EDI Reference / 997
997

Functional Acknowledgment

Either direction

The technical receipt — 'your interchange arrived and parsed' (or didn't).

The 997 is the EDI handshake: it says a functional group was received and whether it was accepted, accepted with errors, or rejected. It's not a business response (that's the 855) — it's the syntax-level 'I got your file.' Trading partners expect a 997 back promptly; a missing 997 means the sender doesn't know you got it.

⚠ Where it bites

AK9 carries the accept/reject status. Many retailers monitor 997 turnaround time as a scorecard metric.

Key segments

ISA GS ST AK1 AK9 SE GE IEA

Related documents

824 Application Advice

Business-level 'your document had a problem' — beyond syntax.

Got a real 997? See if it'd pass.

Inspect it segment-by-segment, or score it against a retailer's rules — free.

Inspect an X12 Readiness Check