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Data Formatting Guide: Data Requirements

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Summary

Learn about the data requirements that a general ledger file must fulfill in order to be imported efficiently into MindBridge.

Overall requirements

  • The first row contains the names of the columns
  • The remaining rows contain only entries (i.e., no totals, subtotals, or subheaders)
  • There is one entry per row (i.e., no empty rows, no grouped entries)

Requirements per row/entry

Each row must contain valid values for all required fields.

  1. Account ID - Account number
  2. Effective Date - The posting date for the entry, in a supported format (preferably YYYY-MM-DD; a few other formats such as MM/DD/YYYY are supported). If date format is ambiguous, you will have the option to specify the format during the account mapping stage of ingestion.
  3. Amount, or Debit and Credit.
    • If Amount is used, all debits must be positive and credits negative.
    • If Debit and Credit columns are used, the values in both columns must have default positive balance.
    • The amounts must also satisfy the following:
      • The only characters allowed are numbers, periods ( . ) and negative symbols ( - ); all other characters must be removed (e.g., currency symbols, spaces, letters, and commas).
        • Use a period (.) to indicate decimal points (i.e., not commas, as is the convention in some areas)
        • Use a "-" (minus/negative) sign before the value to indicate a negative number (other conventions such as (), <>, or - after the number, are not supported)
  4. Transaction ID - Although MindBridge can sometimes suggest a Transaction ID, it is recommended to include a Transaction ID column that identifies groups of entries. If no Transaction ID column is provided, it is necessary to have one or a combination of multiple columns serve as a transaction ID. Please see the article series below for more information on what a transaction ID is and how to identify a better one for your data:

Column requirements

  1. Each column must contain only one field.
    • e.g., Account ID in one column, Account Description in another, not both in one column
    • each field must be in one and only one column — if Account ID is in column A for row 1, it must be in column A for all rows; cannot have some rows with Account ID in column B
  • Each column must be well-defined (delimited by a given character such as tab, comma, pipe (|), or in an Excel column; fixed width text is not supported, but our data formatting team can format well-formed fixed width text).

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