[opensourcedex]

ach is a free, open source e-commerce platforms project written in Go and released under Apache-2.0. It has 570 GitHub stars, 214 forks and 17 open issues, and was last pushed 5 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #45 of 46 tracked projects in E-commerce Platforms, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 4 stars over the last 30 tracked days.

What is ach?

ACH is an Apache-2.0 Go library and HTTP service from Moov that reads, writes, and validates Automated Clearing House (ACH) files against the Nacha standards, built for developers who need to generate or parse ACH files inside their own payment software.

What it is

ACH is an open-source implementation of a reader, writer, and validator for Automated Clearing House files. ACH is the primary method of electronic money movement throughout the United States, and Nacha defines the file format and rules that govern it. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and ships in three shapes from one codebase: an HTTP server, a Go module, and a command line tool. The HTTP server is published as a Docker image, the library is published as the Go package github.com/moov-io/ach, and client libraries exist for both Go and Node/JavaScript. It is part of the Moov family of projects, each of which is focused on solving a single responsibility in financial services.

The concrete problem it replaces is writing and maintaining an ACH file parser and generator by hand. Teams that move money need to produce fixed-width Nacha-formatted files for upload to their ODFI, and to read files that come back, with validation at every layer. ACH provides that reader, writer, and validator directly, and supports generating and parsing all Standard Entry Class (SEC) codes while validating files according to the Nacha standards. An extensive set of examples in the github.com/moov-io/ach/examples package shows the reader and writer applied to various ACH transaction types.

Key capabilities

  • A reader, writer, and validator for Nacha-formatted ACH files, exposed through both the Go package and the HTTP API.
  • Support for generating and parsing all Standard Entry Class (SEC) codes, with validation against the Nacha standards.
  • A public Docker image, moov/ach, which serves on :8080 with no configuration required and exposes Prometheus-format metrics at :9090/metrics.
  • A Go module at github.com/moov-io/ach and a Node/JavaScript client at moov-io/ach-node-sdk.
  • OpenAPI-generated SDKs for calling the HTTP API from other languages.
  • An in-browser ACH file parser and a command line tool for local use.
  • Data persistence options for the HTTP server, plus configuration settings documented for Docker, Google Cloud Run, and the HTTP API.

Who uses it and how

  • Payment teams that generate ACH files for upload to an ODFI, using the library or the HTTP API rather than hand-rolling a Nacha writer.
  • Services that must parse and validate incoming ACH files before posting them to internal ledgers.
  • Go shops that embed the module directly, and JavaScript teams that call the Node SDK or the HTTP API from a separate service.
  • Operators running the container alongside other services, scraping :9090/metrics for Prometheus and routing traffic to :8080.
  • Teams that need event-driven upload and download of ACH files with operations, which Moov addresses with the separate moov-io/achgateway project, described as running in production.

Getting started

Pull and run the published image with docker pull moov/ach:latest followed by docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 9090:9090 moov/ach:latest, or add the Go package github.com/moov-io/ach as a module dependency. A Deploy to Google Cloud Run button and configuration settings for Docker, Cloud Run, and the HTTP API are documented in the project docs.

How it compares

The facts provide no list of paid products that this project replaces, so no direct commercial comparison is drawn here. Within its own ecosystem, ACH is the file-level reader, writer, and validator, sitting underneath the event-driven moov-io/achgateway engine that handles uploading, downloading, and operations. No other tool in this registry entry is named as an equivalent alternative, so it stands alone here as the Nacha file handling implementation.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must run the container or embed the module, expose the HTTP API on :8080, and decide on data persistence for the server, since the README documents persistence as an explicit choice rather than a default. Teams that need a full event-driven ACH engine with upload and download operations should not expect this project to cover that alone; they should look at moov-io/achgateway as well. The project is actively used in production and the licence is clear at Apache-2.0, but the scope is deliberately narrow: it handles reading, writing, and validation of files, and layers that simplify tasks or perform business operations sit above it.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

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moov-io/ach

Moov's mission is to give developers an easy way to create and integrate bank processing into their own software products. Our open source projects are each focused on solving a single responsibility in financial services and designed around performance, scalability, and ease of use.

ACH implements a reader, writer, and validator for Automated Clearing House (ACH) files following the Nacha standards. ACH is the primary method of electronic money movement throughout the United States. The HTTP server is available in a Docker image and the Go package github.com/moov-io/ach is available.

If you're looking for an event driven ACH engine for uploading/downloading files and operations we have built moov-io/achgateway and run it in production. Our article How and When to use the Moov ACH Library will help to generate ACH files for upload to your ODFI.

Table of contents

Project status

Moov ACH is actively used in multiple production environments. Please star the project if you are interested in its progress. The project supports generating and parsing all Standard Entry Class (SEC) codes and validating files according to the Nacha standards. If you have layers above ACH to simplify tasks, perform business operations, or found bugs we would appreciate an issue or pull request. Thanks!

Usage

The ACH project implements an HTTP server and Go library for creating and modifying ACH files. There are client libraries available for both Go and Node/JavaScript. We also have an extensive list of examples of the reader and writer applied to various ACH transaction types.

Docker

We publish a public Docker image moov/ach from Docker Hub or use this repository. No configuration is required to serve on :8080 and metrics at :9090/metrics in Prometheus format.

Pull & start the Docker image:

docker pull moov/ach:latest
docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 9090:9090 moov/ach:latest

List files stored in-memory:

curl localhost:8080/files

{"files":[],"error":null}

Create a file on the HTTP server:

curl -X POST --data-binary "@./test/testdata/ppd-debit.ach" http://localhost:8080/files/create

{"id":"<YOUR-UNIQUE-FILE-ID>","error":null}

Read the ACH file (in JSON form):

curl http://localhost:8080/files/<YOUR-UNIQUE-FILE-ID>

{"file":{"id":"<YOUR-UNIQUE-FILE-ID>","fileHeader":{"id":"","immediateDestination":"231380104","immediateOrigin":"121042882", ...

Google Cloud Run button

To get started in a hosted environment you can deploy this project to the Google Cloud Platform.

From your Google Cloud dashboard create a new project and call it:

moov-ach-demo

Click the button below to deploy this project to Google Cloud.

Run on Google Cloud

Note: If you get an error about the image being marked as "Do Not Trust" follow the below steps.

Error: You launched this custom Cloud Shell image as "Do not trust"
$ cloudshell_open --repo_url "https://github.com/moov-io/ach" --page "shell" --git_branch "master"
Error: You launched this custom Cloud Shell image as "Do not trust".
In this mode, your credentials are not available and this experience
cannot deploy to Cloud Run. Start over and "Trust" the image.
Error: aborting due to untrusted cloud shell environment

This error occurs when some security settings on your account / cloud shell are locked down. To run ACH you need to trust the image, so in the top-right click to restart this image as Trusted.

Click to "Return to default"

Then you'll need to clone down and launch ACH. Pick option #3 to clone this project.

cloudshell_open --repo_url "https://github.com/moov-io/ach" --page "shell" --git_branch "master"

Start the ACH server inside the cloned repository.

go run ./cmd/serverr

Connect to the web preview (e.g. https://YOUR-ACH-APP-URL.a.run.app:8080/files)

In the cloud shell you should be prompted with:

Choose a project to deploy this application:

Using the arrow keys select:

moov-ach-demo

You'll then be prompted to choose a region, use the arrow keys to select the region closest to you and hit enter.

Choose a region to deploy this application:

Upon a successful build you will be given a URL where the API has been deployed:

https://YOUR-ACH-APP-URL.a.run.app

From the cloud shell you need to cd into the ach folder:

cd ach

Now you can list files stored in-memory:

curl https://YOUR-ACH-APP-URL.a.run.app/files

You should get this response:

{"files":[],"error":null}

Create a file on the server:

curl -X POST --data-binary "@./test/testdata/ppd-debit.ach" https://YOUR-ACH-APP-URL.a.run.app/files/create

You should get this response:

{"id":"<YOUR-UNIQUE-FILE-ID>","error":null}

Finally, read the contents of the file you've just posted:

curl https://YOUR-ACH-APP-URL.a.run.app/files/<YOUR-UNIQUE-FILE-ID>

You should get this response:

{"file":{"id":"<YOUR-UNIQUE-FILE-ID>","fileHeader":{"id":"...","immediateDestination":"231380104","immediateOrigin":"121042882", ...

HTTP API

The package github.com/moov-io/ach/server offers an HTTP and JSON API for creating and editing files. If you're using Go the ach.File type can be used, otherwise you can send properly formatted JSON. We have an example JSON file, but each SEC type will generate different JSON.

Examples: Go | Ruby

Configuration settings

Environmental Variable Description Default
ACH_FILE_TTL Time to live (TTL) for *ach.File objects stored in the in-memory repository. 0 = No TTL / Never delete files (Example: 240m)
ACH_MAX_BODY_SIZE Maximum HTTP request body size accepted by the server. Parsed by docker/go-units (RAMInBytes): plain integers are bytes; suffixes like KB/MB/GB/K/M/G are 1024-based. 10MB (Example: 25MB)
LOG_FORMAT Format for logging lines to be written as. Options: json, plain - Default: plain
HTTP_BIND_ADDRESS Address for ACH to bind its HTTP server on. This overrides the command-line flag -http.addr. Default: :8080
HTTP_ADMIN_BIND_ADDRESS Address for ACH to bind its admin HTTP server on. This overrides the command-line flag -admin.addr. Default: :9090
HTTPS_CERT_FILE Filepath containing a certificate (or intermediate chain) to be served by the HTTP server. Requires all traffic be over secure HTTP. Empty
HTTPS_KEY_FILE Filepath of a private key matching the leaf certificate from HTTPS_CERT_FILE. Empty

Data persistence

By design ACH does not persist (save) any data about the files, batches, or entry details created. The only storage occurs in memory of the process and upon restart ACH will have no files, batches, or data saved. Also, no in memory encryption of the data is performed.

Go library

This project uses Go Modules and Go v1.18 or newer. See Golang's install instructions for help in setting up Go. You can download the source code and we offer tagged and released versions as well. We highly recommend you use a tagged release for production.

# Pull down into the Go Module cache
$ go get -u github.com/moov-io/ach

# Show the documentation for the BatchHeader package
$ go doc github.com/moov-io/ach BatchHeader

The package github.com/moov-io/ach offers a Go-based ACH file reader and writer. To get started, check out a specific example:

Supported Standard Entry Class (SEC) codes
SEC Code Description Example Read Write
ACK Acknowledgment Entry for CCD Credit ACK Read ACK Write
ADV Automated Accounting Advice Prenote Debit ADV Read ADV Write
ARC Accounts Receivable Entry Debit ARC Read ARC Write
ATX Acknowledgment Entry for CTX Credit ATX Read ATX Write
BOC Back Office Conversion Debit BOC Read BOC Write
CCD Corporate credit or debit Debit CCD Read CCD Write
CIE Customer-Initiated Entry Credit CIE Read CIE Write
COR Automated Notification of Change(NOC) NOC COR Read COR Write
CTX Corporate Trade Exchange Debit CTX Read CTX Write
DNE Death Notification Entry DNE DNE Read DNE Write
ENR Automatic Enrollment Entry ENR ENR Read ENR Write
IAT International ACH Transactions Credit IAT Read IAT Write
MTE Machine Transfer Entry Credit MTE Read MTE Write
POP Point of Purchase Debit POP Read POP Write
POS Point of Sale Debit POS Read POS Write
PPD Prearranged payment and deposits Debit Credit PPD Read PPD Write
RCK Represented Check Entries Debit RCK Read RCK Write
SHR Shared Network Entry Debit SHR Read SHR Write
TEL Telephone-Initiated Entry Debit TEL Read TEL Write
TRC Truncated Check Entry Debit TRC Read TRC Write
TRX Check Truncation Entries Exchange Debit TRX Read TRX Write
WEB Internet-initiated Entries Credit WEB Read WEB Write
XCK Destroyed Check Entry Debit XCK Read XCK Write
Segment Files
SEC Code Name Example Read Write
IAT International ACH Transactions Credit IAT Read IAT Write
PPD Prearranged payment and deposits Debit Credit PPD Read PPD Write

Command line

On each release there's an achcli utility released. This tool can display ACH files in a human-readable format which is easier to read than their plaintext format. It also allows masking DFIAccountNumber values with the -mask flag.

Download the latest release for your computer

$ achcli test/testdata/ppd-debit.ach
Describing ACH file 'test/testdata/ppd-debit.ach'

  Origin     OriginName    Destination  DestinationName       FileCreationDate  FileCreationTime
  121042882  My Bank Name  231380104    Federal Reserve Bank  190624            0000

  BatchNumber  SECCode  ServiceClassCode  CompanyName      DiscretionaryData  Identification  EntryDescription  DescriptiveDate
  1            PPD      225 (Debits Only)  Name on Account                     121042882       REG.SALARY

    TransactionCode   RDFIIdentification  AccountNumber      Amount     Name                    TraceNumber      Category
    27 (Checking Debit)  23138010            12345678           100000000  Receiver Account Name   121042880000001

  ServiceClassCode  EntryAddendaCount  EntryHash  TotalDebits  TotalCredits  MACCode  ODFIIdentification  BatchNumber
  225 (Debits Only)  1                  23138010   100000000    0                      12104288            1

  BatchCount  BlockCount  EntryAddendaCount  TotalDebitAmount  TotalCreditAmount
  1           1           1                  100000000         0

In-browser ACH file parser

Using our in-browser utility, you can instantly convert ACH files into JSON. Either paste in ACH file content directly or choose a file from your local machine. This tool is particularly useful if you're handling sensitive PII or want perform some quick tests, as operations are fully client-side with nothing stored in memory.

SDKs

Below are some SDKs generated from the API documentation:

Learn about ACH

FAQ

Is there an in-browser tool for converting ACH files into JSON? Yes! You can find our browser utility at https://moov-io.github.io/ach/webui/.
Is my data being saved somewhere? No, we do not save any data related to files, batch, or entry details. All processing is done in-memory.
What ACH transaction types are supported? We support generating and parsing all Standard Entry Class (SEC) codes.
Where can I find the official Nacha Operating Rules? You can purchase the most recent Nacha Operating Rules and Guidelines resource directly from their webstore. Additionally, Nacha has published a free ACH guide for developers.

Getting help

If you have ACH-specific questions, NACHA (National Automated Clearing House Association) has their complete specification for all file formats and message types.

channel info
Project Documentation Our project documentation available online.
Twitter @moov You can follow Moov.io's Twitter feed to get updates on our project(s). You can also tweet us questions or just share blogs or stories.
GitHub Issue If you are able to reproduce a problem please open a GitHub Issue under the specific project that caused the error.
moov-io slack Join our slack channel to have an interactive discussion about the development of the project.

Supported and tested platforms

  • 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu, Debian), macOS, and Windows
  • Raspberry Pi

Note: 32-bit platforms have known issues and are not supported.

Contributing

Yes please! Please review our Contributing guide and Code of Conduct to get started! Check out our issues for first time contributors for something to help out with.

This project uses Go Modules and Go v1.18 or newer. See Golang's install instructions for help setting up Go. You can download the source code and we offer tagged and released versions as well. We highly recommend you use a tagged release for production.

Releasing

To make a release of ach simply open a pull request with CHANGELOG.md and version.go updated with the next version number and details. You'll also need to push the tag (i.e. git push origin v1.0.0) to origin in order for CI to make the release.

Testing

We maintain a comprehensive suite of unit tests and recommend table-driven testing when a particular function warrants several very similar test cases. To run all test files in the current directory, use go test.

Fuzzing

We currently run fuzzing over ACH in the form of a Github Action. Please report crashes examples to oss@moov.io. Thanks!

Related projects

As part of Moov's initiative to offer open source fintech infrastructure, we have a large collection of active projects you may find useful:

  • Moov Watchman offers search functions over numerous trade sanction lists from the United States and European Union.

  • Moov Fed implements utility services for searching the United States Federal Reserve System such as ABA routing numbers, financial institution name lookup, and FedACH and Fedwire routing information.

  • Moov Wire implements an interface to write files for the Fedwire Funds Service, a real-time gross settlement funds transfer system operated by the United States Federal Reserve Banks.

  • Moov Image Cash Letter implements Image Cash Letter (ICL) files used for Check21, X.9 or check truncation files for exchange and remote deposit in the U.S.

  • Moov Metro 2 provides a way to easily read, create, and validate Metro 2 format, which is used for consumer credit history reporting by the United States credit bureaus.

License

Apache License 2.0 - See LICENSE for details.

Frequently asked questions

Is ach free to use?

ach is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does ach do?

ACH implements a reader, writer, and validator for Automated Clearing House (ACH) files. The HTTP server is available in a Docker image and the Go package is av

What is ach written in?

ach is primarily written in Go. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/moov-io/ach, and it has 570 GitHub stars.