Hungarian retail EDIFACT

Before and independently of the RTIR Online Számla, Hungarian retail trade exchanges ~500 million EDIFACT messages per year between retailers and suppliers: orders, deliveries, invoices, returns. EANCOM 2002 remains the standard, supervised by GS1 Hungary.

Hungarian and foreign retailers

EDIFACT messages used

• ORDERS. Retailer's order to supplier. Dominant volume. Common variants: standard order, promotional order (with PROMO segment), drop-ship order.
• ORDRSP. Supplier response: confirmation, change, partial/total refusal. Maturity varies per retailer — Spar and Lidl require systematic ORDRSP, CBA less strict.
• DESADV. Shipping notice (ASN, Advanced Shipping Notice) before physical delivery. Indicates packages, pallets, SSCC of logistic units. Enables scan-only reception.
• INSDES. Despatch instructions (rarely used in Hungary outside automotive).
• RECADV. Receipt acknowledgment after physical delivery. Enables self-billing for partners in that mode.
• INVOIC. Commercial invoice in EDIFACT sense. Always used between retailer and supplier — coexists with the NAV Online Számla flow (see dedicated section below).
• REMADV. Remittance Advice. Used by retailers to announce payments consolidating several invoices (offsetting, credit notes).
• PRICAT. Price catalog. Exchanged at relationship start and on each price revision.
• SLSRPT. Sales reporting to supplier (volume out-of-checkout, category management). Daily or weekly data.

GS1 Hungary — governance

GS1 Hungary (officially Magyar GS1 Egyesület) is the reference organization for EDIFACT standards and barcoded identifiers in Hungary:

• Hungarian GS1 prefix: 599 (on EAN-13 barcodes of products manufactured in Hungary).
• Members. ~12,000 member companies, mainly FMCG suppliers, mass-retail chains, industrial manufacturers.
• EANCOM 2002 subsets. GS1 Hungary publishes harmonized subsets for key messages (ORDERS, DESADV, INVOIC), in line with national variants (country codes, currencies, Hungarian VAT rates).
• Implementation Guidelines (IG). Members-only downloadable documents (~€80 per IG message). Updated annually.
• Certifications. GS1 Hungary delivers GS1 Datapool (product catalog) and GS1 Smart Search (product referencing for ASN) certifications.
• International ties. Representation within GS1 Global Office and the GS1 in Europe Council.

Networks and VANs

• AS2 dominant (~70% of flows). Classic configuration with signed MDN acknowledgments. X.509 certificates issued bilaterally between partners.
• OFTP2 (~5%). Some automotive flows (BMW Debrecen, Mercedes Kecskemét) over ENX network. Not dominant in retail.
• SFTP (~15%). Low-tech variant for small suppliers, hosted at the retailer's or a third-party VAN.
• HTTPS REST/SOAP (~10%). Emerging at new e-commerce / pure player suppliers. Not always EDIFACT in the strict sense (sometimes XML or proprietary JSON).

Major VANs present in Hungary:

• Comarch EDI Hungary. Comarch (PL) local office, leader on ~40% of retail flows. Infohub platform with SAP/Oracle connectors.
• EDITEL Magyarország. Subsidiary of EDITEL group (AT/DE/CZ). Central European retail specialist.
• GXS / OpenText. Historical presence for multinationals (Unilever HU, P&G HU, Coca-Cola HBC HU).
• B2BX (Hungarian). Local Hungarian VAN for SMEs and regional suppliers.
• Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Present via TCS BaNCS for outsourced IT suppliers.

Coexistence with NAV RTIR

• No native chaining. The standard EDIFACT INVOIC and the NAV XSD schema are independent. No mandatory cross-reference (neither NAV transactionId in the INVOIC, nor EDIFACT number in the NAV XML).
• Recommended best practice. Insert the legal invoice number (used both in INVOIC and NAV XML) in the shared invoiceNumber field. This way the retailer can cross-check via NAV queryInvoiceCheck if desired.
• Multi-channel flow. One legal invoice, two distinct technical carriers. VAT deduction and payment rely on the EDIFACT INVOIC (validated by retailer processes), not on the NAV flow (which is purely declarative).
• Integrator cost. Any Hungarian retail EDIFACT integration must include the NAV RTIR module in parallel. One of the two rarely suffices.

Common pitfalls

• Believing EDIFACT INVOIC is enough. EDI flow does not extinguish the NAV RTIR obligation. Many European suppliers discover RTIR after a first NAV audit and adjustment.
• Bad GLN / adoszám alignment. GLN identifies the partner in EDIFACT, but NAV requires adoszám. The GLN → adoszám mapping must be maintained locally, without duplicate errors (one GLN per adoszám, not one GLN per site).
• GTIN-13 vs retailer internal codes confusion. Lidl and Aldi use their own SKU codes alongside the GTIN EAN-13. Mapping must be bidirectional on each send.
• Outsourcing to VAN without governance. A VAN transmits flows but does not handle NAV RTIR compliance. Responsibility remains the supplier's. Clarify perimeters in the contract.
• Mixing HUF / EUR currencies. For multi-currency suppliers, INVOIC can be in EUR with indicative exchange rate; NAV RTIR requires the invoice in HUF (or EUR with explicit conversion + MNB rate). Frequent error.

Cross-links

• Hungary hub — full RTIR
• NAV Online Számla — B2B platform
• Hungarian automotive EDIFACT
• Hungarian VAT regimes
• Online pénztárgép cash registers
• GS1 Hungary — Magyar GS1 Egyesület
• GS1 EANCOM — global standard