An EDI 830 Planning Schedule/Material Release is the electronic version of a document that specifies information regarding a planned schedule for an order and/or the commitment of materials on the part of the supplier. EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange. Companies use EDI to reduce the errors and costs associated with the manual keying of data, and to speed up the process of sending and receiving EDI 830's.

The 830 Planning Schedule/Material Release is sent by a trading parnter, and it contains relevant instructions including the expected quantities of items in the order and the required range of dates that they may be received.

EDI is a mature electronic document format that has been carefully defined both by the companies that require their trading partners to use EDI and by standards bodies. The two recognized standards for EDI are ANSI X.12 and UN/EDIFACT. ANSI X.12 is by far the most widely used standard in the United States. UN/EDIFACT is more popular outside the United States, although it is used by US automotive manufactures.

Each EDI Planning Schedule/Material Release document will have data organized into segments and data elements. Each segment contains at least one data element. Each data element is a data field. The standards bodies have allowed for every conceivable possibility for data on the EDI Planning Schedule/Material Release document. Any one company will use a small subset of the available choices within the ANS X.12 or UN/EDIFACT standards.

Each company that requires its suppliers to use EDI will have an EDI Guide or mapping document. The EDI Guide will specify each segment and data element, the allowable values for each, and the applicable business rules that must be followed. EDI guides are detailed and extensive. It is not unusual for an EDI Guide to be more than 100 pages long.