Understanding Trading Partners

In PeopleSoft EDI Manager, a trading partner is a business entity in an external company with which a business entity in your company does business.

When you set up trading partners in PeopleSoft EDI Manager, you need to define the internal structure of your company and, possibly, the companies with which you trade.

PeopleSoft Financials applications enable you to organize your company into multiple business units, each of which tracks its data somewhat independently. Each business unit likely does business with a different set of trading partners. When a trading partner submits an EDI transaction, the transaction must be addressed to a specific business unit or the EDI agent should know to which business unit to forward the transaction.

Conversely, the external companies that you do business with are not monolithic entities. They have different divisions, departments, or business units, and you might need to address EDI transactions to a specific entity inside that company.