The Silent Margin Killer in Your Business? EDI Errors You Don’t Know You’re Making

Imagine this: You’re a retail supplier with a strong product line, loyal customers, and solid sales.

But your margins are slowly leaking. You can't quite put your finger on it—until someone in finance flags a pattern of short-pays on invoices. After weeks of review, you discover the culprit: a misconfigured EDI translator quietly undermining your profits for years.

This scenario isn’t hypothetical. Suppliers across the retail landscape are being affected right now. And for some? It’s a seven-figure problem.

What You Don’t Know About EDI Can Hurt You

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the universal language between retailers and suppliers. It handles your POs, invoices, and credits automatically. But when there’s even a slight miscommunication in how your EDI translator interprets those transactions, discrepancies can lead to invalid deductions, misapplied allowances, or inaccurate invoice transmissions.

And most suppliers don’t even know it’s happening.

As HRG’s CEO Boyd Evert put it on a recent episode of The Savvy Supplier, “EDI is like high blood pressure. It’s the silent killer. You don’t know you’ve got a problem until you take the measurement—or until something breaks.”

One Mistake, Ten Years of Losses

In one real-world example shared by HRG, a supplier had not updated their EDI translator since 2016. A seemingly harmless assumption buried deep in the translator's logic caused a major retailer to misapply warehouse allowances for over a decade. The problem? The software converted summary-level discounts to line-level adjustments, violating the retailer’s invoice policies and triggering automatic deductions.

It wasn’t caught until leadership asked, “Why are we being short-paid?”

By then, the damage was in the millions.

Why Most Suppliers Don’t Catch EDI Errors

The core issue isn’t negligence—it’s visibility. Most EDI tools don’t allow suppliers to run full-scale discrepancy reports or analyze trends across all transactions. Spot checks are possible, but they’re not enough. Suppliers usually don’t investigate their EDI setups until there’s already been a financial hit.

On the retailer side, systems are designed to handle billions of data points and catch even minor inconsistencies. On the other hand, most suppliers operate with tools and practices that are decades behind.

That’s where HRG comes in.

HRG’s Secret Weapon: Retailer-Grade EDI Analysis

HRG was founded by former retailer auditors who understand how deductions happen—and how to prevent them. We use the same advanced filtering, sorting, and data analysis methods retailers use. Every transaction is preserved in raw EDI format and run through our warehouse for error detection.

More importantly, we don’t just identify the problem. We help fix it.

Whether we’re working with your EDI provider, reviewing your invoice setup, or training your team on best practices, we ensure errors are corrected at the source and that you recover what you’re owed.

Why You Need a Third Eye on Your Translator

Most suppliers outsource their EDI to third-party providers. That’s fine—but it’s not foolproof. Misunderstandings between teams, undocumented business rules, and outdated logic can all lead to recurring deduction issues.

A best-case scenario? We audit your system and give you peace of mind that everything is working correctly.

Worst case? We uncover a long-standing issue and help you recover lost revenue.

Either way, you win.

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