EDI 820 - Payment Order / Remittance Advice

What is an EDI 820?
The EDI 820 is a specific EDI transaction, where payment data is transferred between a buyer and seller. An EDI 820 is widely known as a Payment Order or Remittance Advice document, which is typically delivered as a response to an EDI 810 Invoice or EDI 850 Purchase Order as to confirm payment details or advise the seller of any changes to the payment amount. Commonly, an EDI 820 is sent together with the actual payment through electronic funds transfer.

How to use an EDI 820?
The EDI 820 Payment Order / Order Remittance Advice is usually issued when an open account needs to be settled or to advise the paying trading partner of the details or potential adjustments within a given payment. EDI 820 documents are sent from the buyer to the seller and serve as a payment intent statement. The EDI 820 is matched with its counterpart EDI 810 or another invoice format after being sent to the accounts receivable department via EDI integration with your ERP. The open account can then be settled using your EDI solution, ERP, or accounting staff.

After receiving the EDI 820, the buying trading partner generates a 997 Functional Acknowledgement to send back confirming the successful reception of the EDI 820 transaction.

What are the Benefits of an EDI 820?
The EDI 820 document, when translated, contains the same information as a paper Payment Order or Remittance Advice. The data encryption used for electronic data interchange, on the other hand, keeps buyer, seller, and payment information much safer than sending these documents by fax, email, or PDF.

Both buyers and sellers can streamline their order processes by automating EDI 820 sending and receipt. This automation, in particular, enables management by exception, in which accounting teams only address open accounts when alerted to an issue, rather than tracking all accounts, re-typing data, or issuing functional acknowledgments manually for each order.

EDI 820 Specification 
This X12 Transaction Set contains the format and establishes the data contents of the Payment Order/Remittance Advice Transaction Set (820) for use within the context of an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) environment. The transaction set can be used to make a payment, send remittance advice, or make a payment and send remittance advice.

This transaction set can be an order to a financial institution to make a payment to a payee. It can also be remittance advice identifying the detail needed to perform cash application to the payee's accounts receivable system. The remittance advice can go directly from payer to payee, through a financial institution, or through a third-party agent.

Sources
Accredited Standards Committee X12. ASC X12 Standard [Table Data]. Data Interchange Standards Association, Inc., Falls Church, VA. https://x12.org/products/transaction-sets