EDI Testing: The Purchase Order Example

Yesterday, we talked about the complexities in EDI processing, and what demands the complexity places on EDI Testing.

Today, we will take a short example of an EDI document, and see what are the test considerations involved in testing this EDI document flow. The Purchase Order EDI document (850) is sent from the trading partner to the supplier. Some of the test considerations are:

• Whether the transmission happens successfully, and the supplier gets the purchase order successfully from the trading partner
• Making sure that the various versions received from the trading partners is properly mapped to a format that the supplier’s ERP system understands
• Purchase order fields (PO number, PO date, Destination shipping information, quantities, prices, item numbers, amount to be paid)
• Mapping to an XML happens correctly (verify the fields)

Verifying the versions agreement between the two business entities is a very important part, and determines the ability of the systems to talk to each other correctly. Likewise, each of the other aspects have to be taken into consideration.

Hope that provides an introduction to testing considerations of an EDI. Other documents and flows are even more complex; 850 is just a simple example. With EDI example covered, let’s move on to API-based transactions in the next blog and see how they work.

Testing Supply Chain software needs mature expertise. If you have a requirement for testing Supply Chain software, please feel free to reach out to me. I would be glad to take a look to see how I can help you.