Cutoff Times

A cutoff time is a wall-clock time that ACH files must be delivered to the Federal Reserve. As ACH is a batch payment method these cutoff times are the key component to batching payments. The Federal Reserve publishes their Processing Schedule but ODFIs typically require uploads 15-30mins prior to the Federal Reserve window. The Federal Reserve also publishes a list of holidays where processing does not occur.

Example with 30-min ODFI deadline

Next cutoff

When a file is queued, ACHGateway predicts the next automated cutoff that should upload it and returns that time as nextCutoff on the HTTP queue response. The prediction uses the shard’s Cutoffs.Timezone, Windows, and On setting:

• On: banking-days (default) skips weekends and Federal Reserve holidays
• On: all-days includes holidays but still skips weekends, matching automated processing

A file queued at an exact window time is scheduled for a later window that day, or the first window on the next processing day. Manual /trigger-cutoff processing can still upload the file earlier than nextCutoff.

Developers

Moov publishes a Time object in moov-io/base to assist with calculating banking days and when holidays are observed. There is also a bankcron Docker image for running tasks only on banking days.

Manual Triggers

ACHGateway supports manually triggering inbound or cutoff processing. A list of shards can be specified or all shards can be triggered.

Flushing ACH Files

There is an endpoint to initiate cutoff processing as if a window has approached. This involves merging transfers into files, upload attempts, and audit trail storage.

$ curl -XPUT http://localhost:9494/trigger-cutoff --data '{"shardNames":["testing"]}'
{
  "shards": {
    "testing": null,
    "SD-live": "ERROR: unknown host"
  }
}

Processing ODFI Files

There is an endpoint to initiate processing of ODFI files which could be incoming transfers, returned files, corrected files, and pre-notifications.

$ curl -XPUT http://localhost:9494/trigger-inbound
{
  "shards": {
    "testing": null,
    "SD-live": "ERROR: unknown host"
  }
}