A Guide to 820 EDI for Greenhouse Growers

An EDI 820 is the Payment Order/Remittance Advice transaction set. For a greenhouse or nursery grower it is the document a retailer sends to say what it paid you and which invoices that money covers. It replaces the check stub and the emailed remittance spreadsheet, and it is where a deduction gets its reason code.

What is an 820 Payment Order / Remittance Advice?

An 820 answers three questions: how much the retailer paid, which of your invoices the payment covers, and what was taken off along the way. In a grower program the retailer sends it to you, the opposite direction from the 810 invoice you sent them.

The name covers two jobs. A payment order instructs a bank to move money. A remittance advice explains a payment moving some other way. The same transaction set does both, and the first element in the file says which one you are holding.

Growers want it as data because your accounting system can match a file against your open invoices, instead of a person doing that by hand off a stub. It matters most on the payments that are not clean.

Important data included in an 820

• BPR, the beginning segment: the total paid, the payment method, the payment format, and the effective date. Its first element says whether money moves with this file or only information does.
• TRN, the trace segment: the number tying this remittance to the actual bank transaction.
• RMR, the remittance loop: one occurrence per invoice, carrying your invoice number, the amount paid against it, and the gross invoice amount before deductions. A single 820 can carry dozens.
• ADX, the adjustment segment: the amount taken off, a reason code for why, and a reference back to the invoice it applies to. This is the segment that explains a short pay.

An EDI 820 example, annotated

Here is a short 820 from a retail partner to a grower, with placeholder identifiers:

ISA*00*          *00*          *ZZ*RETAILPARTNER  *12*5551234567     *260810*0930*U*00401*000002001*0*P*>
GS*RA*RETAILPARTNER*5551234567*20260810*0930*2001*X*004010
ST*820*0001
BPR*I*18450.00*C*ACH*CCP***********20260812
TRN*1*260810004455
DTM*097*20260810
N1*PR*RETAIL PARTNER
N1*PE*GROWER FARMS LLC*92*987654
RMR*IV*104488**9200.00*9200.00
DTM*003*20260714
RMR*IV*104512**9250.00*9500.00
DTM*003*20260721
ADX*-250.00*01*IV*104512
SE*12*0001
GE*1*2001
IEA*1*000002001

Segment by segment:

• GS*RA is the functional group code for payment order and remittance advice.
• BPR carries the payment. I is the transaction handling code for remittance information only, so this file explains a payment rather than instructing one, and the money moves on its own ACH file. 18450.00 is the total, C marks it a credit, ACH is the method, and CCP is the ACH format, corporate credit or debit plus addenda. The empty positions after that are bank routing and account data, which a remittance-only file leaves out, and 20260812 is the effective date.
• TRN*1*260810004455 is the trace number. Match it against the trace on your bank deposit and you know which remittance goes with which lump of cash. DTM*097 is the date the file was created.
• N1*PR and N1*PE identify the payer and the payee. The 92 qualifier on the payee line means the number after it was assigned by the buyer, so that is your vendor number in their system.
• RMR carries one invoice each. On RMR*IV*104488**9200.00*9200.00, IV says the number that follows is your invoice number, the first amount is what they paid against it, and the second is the invoice total. Those agree, so that one was paid in full. The DTM*003 under each RMR is the invoice date.
• The second RMR is a short pay. Invoice 104512 was 9,500.00 and the payment against it was 9,250.00. ADX*-250.00*01*IV*104512 explains the gap. 01 is the adjustment reason code for a pricing error, and IV*104512 points at the invoice being adjusted.
• SE, GE and IEA close the file. The two RMR amounts add to 18,450.00, which is the BPR total, and that arithmetic is the first thing to check on any 820 you receive.

Reconciling the 820 against your 810s

The reconciliation is easy to describe and tedious to do. Every RMR line names an invoice you sent as an 810, so match them up, compare paid against invoiced, and the differences become your work list.

Four things turn up on that list. An invoice paid in full needs nothing. An invoice short-paid with an ADX segment carries a reason code, which tells you what the retailer decided and where to look. An invoice short-paid with no adjustment detail is worse, because you have a difference and nothing to research it with. An invoice that appears nowhere has either not come due or failed upstream, and a rejected 810 does not pay.

Deductions are where the money is. Chargebacks, shortage claims, and pricing corrections all arrive as adjustments, and the reason code is the retailer’s version of events rather than settled fact. An 820 records what was decided. Whether the decision was right is a conversation with your buyer, and no EDI service is going to have it for you.

How retailers pay, and where the 820 fits

Big-box programs pay on a cycle rather than on demand. Your terms set when an invoice becomes eligible, and the retailer’s payment run decides which eligible invoices go out that week. Two invoices sent two days apart can settle in the same 820 or two weeks apart, depending on where the run falls. Your trading partner’s guide states the specifics.

ACH payments can also carry remittance data in an addenda record, and the formats named in the BPR segment are ACH formats. CTX, corporate trade exchange, can carry a full 820 inside the payment itself. Many growers instead get the remittance as an EDI file from the retailer and the cash as a plain ACH deposit from a bank, with the trace number as the only thing joining them.

None of that is a published rule from any retailer. It is how ACH and EDI generally fit together, and your bank and your trading partner are where to confirm it.

EDI 820 FAQ

What is the difference between an EDI 810 and an EDI 820? The 810 is your invoice, sent from you to the retailer to ask for payment. The 820 is their remittance advice, sent back to tell you what they paid and what they took off.

Is an 820 the same as an ACH payment? No. An 820 is a document and an ACH payment is money moving between banks. They can travel together when the payment format carries the remittance inside it, and they often travel separately, which is what the TRN trace number exists for.

Who sends the 820, the grower or the retailer? The retailer, in a grower program. The standard also supports a payer’s bank sending it.

Why does the 820 total not match my invoices? Look at the ADX segments first. An adjustment reduces what was paid against a specific invoice and names the retailer’s reason for it. If there are no ADX segments and the numbers still disagree, check whether an invoice was rejected before it reached their accounts payable.

Summary

An 820 is the retailer’s account of a payment: the total, and the invoices and deductions behind it. Reconciled against your 810s, it turns a lump deposit into a list of paid invoices and a short list of items to chase. The reason codes in the ADX segments are the part to read closely, because that is where the gap between what you billed and what you were paid gets explained.