EDI 864 Text Message: Implementation Guide

The EDI 864 is email that travels over your EDI connection. A retailer tells you an invoice was not paid and why. A supplier announces a holiday shipping cutoff. A government buyer sends a clarification on a solicitation. None of these fit a coded document, so they arrive as an 864: a subject, a sender, and lines of plain text.

The risk is simple. Your translator accepts the 864, sends back a clean 997, and files it somewhere nobody looks. This guide covers what the 864 carries, its segments, two live examples (a retailer's invoice rejection and a supplier's shipping notice), how it compares to the 824, and how to make sure a person actually reads each one.

What Is an EDI 864?

An EDI 864 is the Text Message transaction set defined by the ASC X12 standards body. Its X12 purpose statement says it gives users a way to electronically move messages, contracts, explanations and other one-time communications, and that it is intended to provide messages for people, not for computer processing. The same statement discourages using the 864 to carry "quasi" or home-grown transaction formats. It travels in functional group TX.

Authoritative references for 864 work:

• The X12 transaction set catalog defines the 864 and its segment order
• The Stedi X12 4010 reference lists the BMG, MIT and MSG segments with their element limits
• The Defense Logistics Agency's 864 implementation convention is a public example of a large buyer's 864 rules, including how to reference a related transaction
• Each trading partner that sends or accepts 864s says so in its EDI requirements, along with what it uses them for

Who sends it? Either side. Retailers and manufacturers send notices to suppliers. Suppliers send notices to customers. Government agencies and their vendors exchange clarifications on solicitations and awards.

Who receives it? In theory, a person. In practice, your EDI translator, which then has to hand the text to a person.

When is it sent? Whenever there is something to say that no structured document covers: a rejected document explained in words, a schedule change, a new requirement, a contact change.

Why does it matter? Because the content is prose, no system will act on it for you. If an 864 tells you an invoice will not be paid until you correct it, the only way that gets fixed is if someone reads it.

What 864s Are Used For

Which of these your partners actually send is in their EDI requirements. Many retailers have moved notices to supplier portals and email, and use the 824 for document rejections. The 864 is still common in automotive, manufacturing, government and some retail relationships.

Interactive Example: Invoice Rejection Notice

A grocery retailer's accounts payable desk tells a food supplier why two invoices were not processed. BMG02 gives the overall subject. Two N1 loops name the sender (FR, message from, with a PER contact) and the recipient (TO, message to). Each problem gets its own MIT loop with a message number and subject, followed by MSG lines of text.

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

Notice what the 864 does not give you: no invoice number in a coded field, no error code, no status a system can branch on. The invoice number is only in the text. That is the trade-off of a text message.

Interactive Example: Supplier Holiday Shipping Notice

Going the other way, the food supplier tells the grocery customer its plant will not ship over Thanksgiving, when the order cutoff is, and who to call. Two MIT loops separate the schedule from the contact details.

864 Structure at a Glance

The 864 is one of the simplest X12 sets.

In the envelope, GS01 is TX. Many partners use release 004010, and the version is set by their guide.

Key Segments Explained

BMG: Beginning Segment for Text Message

BMG*00*INVOICE REJECTION NOTICE~

BMG02 is the closest thing the 864 has to a routing key. If your partner uses consistent subjects, you can route on them. If not, route every 864 from that partner to a person.

DTM: Date/Time Reference

DTM*097*20261112*0805~

DTM01 is the date qualifier (097 = transaction creation), DTM02 the date and DTM03 the time. Partners use other qualifiers for effective dates or deadlines mentioned in the text.

N1, REF and PER: Who It Is From and To

N1*FR*HARBOR GROCERY AP*1*069854900~
PER*IC*ACCOUNTS PAYABLE EDI DESK*TE*5035550100~
N1*TO*PINE HOLLOW FOODS*1*081234567~

N101 codes FR (message from) and TO (message to) identify the two ends of the message, with an ID in N103/N104 (here 1 = DUNS). PER gives a contact with a name and number. A REF in the same loop can point to a related transaction. The DLA convention, for example, requires the reference number of the related transaction when an 864 accompanies another document.

MIT: Message Identification

MIT*001*INVOICE 30418 NOT PROCESSED*80~

One 864 can hold many messages. Separate topics into separate MIT loops so each can be routed and answered on its own.

MSG: Message Text

MSG*YOUR INVOICE 30418 DATED 11/10/2026 COULD NOT BE MATCHED TO AN OPEN ORDER.~

Each MSG is one line. Keep lines within the MIT03 page width and avoid the delimiter characters your interchange uses (*, ~ and the component separator), which will break the segment.

EDI 864 vs 824, 997 and Email

The short version: the 824 tells your system that a document failed and which one, so the fix can be tracked. The 864 tells a person, in words. When a partner rejects documents with 864s instead of 824s, you lose the automatic link between the rejection and the document, and have to rebuild it by reading the text.

How to Make Sure Someone Reads Your 864s

The most common 864 failure is not a mapping error. It is a message that was received, acknowledged and never seen.

1. Route every 864 to a monitored inbox or queue. Convert the BMG, MIT and MSG content into an email or ticket, with the sender and date.
2. Route by partner and subject where you can. An AP rejection from a retailer belongs with your billing team; a routing change belongs with shipping.
3. Pull references out of the text. Invoice and PO numbers in MSG lines are just text. Matching them to your documents, even with a simple pattern search, turns an 864 into something you can act on.
4. Keep the original. Store the raw 864 alongside the converted message, so you can show what the partner actually said.
5. Answer through the channel the partner asks for. Many partners do not accept 864s back. Their guide or the message itself says how to respond.

Rejections that are never read turn into short-pays and EDI chargebacks weeks later. Pasting a raw 864 into the EDI inspector lays out the subject, parties and each message as readable text.

Common 864 Errors and How to Prevent Them

864 Implementation Checklist

• Ask each partner whether it sends or accepts 864s, and for what
• Get its guide: which heading segments it uses, which N1 codes, and whether it uses BMG03
• Decide where inbound 864s go: an inbox, a ticket queue, a named person per partner
• Convert MIT and MSG content into readable text, keeping line breaks
• Store the raw transaction with the converted message
• If you send 864s, wrap text to the page width and strip delimiter characters
• Confirm the 997 handling: an 864 needs a 997 like any other set

For the wider set of documents your partners may exchange, see the EDI document types reference and the EDI compliance guide.

Fewer Rejections Start With Clean Orders, With OrderSync

Many 864s are rejections, and many rejections trace back to order data: a PO number keyed wrong, an item the customer does not recognize, a unit that does not match. Orders arrive as EDI 850s, emails, PDFs and spreadsheets, and each one has to be matched correctly before it turns into an acknowledgment, a shipment and an invoice.

OrderSync reads inbound orders in any format, matches customers, items and units to your catalog, and outputs valid X12 or clean data to your ERP. Paste any 864 into the free EDI inspector to read it as plain text, or book a 15-minute walkthrough to see your own orders processed.

Frequently Asked Questions