Create a bank export format

What this achieves

A bank export format describes the exact CSV layout your bank expects for a payment file, including which columns appear and in what order. Matching the bank’s template here means the payment file you produce after a pay run can be uploaded without editing it by hand.

Required role: Administrator.

Before you start

Get your bank’s file specification. Every setting on this screen is dictated by the bank, not chosen by you, so configuring it without the specification means guessing at a file the bank will reject.

Steps

Go to Payroll → Bank Export Formats.
Select Add Format.
Enter a Name and a Code.

Example: Barclays UK — payroll.
Set the Delimiter and the Encoding to match the bank’s specification.
Set Include header row according to whether the bank expects one.
Add each column with Add Column, entering its Header label, and use the arrows to put the columns in the order the bank requires.
Set the amount formatting — Decimals, Thousands, and Decimal separator.
Choose the Reference field.
Set Use as default format if this is the format to offer first.
Select Save.

Column order is the file

Columns export left to right in the order you arrange them. A file with the right columns in the wrong order is not a partially correct file — most banks reject it outright, and the ones that do not may misread a column as another.

Example: if the bank’s template expects account number before amount, arranging them the other way at HC Corp UK Ltd produces a file that fails validation at upload.

Amount formatting

The amount settings control exactly how net pay is written into the file, which is one of the most common causes of a rejected upload.

Option	Description
Decimals	How many decimal places the amount carries.
Thousands	The thousands separator, if the bank wants one.
Decimal	The decimal separator.

Example: two decimals with no thousands separator writes £1,234.50 into the file as 1234.50. A thousands separator in a comma-delimited file would break the row into extra columns.

Reference field

The Reference field decides which value a reference column emits, such as the employee number. Banks usually show this back on the statement, so choose the value your finance team will want to reconcile against.

Default format

Marking a format as the default is a convenience for the person exporting a file. It is worth setting if you pay through one bank, and worth leaving unset if you genuinely choose between formats each time.

What happens next

The format is used when a payment file is generated from a finalised pay run. Generating that file is a gated and audited action, because it carries employees’ bank details. Test a new format with your bank before relying on it for a live payment, since a format error is only visible when the bank rejects the upload.