EDI 997 Functional Acknowledgment:
The EDI 997 transaction set, known as the Functional Acknowledgment or FA, is sent as a response to other EDI transactions received. An EDI 997 serves as a receipt, to acknowledge that an EDI transaction, or a group of transactions, was received by the remote party.
It is important to note that when you receive an EDI 997 in response to a transaction you sent previously, you only know that your document arrived and was processed by the recipient’s EDI translator. It does not provide any indication that the trading partner agrees with the contents of the prior transaction, or that the transaction met all their business requirements. For example, a 997 sent in response to an EDI 810 (Invoice) transaction does not indicate that the pricing or terms in the invoice were accepted, only that that invoice transaction was received and identified.
At the most basic level, the acknowledgement will only contain an acceptance or rejection notification. However, the remote EDI translator will perform some validation of the EDI standards before responding. Therefore, at more advanced levels, some trading partners will send more detailed EDI 997s that describe individual elements that contain syntax errors when rejections occur.