What Is EDI?
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is an automated exchange of invoice data between your supplier and Toast. Instead of a paper invoice arriving with a delivery and sitting in a pile, or a photo you have to upload yourself, the invoice data arrives in your Toast Retail account on its own — already digitized.
Your supplier sends invoice data directly to Toast Retail, it lands in your account already digitized, you review and approve it, and it flows into your reporting, food cost, inventory, and accounts payable.
EDI invoice delivery is currently available for KeHE and Southern Glazer's. Support for additional suppliers is coming soon. If you use a different supplier, contact Toast Customer Care to learn about alternative automated invoice options. |
Supported Suppliers
EDI is currently supported for the following suppliers:
KeHE
Southern Glazer's
The Benefits
Operational automation. EDI eliminates manual effort — document printing, handling, classification, sending, and manual data entry all go away.
Data accuracy. Minimizing manual data entry means greater information accuracy. Item-level detail comes through exactly as the supplier sent it, so your costing and inventory numbers are built on clean data.
Faster response times. Invoices arrive as your supplier sends them, with no waiting on someone to photograph, forward, or scan them first.
Cost savings. Faster turnaround, fewer errors, and minimized paper use add up to real cost savings in labor hours and correction work.
Process visibility. Replacing paper with digital documents means better monitoring across every location, in one place.
What You Need To Get Started
Toast Retail invoice scanning
A supported supplier that you already order from
For each location you want connected: the location name, the address on the account, and your customer number with that supplier (customer numbers can be found on the invoice)
Note: EDI is set up per supplier, per location. There's no need to switch everything at once.
What To Expect
Setup takes a few weeks. Your part takes a few minutes. After that, it's with your supplier — commonly two to three weeks, depending on their queue.
Invoices start from activation. EDI delivers invoices going forward. Most suppliers can't send historical invoices, so anything from before your connection went live still comes in the way it does today.
Give the first few invoices a look. Item mapping settles after a cycle or two. A little cleanup early is normal.
You still approve invoices. EDI handles the data entry and most of the correction work. What's left is checking the invoice against what actually arrived — removing items that weren't delivered, and handling shorts, substitutions, and credits.
EDI covers invoices, not ordering, at this stage. Invoice data flows in; purchase orders do not flow out through this connection.
Related Articles