2026-11-09EDI Rescue

Your 997 says rejected. Here is what that does and does not tell you.

A 997 is a receipt. It says the file arrived and whether the group passed syntax. It does not say your data was right, and a rejected 997 often arrives with no explanation at all.

That is the trap: suppliers treat a 997 as acceptance, ship the order, and meet the real problem as a chargeback three weeks later.

Get a fixed quote Decode an 824

Reading the verdict

The AK9 segment carries the group status. Five values matter:

A accepted — syntax fine, nothing else promised.
E accepted with errors — it was processed, and something inside was wrong.
P partially accepted — some transaction sets passed, some did not.
R rejected — nothing in the group was processed.
M / W — authentication failures; rare, usually a certificate or key mismatch.

Why there is no detail

The 997 only carries AK1, AK2, AK5 and AK9: group and transaction-set level. It has no AK3 or AK4 segments, so it cannot name a segment or an element. That detail lives in an 824 (application advice) or a 999 (implementation acknowledgment, the 5010 replacement).

If you get a 997 only, ask the partner's EDI team for the 824 or the 999.
If they send neither, compare your document to the guide element by element. The rejection is usually a missing required field.

The four causes behind a rejected 997

In practice, rejection at group level is structural, not a value problem:

Envelope mismatch — the ISA or GS control numbers do not agree with what the partner expects.
Wrong version — 004010 sent where 005010 is required, or the reverse.
Segment count — the SE count does not match the number of segments sent.
Unknown sender/receiver ID — you are transmitting under an ID the partner has not qualified.

What to do in the next hour

Count the segments between ST and SE inclusive and compare to the SE value. Check the ISA sender and receiver qualifiers against the partner's setup sheet. Confirm the version. Then resend the whole transaction set, not just the failing part.

Questions

Does an accepted 997 mean the order is confirmed?

No. Acceptance is syntax. Correctness is the 824, and commercial confirmation is the 855.

What is a 999?

The 5010 implementation acknowledgment. It carries the element-level detail that the 997 lacks, which is why partners on 5010 send it instead.

Can I ignore a 997 with code E?

No. Accepted-with-errors means something inside was wrong and was probably dropped. It is the most expensive code to ignore.