The 997 Functional Acknowledgement EDI transaction set is often under-appreciated. Because so many 997s pass back and forth between two EDI trading partners, it is easy to take them for granted. But to casually dismiss the importance of these documents is asking for trouble – for the 997 carries information that is crucial to your EDI efforts.
A transaction set (997) transmitted by the receiver of an EDI transmission to the sender, indicates receipt and syntactical acceptability of data transmitted according to the ASC X12 standards. The functional acknowledgement allows the receiving party to report back to the sending party problems encountered by the syntax analyzer as the data are interpreted. It is not intended to serve as an acknowledgement of data content. The sender keeps track of the sent transactions, and upon receipt of the functional acknowledgement, flags the sent messages as received.
Just receiving a 997 is not enough. You must also open it. That is because a 997 can be the bearer of good news or bad news.
The vast majority of 997s you receive will read “Group Accepted”. This means your document successfully reached your trading partner with no difficulties or errors. A 997 that reads “Group Accepted, But Errors were Noted” indicates that your trading partner has accepted your document even though minor errors were found. A 997 that reads “Group Rejected” means that your trading partner will not be able to successfully process your document. If no 997 is returned, then you can assume that your document was not received by your trading partner.
It is important to remember that 997s are two-way—each time you receive a one-to-one EDI transaction from a trading partner, EC Gateway can be configured to create a 997 on your behalf.
EC Gateway does not keep track of or report on sent
transactions. Tracking and reporting for information sent and received
is up to you.
