August recap of Moov community working groups
The recap
This month marked the first meetings of the Moov ACH and ICL working groups. Our first of many ongoing monthly meetings where community members come together and discuss how we can improve our open source projects. These meetings started a few weeks ago when one community member asked a question about mobile check capture. What resulted was a lengthy discussion and, finally, a suggestion to host a call.
During the ICL call, we had roughly a dozen community members join for a lively discussion of a few topics. Early on, we decided that finding an open source solution to mobile image capture wasn’t going to be the best use of time for legal reasons. The conversation then took a turn, and we discovered some collective pain points.
Later in the month, it was time for the ACH kickoff call, and again we had a strong showing from the community. This discussion focused on making it easier for people to generate ACH files from standard invoices or file types. With so many people still using tools like excel to keep records, we must provide translators or, at the very least, guides to make this easier.
These calls created actionable issues and questions that we’re hoping the community can help take on. Take a look at the issue’s below, leave a comment or join the next workshop to help shape the future of fintech.
Image cash letter suggestions
X9 viewer that works on Mac
Many on the call raised the issue that there is no available X9 viewer that works for Mac. While we are working on something that would work in the browser, we opened this issue:
Expanded support for longtail of X9 formats in reader function
Many vendors use different formats, and it’s not entirely clear what the format is until the ODFI rejects it. Our proposed solution is to attempt to discover the format of a given file if it’s unknown. Read more about the proposed solution:
ICL format field guide
There is a lot of knowledge around ICL formats that aren’t widely available. During the call, Zach from HM Bradley suggested we create a human-readable “field guide” that explains all the different formats, vendors using them, and how to differentiate between them. This project will start soon and will live in the ICL documentation:
ACH suggestions
EDI record support
There is a wide variety of EDI records used throughout the private and public sectors. These records often follow the payment remittance that can take the form of an ACH. By supporting popular EDI records, businesses can more quickly and easily programmatically create ACH payments from their EDI records. We’re currently seeking input from the community on which records are most in demand for this service:
Translators for CSV/XSLS
As Wade said on our ACH working group call, “There are probably trillions of dollars in ACH payments that start as an excel file.” Considering this assumption, we floated the idea of creating a sub-package in the ACH project to turn CSV/XSLS files into ACH files. Check out the issue here:
Standard ACH workflows library
Between the low-level ACH library and the high-level Paygate API, there was a request for something to sit in between these two. This new project would handle common workflows that cover most ACH use cases. If this is a project that interests you, please give feedback on the issue:
If you’d like to join a working group, signup here:
These working groups have been invaluable for us to connect with the community. We love hearing from people using the libraries and get their feedback for improvements. We are continuing the ICL/ACH groups and launching a new working group around our Watchman project in September.
Thank you to everyone in the community who contributed. We appreciate everyone’s involvement in helping us make the financial world run more smoothly.
