EDI 410 Rail Freight Invoice: Complete Guide

The EDI 410 is a railroad's freight bill as data. Once a car moves, the railroad that bills the shipment sends a 410 to the party paying the freight: the shipper on prepaid, the consignee on collect, or a third party. It looks a lot like the motor carrier 210, with one big difference. A rail invoice is built from a waybill, so it carries the car, the waybill number, the rail stations and the railroads in the route, and those are what you match it on.

This guide covers what the 410 bills, every segment you will map, a live carload invoice that continues our 404 and 417 examples, how the 410 compares with the 210 and the ocean 310, and the checks that catch rail billing errors.

What Is an EDI 410?

An EDI 410 is the Rail Carrier Freight Details and Invoice transaction set defined by ASC X12, which can be used to provide detailed information of charges associated with a rail movement. It travels in functional group IR (the GS01 value).

Authoritative references for 410 work:

• Stedi's X12 004010 reference for the 410 lists every segment, loop and element in release 004010
• CN's 410 implementation guide shows a railroad's outbound freight invoice in releases 003020 to 004010, with complete samples and its charge code list
• Railinc's STCC resource describes the commodity codes that rail rates are tied to
• The NMFTA issues the SCAC that identifies the billing railroad in B3B06

Who sends it? The railroad billing the shipment. On an interline move under a through rate, one railroad usually bills the payer and the railroads divide the revenue among themselves through interline settlement.

Who receives it? The party paying the freight: the shipper on prepaid, the consignee on collect, or a third party such as a 3PL or freight payment provider.

When is it sent? After the railroad rates the waybill. CN's guide, for example, says it collects the day's invoices and transmits them overnight.

Why does it matter? Rail freight is billed from the waybill: the car, the weight basis, the STCC, the route and the price authority. The 410 is where any difference between what you tendered on the 404 and what the railroad recorded turns into money.

What the 410 Bills

• Line haul. The base charge for the move, often per car on carload freight, or per hundredweight or per ton under some price authorities.
• Fuel surcharge. Often a rate per mile on the route miles, or a percentage, depending on the railroad's fuel program.
• Accessorials. Switching, storage in transit, diversion and reconsignment, and similar services. CN's guide notes that it invoices some optional services outside the 410, so ask each railroad which charges come on the 410 and which come another way.
• Taxes. Cross-border and Canadian moves can carry tax lines, such as GST, as separate charges.
• References. The waybill number and date, the bill of lading number, and any PO or contract numbers the shipper put on the bill of lading.
• Price authority. The tariff or contract the charge is rated under, in the PI segment, when the railroad sends it.

CN's guide makes a point worth repeating for every railroad: if you need a reference on the invoice to reconcile it, put it on the shipping instructions. The railroad can only copy what it received.

Interactive Example: Prepaid Carload Invoice

The car from our 404 and 417 examples, QPLX 450127, has been delivered to Joliet. The origin railroad (QPRR) bills the shipper, who paid the freight.

B3B gives the invoice number, prepaid terms, the billing date, the net amount due (6,936.52), the payment due date, the SCAC, rail mode, the shipper's bill of lading number as the shipment ID, pounds and US dollars. N9 carries the bill of lading and PO, N7 the car, N8 the waybill, and F9/D9 the stations. The N1 loops name the payer (with the railroad's customer code), shipper and consignee, and R2 the two-railroad route. In the LX loop, the first L0/L1 pair bills the line haul at 6,850.00 per car, and the second bills a fuel surcharge of 0.21 per mile on 412 miles (86.52). L3 totals the invoice. The sample follows the layout of CN's 004010 invoice sample. All names, SCACs, codes, rates and numbers are fictional.

Use the Plain English tab for a readable summary, or click any segment to break it down element by element.

410 Structure at a Glance

The table follows X12 release 004010.

Note where the 410 differs from the 210. The car (N7), the waybill (N8) and the stations (F9, D9) are mandatory, and each L1 sits inside an L0 loop within the LX loop. That is why CN's samples send a bare L0*1 before the fuel surcharge L1: each charge opens its own L0 loop.

Key Segments Explained

B3B: Beginning Segment for Carrier's Invoice

B3B*QP26110713*PP*20261110*693652*20261210*QPRR*R*NGP-BL-60418*L**USD~

B3B is a rail-specific beginning segment. It is not the B3 used in the 210, 310 and 110: the invoice number comes first, the due date has its own element, and the mode and currency are part of the segment. B3B04 is a numeric field with two implied decimals, so 693652 means 6,936.52.

N9: Reference Identification

N9*BM*NGP-BL-60418~
N9*PO*LBS-778120~

CN's guide lists qualifiers such as BM bill of lading, WY waybill number, CT contract number, CO customer order number, and tax registration numbers on Canadian invoices. The bill of lading number is the reference most payers match on, because it is the one the shipper created.

N7 and N8: Car and Waybill

N7*QPLX*450127*168000*N*67200******RR~
N8*318204*20261106~

N701 and N702 are the car's reporting mark and number, N703/N704 the lading weight and qualifier, N705 the tare, and N711 the equipment description (RR rail car). N801 is the waybill number and N802 the waybill date. A 410 can bill many cars (the N7 loop repeats up to 500 times and N8 up to 499), so match each car to its own bill of lading and waybill.

F9, D9 and R2: Stations and Route

F9*41720*FORT DODGE*IA~
D9*63115*JOLIET*IL~
R2*QPRR*S*DES MOINES~
R2*QSWR*1~

The origin and destination stations carry the railroad's Freight Station Accounting Code in F901 and D901 and, when sent, the SPLC in F908 and D908. R2 lists each railroad with its routing sequence code and interchange junction. The route on the invoice should match the route on your 404 and the 417. If it does not, the rate may not be the one you expected.

N1 Loop: Payer, Shipper and Consignee

N1*PR*NORTHGATE GYPSUM PRODUCTS*25*NGP0071~
N1*SH*NORTHGATE GYPSUM PRODUCTS~
N1*CN*LAKELINE BUILDING SUPPLY~

N101 gives the role: PR payer, SH shipper, CN consignee. CN's guide also sends SF ship from and CO (its care-of party). N103 = 25 means N104 is the carrier's own customer code for the party, which is useful when one company has several billing accounts with the railroad.

L5, L0 and L1: Lading and Charges

LX*1~
L5*1*GYPSUM WALLBOARD*3275440*T~
L0*1***168000*N***336*BDL~
L1*1*6850*PC*685000~
L0*1~
L1*1*0.21*PM*8652****ENS*********412*MR~

CN's guide lists the L108 codes it sends, including ENS fuel surcharge (the X12 name is energy surcharge, fuel adjustment factor), SWC switching charge, STR storage in transit, DIV diversion and reconsignment, TER terminal charge, GST goods and services tax, and several provincial carbon tax codes. Other railroads use their own subsets. Build a per-railroad table of the codes you accept and route anything else for review.

L3: Total Weight and Charges

L3*168000*N***693652~

Add the L104 charges and compare the sum with L305 and with B3B04. In the sample: 6,850.00 + 86.52 = 6,936.52.

EDI 410 vs 210, 310, 110 and 810

Some railroads will send a 210 instead of a 410 on request; CN's guide offers both. If your freight audit already reads 210s, ask whether the railroad's 210 carries the car and waybill data you need before choosing it over the 410.

How to Audit a 410

410 Implementation Checklist

Before your first live 410 from a railroad:

• Get the railroad's 410 guide and confirm the X12 version in GS08 (CN recommends 004010)
• Confirm which charges come on the 410 and which are invoiced separately
• Agree which references will appear in N9, and add them to your 404s
• Load the railroad's L108 charge codes and map them to your freight cost accounts
• Link each 410 to its bill of lading, car and waybill from the 404 and 417
• Decide how corrected and balance-due bills are reviewed before payment
• Return a 997 for each 410; CN's guide makes this mandatory
• If you pay by EDI, agree on the remittance format, such as an 820
• Test a single-car invoice, a multi-car invoice, a correction and a cross-border invoice if you have them

To put rail freight into product cost, our landed cost calculator shows how freight is allocated across order lines. See the EDI document types reference for where the transportation sets fit.

Where OrderSync Fits

Every car on a 410 started as a customer order. The PO numbers in N9, the consignee and the quantities your customer expects all depend on that order being captured correctly, whether it arrived as an EDI 850, a PDF, an email or a spreadsheet.

OrderSync reads inbound orders in any format, matches customers, items and units to your catalog, and outputs clean ERP data or valid X12. Paste any 410 into the free EDI inspector to see it parsed segment by segment with a plain-English summary and any structural errors explained, or book a 15-minute walkthrough to see your own orders processed.

Frequently Asked Questions