Merging files

Moov ACH supports merging an arbitrary set of ACH files together. This is useful for optimizing cost and network efficiency. NACHA files are limited to 10,000 lines (in their text format) and so Moov ACH merges valid files together where the FileHeaders match the same ABA routing numbers.

See MergeFiles and MergeDir

Merging accepts a Conditions struct which allows custom file lengths and dollar amounts per-file.

There are several key features of file merging:

• Duplicate Trace Number Handling: Duplicate trace numbers are allocated to separate batches within the same output file, adhering to Nacha regulations.
• Validation Options Aggregation: Aggregate ValidateOpts from all input files to apply non-zero values (e.g., true) uniformly across all batches and entries within the file, thus streamlining the validation process.

An example of merging ACH files can be seen below. Assuming we have two ACH files to merge (first.ach and second.ach) on disk, let’s read them and produce a merged file.

package main

import (
    "log"
    "os"
    "github.com/moov-io/ach"
)

func main() {
    // first.ach and second.ach need to have the same Origin and Destination ABA routing numbers
    // in order to be merged into one ACH file, otherwise two ACH files would be returned.

    first, err := readACHFilepath("first.ach")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("first.ach parsing error: %v", err)
    }
    second, err := readACHFilepath("second.ach")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("second.ach parsing error: %v", err)
    }

    mergedFiles, err := ach.MergeFiles([]*ach.File{first, second})
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("problem merging ACH files: %v", err)
    }
    log.Printf("merged into %d ACH files", len(mergedFiles))
}

func readACHFilepath(path string) (*ach.File, error) {
	fd, err := os.Open(path)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	defer fd.Close()

	file, err := ach.NewReader(fd).Read()
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	return &file, nil
}

Running the following code would produce (saved as merge.go):

$ go run merge.go
2019/05/23 13:07:37 merged into 1 ACH files