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EDI 861: Receiving Advice / Acceptance Certificate

A buyer’s report of what was received against a shipment: quantities accepted, rejected, and why. Buyer (receiver) to supplier. This page covers what the 861 is for, the segments you meet when you open one, the documents it travels with, where it tends to go wrong, and how it moves over AS2 into your systems on Files.com, which receives, parses, validates, and routes it as configuration.

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What The 861 Is For

The 861 tells the supplier what the buyer actually received. After goods arrive, the receiver reports each item with the quantity received, accepted, and rejected, and the condition or reason for any rejection, referencing the shipment and purchase order.

Suppliers use it to reconcile shipments against receipts before invoicing, and in evaluated-receipt-settlement arrangements the 861 replaces the invoice altogether: the buyer pays on what it received rather than what it was billed.

The Segments You Meet First

In document order, the segments that carry the 861's meaning. A partner's implementation guide says which are required and which fields each must hold.

BRA

Beginning segment for receiving advice: the receiving advice number, date, and type.

REF

References: the purchase order, bill of lading, or ship notice.

N1

Parties.

RCD

Receiving conditions: quantities received, accepted, returned, or rejected, with condition codes.

LIN

Item identification.

CTT

Transaction totals.

Where It Goes Wrong

Receipts posted against the wrong PO when the 856 references were missing, and rejection reasons that are too vague to act on. In evaluated-receipt settlement, an inaccurate 861 is an inaccurate payment.

The Documents It Travels With

The 861 rarely moves alone. These are the documents that precede, answer, or settle it.

856 · Ship Notice / Manifest (ASN)

The advance ship notice: what is in the shipment, how it is packed, and how it is labeled, sent before it arrives.

See The 856

810 · Invoice

The supplier’s bill for goods or services delivered against a purchase order.

See The 810

850 · Purchase Order

A buyer’s order to a supplier: the items, quantities, prices, dates, and ship-to locations.

See The 850

997 · Functional Acknowledgment

The receipt that says an EDI transmission arrived and was parsed, with any syntax errors found.

See The 997

How The 861 Moves On Files.com

A partner sends the 861 over AS2, SFTP, or FTPS, and it lands in that partner’s inbox folder on Files.com with the transport receipt recorded. From there it is a workflow, not a project: TransformScript parses the X12 natively into the JSON, CSV, or XML your ERP or WMS reads, content validation flags a document whose contents are wrong before anything ingests it, and an automation routes the result to the system and the people who act on it.

Outbound is the mirror image. Your system exports its record, TransformScript builds the 861 the partner’s guide specifies, and the file dropped in the partner’s outbox goes out over AS2 with automatic retries until the MDN confirms delivery. Every transmission in both directions is in the audit log, and delivery monitoring alerts when a 861 that was due never arrives. The full picture is on the EDI software page.

EDI 861 Questions

What teams ask about the 861 and how it moves on Files.com.

An EDI 861 is the X12 Receiving Advice/Acceptance Certificate. A buyer sends it to a supplier to report the quantities received, accepted, and rejected for a shipment, with reasons, referencing the order and ship notice.

Yes. Files.com is a standards-compliant RFC 4130 AS2 endpoint, and a 861 sent by a trading partner lands in that partner’s inbox folder with a signed MDN receipt returned to the sender. Partners who exchange over SFTP or FTPS connect to the same platform and the document lands in the same place.

Yes. TransformScript parses the X12 861 natively and writes the JSON, CSV, or XML your systems ingest, as a step in the workflow that fires when the document arrives. Outbound, the same engine builds a 861 from your system’s export and drops it in the partner’s outbox for delivery.

Exchange The 861 Without The Legacy Stack

Start the 7-day trial, turn AS2 on, and exchange certificates with your partner. The 861 lands in their folder, parses into the record your system reads, and every transmission carries a signed receipt.

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