Example: 850


The slide shows the general organization of the 850 document.

The first line of the document contains the EDI code and the name of the transaction set. Following that is a description.

A bold vertical line divides the document. Information to the left of the line - NOTE and POS. NO - is used by the ANSI X12 committee and can usually be disregarded when developing a system.

The right side of Table 1 contains the individual segments that make up the transaction set.

The 2 or 3 character tag in the SEG. ID (Segment Identification) column must be in the front of each segment to identify what the segment is. The segment IDs physically become a part of the segment. Use the segment ID tag to look up detailed information for a particular segment. For example, to look up the ST Transaction Set Header segment, you would turn to the Segment Directory tab in your ANSI X12 book and then find the item labeled ST.

The REQ. DES (Required Description) column tells you whether the segment is required or not. It has the following labels:

The Max Use column specifies the maximum number of times a segment can be used in the transaction set. A segment with 100 designation can be used up to 100 times in a transaction set, and a >1 designation can be used any number of times.

Even if you don't use all of the segments in a transaction set, which is usually the case, the order is very important. You can omit optional segments but you must maintain the order of segments in a transaction set.