SAP Business One and TrueCommerce integration

What moves between them

The main flow moves outbound from SAP Business One to trading partners through TrueCommerce. Purchase orders from SAP Business One are polled on a daily or weekly schedule, formatted as X12 850 EDI documents, and placed on the TrueCommerce SFTP server. Inbound documents such as purchase order acknowledgments (855) and advance ship notices (856) are polled from TrueCommerce and mapped back into SAP Business One as supplier confirmations and expected goods receipts. Reference data such as item codes and trading partner IDs are mapped bidirectionally to ensure purchase order line items reference valid supplier products and ship-to locations.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector maintains persistent SFTP credentials encrypted and logs in to TrueCommerce's SFTP server on a schedule you define. On each run it queries SAP Business One's PurchaseOrders endpoint with an UpdateDate filter to find new and modified orders since the last poll, converts each purchase order and line item to X12 850 EDI format with your supplier codes and locations, and writes the file to the TrueCommerce SFTP directory using their required naming convention. It also polls the inbound directory for 855 and 856 documents, parses the EDI, maps supplier and location codes back to SAP Business One dimensions, and creates supplier confirmation records via the Service Layer API. SAP Business One session tokens expire after 30 minutes of inactivity, so ml-connector reuses sessions across requests rather than authenticating per call. Trading partner IDs and item mappings are configured during setup so each SAP Business One supplier and item maps consistently to the correct EDI identifiers. Because EDI functional acknowledgments use ISA control numbers for deduplication and TrueCommerce requires file naming conventions per customer, ml-connector handles both to avoid duplicates when a retry occurs.

A real-world example

A mid-sized distributor runs SAP Business One for purchasing and inventory management and works with 15 suppliers coordinated through TrueCommerce EDI. Before the integration, the procurement team exported purchase orders from SAP Business One as CSV, manually formatted them as EDI X12 files using a spreadsheet, uploaded them to TrueCommerce SFTP weekly, and then manually entered supplier acknowledgments and ship notices back into SAP Business One. This process took 4-5 hours per week and was prone to keying errors. With SAP Business One and TrueCommerce connected, purchase orders flow automatically on a daily schedule, suppliers acknowledge orders and provide shipment visibility within hours, and the procurement team spends that time on supplier negotiation instead of data re-entry.

What you can do

• •Poll SAP Business One for purchase orders and convert them to X12 850 EDI format, then upload to TrueCommerce SFTP on your schedule.
• •Retrieve purchase order acknowledgments (855) and advance ship notices (856) from TrueCommerce and create supplier confirmations in SAP Business One.
• •Map trading partner IDs, supplier codes, and inventory item numbers between SAP Business One and EDI standards automatically.
• •Maintain encrypted SFTP credentials, reuse SAP Business One session tokens to avoid authentication overhead, and handle EDI deduplication via ISA control numbers.
• •Provide a full audit trail of every order, acknowledgment, and shipment document exchanged so exceptions can be investigated and replayed.

Questions

Does ml-connector require a local Windows Integration Service or can it use TrueCommerce SFTP directly?

ml-connector uses TrueCommerce SFTP directly via encrypted credentials provisioned during your TrueCommerce account setup. No local Windows service is required. If you have a local Integration Service already deployed for other systems, ml-connector can use that instead depending on your configuration.

How does the integration handle SAP Business One's 30-minute session timeout?

ml-connector reuses authenticated sessions across multiple API calls rather than authenticating on every request, so it avoids the overhead and timeout risk of frequent login. If a session expires mid-flow, ml-connector re-authenticates transparently and retries the request.

What if a purchase order in SAP Business One has no corresponding supplier or item in the EDI mapping?

ml-connector skips the line item and logs the missing mapping so your procurement team can add it to the mapping table. The order is held until the mapping is complete, preventing malformed EDI files from being sent to TrueCommerce. Once the mapping is in place, the next scheduled run picks up the order.