Introduction
The pervasiveness of electronic check image exchange is increasing every day. More and more financial institutions are receiving, generating, and re-distributing Image Cash Letters (ICLs), or wondering how they can.
All My Papers has developed a set of software tools that will facilitate compliance with the Check 21 Act and automate check imaging. Financial institutions such as banks, credit unions, thrift associations, clearing houses, and their corporate customers will need new software to view, image process, extract data, and verify data.
Financial institutions need to adopt this technology to remain competitive. The old adage, time is money, is the primary driver. You can transport an electronic file to its destination much faster and less expensively than the physical transport of paper documents. This means you can process checks later in the day regardless of the weather. How you can compose, edit, and sort ICLs is the subject of this solutions section.
A cash letter is an inter-bank transmittal letter that accompanies cash items sent from one financial institution to another. The X9.37 file is the electronic image version of the cash letter. An X9.37 or Image Cash Letter (ICL) is the transmission of an electronic file to a Federal Reserve Bank or other financial institution, containing cash letter totals and individual items drawn on eligible endpoints. The electronic transmission contains the MICR information from the checks and total information for reconciling in standard format. An ECL is an Electronic Cash Letter (X9.37 file) with no image data and an ICL is an Image Cash Letter ( X9.37 file) with image data.
The X9.37 Image Cash Letter files may have multiple uses. They can be used to exchange funds with another institution or to print IRDs. In Remote Deposit Capture systems, they provide a standardized way of sending check image and deposit information from the capture site to the depositing institution.
A key process in taking advantage of the Check 21 Act is converting the captured check data into an Image Cash Letter file, also known as an X9.37 file. After the check image data is captured and the data extracted, the information is usually loaded into a database. Each database system or application stores data using its unique method and format. The database information including the pointers to the check image files and the extracted data can easily be formatted into a Comma Separated Value (CSV) format file.
The All My Papers AX9LIB Software Development Toolkit (SDK) has function calls to generate a valid X9.37 file using data stored in a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file. The appropriate fields containing the data are mapped to the standard specifications. The All My Papers Visual Basic source code (included free with the purchase of our AX9LIB toolkit) will generate CSV files from generic data types. Computer programmers can easily adapt this data from their database format.
Conversely, many financial institutions want to extract data from an ICL and store it in their archive systems or use the data in other internal applications. All My Papers software is able to take an X9.37 file and extract the data from the cash letter, bundles, items, and records and convert that into a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file. This CSV file can then be uploaded to an application, text editor, or database.
X9.37 File Format Converters
Different computer systems and environments will require different formats. All My Papers has a set of utility functions to convert:
- X9.37 to CSV
- CSV to X9.37
- EBCDIC to ASCII or ASCII to EBCDIC
- X9.37 file to/from Motorola/Intel
All My Papers makes it easy for the software data to work in the format or environment of your choice.
When an X9.37 or ICL is received by a financial institution, there may be a problem with some of the items contained in this file. These ICL files can be large (several hundred megabytes) with hundreds of check images and data. A financial institution may want to extract these items and generate a Return X9.37 or ICL.
To support Return processing, All My Papers uses a “pick list” to select items from a Forward X9.37 and converts it to a Return X9.37 file. The "pick list" includes the return reason. Selecting a few dozen items from a 100 megabyte file and creating a Return takes only a few seconds. The new files (original less the deleted items and the Return ICL) are recalculated and re-balanced.
The removed items can be processed as a Return X9.37 file that we discussed previously, or converted into CSV for upload into a database for other processes, depending on the architecture of the application.
Many large Image Cash Letter files contain hundreds or thousands of individual check images and data. A financial institution may receive hundreds of ICL files daily containing check images drawn on several different banks. One very valuable feature of AX9LIB is the ability to sort, extract, and then regenerate balanced ICLs based on the ABA routing number. Then a financial institution can send all the checks drawn on a particular bank in one single balance ICL.
All the check images in a group of X9.37 files can be sorted using a sorting function from All My Papers. This software sorts and merges X9.37 files. It replaces all the sorting pockets on a hardware transport with a number of virtual payor bank routing pockets. The results are Image Cash Letter bundles that would have been bundles of paper checks given to a courier, except now they are X9.37 files for each payor bank. Financial institutions can now paste, reassemble, recalculate X9.37 files based on sort results, and merge this data into a single ICL for the payor bank, using our software.
Split X9.37 Files or Bundles
Our SplitCashLetter function will create a new X9.37 file for each cash letter in the original file. The resulting files will have one cash letter. The SplitBundle function will create a new X9.37 file for each bundle in the original file. The resulting files will have one cash letter and one bundle in each file.
Editing a X9.37 Files
Similar to the process of generating a Return X9.37 file, the AX9LIB toolkit provides the functionality to edit an X9.37 file. This allows a user to select the items that are not valid, to edit or correct them in the X9.37 file. The X9.37 file totals are then recalculated. All My Papers uses a “pick list” to select items from within an ICL. A “Pick List” is a CSV file containing the Cash Letter Number, Bundle Number and Item Number of the Item to be selected. Users can select a “Pick List” to: copy, delete, append, prepend data contained within an X9.37 or ICL.
Using an application built with our toolkit, a user can get and set field functions, either reading and/or editing specific fields without the need to rebuild the entire file.
Balance and Test balance newly composed X9.37 files
For X9.37 files to be in balance it means that the contents of item records (25 and 31) total to the Control Records for bundles, cash letters and the file as a whole.
With our software, users can prevent duplicate X9.37 files (and IRDs generated from X9.37 files) from being generated. This is a very useful security feature. A function call analyzes the file and prevents processing the same file contents even with different file names and dates.
Click here to download a free trial version of the AX9LIB SDK
X9.37 File Viewer and Analyzer
A bank may be receiving X9.37 files from many different remote capture sites. These files must be checked for format and content validity. All My Papers has developed an application for X9.37 viewing and analysis. It is a .NET application that allows the viewing of the content of X9.37 files such as the check image, field values and record values. One can easily toggle between the check image (front and back) and the associated data fields to verify that they are correct and correlate. It is also easy to move through even large X9.37 files of several megabytes with the tree structure navigation pane that lets you pass quickly from bundle to item to record.
See information and download a free copy of the All My Papers X9.37 File viewer and analyzer at X9.37 File Viewer and Analyzer
Click here to download a free trial version of the AX9LIB SDK
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Creating, Editing, and Using Image Cash Letter, X9.37 Files