Format Specification

This module enables you to create and edit formats which can be used for import and export of data, for example, as payment formats for payments and customer payments.

A payment format is used in connection with the Banking module in Maconomy. For more information about setting up payment modes, payment agents, and so on, please refer to the description of the Banking module.

Using import and export formats, financial data from Maconomy can be imported from a file of a certain format or exported to other systems in a given format.

The Format Specification module is used for creating formats. A format is a specification of the content of a file.

Formats are, for example, used in the following cases:

• When you create a file with payment requests for your bank.
• When you receive a file from your bank containing information about payments into your accounts.
• If you need to export financial data from your Maconomy sys- tem to be used in another system from another vendor.
• If you need to import financial data into Maconomy, for example, from a system from another vendor.

What all these examples have in common is that Maconomy is not in control of the nature or structure of the ex- or imported data. That means the sequence of data, how you indicate that data belong to the same field in the database, how you specify a new record in the database, and so on. In example 1 above, your bank dictates the structure of the format. If you are using two different banks, they are probably using different formats.

For this reason, it is important to be able to control very precisely how data are exported from or imported into Maconomy. This is done by creating a format.

Usually a format has a certain structure. The structure is specified using record types. The format will consist of a record specifying the beginning of the file. After this follows a record which specifies the beginning of a section in the format and which specifies common information about the following set of data records. Several sections can follow before the file is concluded with a record specifying that the file is ended. This sequence can be represented like this for a payment format:

FileStartRecord

SectorStartRecord

PaymentRecord

SectorEndRecord

FileEndRecord

It can also be expressed in the following way:

FileStartRecord, (SectorStartRecord, PaymentRecord+, SectorEndRecord)+, FileEndRecord

When the structure is created, the individual elements in the structure are adapted from the guidelines issued by, for example, the bank for which you want to create a payment format. According to this you specify the content of the start record (for example, information about your company, your accounts, and so on), the various sectors (for example, which data should be transferred about a single supplier), and the payment records (which data should be transferred about each payment entry pertaining to the vendor in question). Furthermore, the end record is defined, which may, for example, contain the total number of payment entries contained in the file.

Then the format is saved as a file on disk. This file can then be imported into Maconomy using an import program and used as a payment format in the Banking module.

Certain payment formats do not contain the structure mentioned. Instead, only payment records are used, repeating all information about your company and the suppliers (like this: PaymentRecord+).

When the payment format (for example) has been imported into Maconomy, and the correct setup has been applied, a file can be created which contains the payments your company wants to perform. This file is sent to the bank, which can then execute the desired payments because the bank’s systems are able to read and interpret the file you sent.