All data fields in the header, trailer and summary records must be filled by the merchant as indicated in the Elavon Global Settlement File (EGSF) specification.
Data fields cannot be packed. Lower case alphabetic characters are not permitted.
All unused character positions, except for numeric fields, will be expressed by blanks in the low order of the field.
Alphabetic and Alphanumeric data element fields shall contain left-justified strings of characters. Spaces are acceptable if no value is entered by the merchant.
All dates shall be in the format YYMMDD where “YY” denotes the year, “MM” denotes the month, and “DD” denotes the day unless otherwise indicated.
The (EGSF) file format is a fixed record length of 500 bytes in each record.
Numeric fields will be right-justified, left zero-filled and unsigned unless otherwise specified. If the field is noted as a signed field, meaning if the file total is negative the last position of the field would contain a letter or symbol. Valid values to be used if negative amount are listed below. These values are case-sensitive:
- } = 0
- J = 1
- K = 2
- L = 3
- M = 4
- N = 5
- O= 6
- P = 7
- Q = 8
- R = 9
For example: if the file total is negative $256.25, this field would contain 000000002562N