Shopify EDI integration

Is Shopify EDI capable?

Shopify does not read or write EDI. The platform has no X12 or EDIFACT translator: its Admin API exchanges JSON over GraphQL, and nothing in it produces an ISA envelope, a control number or a 997. A retailer that asks whether you are EDI capable asks whether you can receive its 850 and return an 855, 856, 810 and 997 according to its guide. A Shopify store can, with a layer in front of the API.

The route has three parts:

1. The trading partner sends and receives X12 files over AS2, SFTP or a VAN.
2. The integration translates each file, applies the mapping for that partner and keeps the acknowledgments.
3. Shopify's Admin API creates the order and supplies the fulfillment and inventory data for the documents that go back.

This page is the Shopify side of our EDI integration. When an ERP sits behind the store, the same documents map to the ERP instead, as on the NetSuite EDI integration page.

What Shopify gives you natively

The B2B features and the Admin API hold most of what a purchase order needs.

Plan features checked on 3 October 2026 against Shopify's B2B plan overview. Direct catalog assignment to a company is Plus only.

Which documents a Shopify merchant handles

One order is 4 business documents and 4 acknowledgments, 8 transaction sets. The full list is under EDI document types.

How an 850 becomes a Shopify order

The request for the first line of that order:

{
  "order": {
    "poNumber": "4500018236",
    "companyLocationId": "gid://shopify/CompanyLocation/7001",
    "sourceIdentifier": "HARBOR-4500018236",
    "lineItems": [
      {
        "variantId": "gid://shopify/ProductVariant/44810",
        "quantity": 24,
        "priceSet": { "shopMoney": { "amount": "12.50", "currencyCode": "USD" } }
      }
    ]
  },
  "options": { "inventoryBehaviour": "DECREMENT_OBEYING_POLICY" }
}

Five things in it are decisions, and each is a place where an EDI order goes wrong in Shopify.

Two limits apply to the request itself. Every array input on a Shopify API holds at most 250 items, and the PO1 loop of an 850 can repeat 100,000 times, so a purchase order with 300 lines does not fit in one orderCreate call and has to be split or built up with order edits. On a trial or development store, orderCreate is limited to five new orders per minute: a partner's test batch of 40 orders takes 40 divided by 5, so 8 minutes, when the test runs against a development store.

The technical reality of this pair

EDI arrives in batches and Shopify meters by cost. The GraphQL Admin API restores 100 cost points per second on standard plans, 200 on Advanced and 1,000 on Plus, and a single query may cost at most 1,000 points. A throttled request comes back as HTTP 200 with a THROTTLED error in the body, so an integration that only checks the status code counts a refused order as created. Shopify documents the limits on its rate limits page; the note on Shopify API rate limits works them through.

The second point is the 846. A drop-ship partner sells what your last inventory advice said was available. Shopify holds inventory per location, and not every location ships for every partner. Three locations with 14, 6 and 0 available make 20 when all count and 14 when only the main warehouse ships partner orders. The rule is set once per partner. How the available figure is built is covered under stock and availability.

The third is what Shopify does not store. A Shopify order and its fulfillments have no field for the contents of a carton, an SSCC or a bill of lading, and no separate invoice number. The 856 and the 810 need all four, so the integration reads them from the shipping tool or 3PL and from your accounting system.

Small volumes

Drop-ship programs send one purchase order per consumer order, often for a single unit. The document count is the same as for a pallet order: 8 transaction sets each. A store with 50 drop-ship orders a month exchanges 50 times 8, so 400 sets, and every one of the 150 outbound business documents has to match the partner's guide.

The usual starting point is a web portal: a person reads each order, types it into Shopify, and types the acknowledgment, the ship notice and the invoice back into the portal. At 50 orders that is 150 documents keyed by hand each month, and a mistyped quantity or tracking number in a ship notice is the kind of error retailers charge for. The integration replaces the typing in both directions, and the orders appear in Shopify next to the store's own.

When it goes wrong

Nothing is skipped without a trace. Every document has a status in the dashboard, with the raw file and the Shopify record it became or came from.

We build the integration to your trading partners and your store, host it and run it, for a fixed build price and a monthly fee. A new partner starts as a dry run that creates no orders, and you approve the first documents before they are sent. More on the platform side is under Shopify integrations and Shopify ERP integration. Tell us which retailer asked you for EDI.