc is created.
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04
We prove inbound orders and outbound acknowledgements, deliveries and invoices against what the partner requires, checking IDoc status until each flow is clean.
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05
You get flows we monitor ourselves, rather than an IDoc queue somebody has to remember to watch.
Ready to connect SAP HANA?
Talk through documents, mapping, testing and go-live with XEDI.
Everything about SAP HANA EDI
Common requirements
- S/4HANA access and authorisation to configure partner profiles
- Customer, partner function and business partner records
- Material master, units of measure and packaging data
- Output determination rules for each document type
- How we should reach the SAP environment, and who owns that access
What we need from you to build it
Only the things we cannot hold for you. Each partner's requirements are already ours; the partner profiles and segment mapping are ours to build.
- Partner profiles and process codes
- A profile per trading partner and document type, with the ports and process codes that route each IDoc, and someone who owns changes to them.
- Business partner and customer data
- Partners mapped through the business partner model, with delivery points mapped to GLNs so ship-to determination resolves without manual matching.
- Material master and units
- Material numbers at their full S/4HANA length, GTINs at each packaging level, and the conversion between the unit a partner orders in and the unit you stock.
- Output determination
- Whether each outbound document is triggered through BRF+ output control or classic message control, since the two behave differently and are often mixed after a migration.
- IDoc monitoring
- An owner and an alerting route for IDocs that fail or stall, because a document that is created but never sent produces no error anywhere else.
Common SAP HANA EDI problems, and how XEDI handles them
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An inbound ORDERS IDoc cannot resolve a unique material from IDTNR in segment E1EDP19, because either nothing matches the qualifier used or several materials share the value. Qualifier 001 is the customer's material number, 002 yours and 003 the GTIN, and retailers do not all send the same one.
XEDI maps each partner to the identifier they actually send and resolves it to your material before the IDoc is built, so SAP receives a value that matches exactly one material rather than attempting the lookup itself.
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Sales orders are created even though the IDoc sits in status 51. Soft errors and warnings, such as a credit check or a blocked customer, post the document and flag the IDoc, so the queue shows a failure for an order that exists and will ship.
XEDI tracks the document by the partner's own reference independently of IDoc status, so what was received, what was acknowledged and what was despatched can be reconciled without reading the IDoc queue to work out which failures are real.
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Status 51 on master data that simply is not there in the receiving system. A material on the retailer's order has never been created, and the IDoc fails at posting rather than at receipt, after the order has been accepted.
XEDI validates the order against your item data as it arrives and raises the unknown line as an exception at that point, while there is still time to set the material up or query the line with the partner.
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Mappings carried over from ECC that assume an eighteen-character material number. S/4HANA extended the field to forty and added the longer fields to the IDoc segments, so a real material number can be truncated or rejected by a mapping that worked for years.
Field mapping in XEDI is configuration rather than code, so the material field is repointed once and applies to every partner, instead of revisiting each interface that carried the old assumption.
Why suppliers choose XEDI for SAP HANA
- Because the partner connections already exist, an S/4HANA migration is not blocked by re-establishing them.
- Partner dialects and validation live with us, so a new retailer is not a change to SAP configuration or a job for your team.
- Documents are validated against the partner's rules before transmission, so problems surface before an IDoc is created rather than after it stalls.
- One connection covers current and future partners, each onboarded by us, instead of a partner profile proliferation inside S/4HANA.
- Every message is traceable end to end, independently of IDoc status, which matters when finance queries an invoice weeks later.
- Partners come to us, not to you. We are notified of problems on your behalf and resolve them, instead of the first sign being an IDoc nobody was watching.
Does S/4HANA still use IDocs for EDI?
Yes. IDoc remains the way EDI documents enter and leave S/4HANA, though the structures changed with the move, most visibly the longer material number fields. Mappings carried over from ECC usually need revisiting rather than rebuilding.
Can XEDI connect S/4HANA to EDI trading partners?
Yes. XEDI translates each partner's EDIFACT, TRADACOMS or X12 message into the IDoc type S/4HANA expects, and turns outbound IDocs back into the format the partner requires, so partner-specific rules stay outside your SAP configuration.
What usually breaks when EDI moves to S/4HANA?
Two things recur: segment mappings that assume the old 18-character material number, and output that no longer triggers because determination moved to BRF+. Both produce silence rather than an obvious error, so they are found by monitoring rather than by testing.
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