DESCRIPTION

The dtaus(1) program reads and writes German DTAUS files. DTAUS is an semi-acronym for DatenTr�gerAUStausch. It is used by German credit institutes in order to implement money exchanges between accounts and credit institutes. These files are always called DTAUS0.TXT.

Since they are shipped in a weird ascii format that is not quite readable and writable for human beings a special control format was invented. The dtaus(1) program reads and writes such a control file and generates a proper DTAUS file if requested or decodes one.

CONTROL FILE

The control file implements a very simple format which was invented only for use with the dtaus(1) program. Like with many *nix configuration files empty lines and those beginning with a hash mark (``#'') are ignored. The remaining file is splitted into three major parts: one BEGIN record (representing the A record), several regular records (representing C records) and one optional END record (representing the E record), which is ignored when the control file is read but is extracted from the bank file if one is decoded.

Here's a short sample for a control file:

  BEGIN {
    Art   type
    Name  Martin Schulze
    Konto 123545
    BLZ   2004002
    Ausfuehrung 23.12.2001
    Euro
  }
  {
    Transaktion transaction
    Name   Martha Schulze
    Konto  98832
    BLZ    2004003
    Betrag 20.00
    Zweck  Geb�hr Wohnheimnetz
    Text   Anschlu� u. 11+12.97
  }
  ...

Please note that several field names are used in both the BEGIN and the regular record. When used in the BEGIN record they denote your name and your bank account. When used in a regular record they are affiliated with your customers data.

You may use up to 15 fields entitled as Text. They will be recorded one by one and stored into additional data records using the same order. This way you could add a detailed description of the type of money transfer if you like. The contents of the field Zweck are most probably what the customer will see on their bank statements.

The field Ausfuehrung is optional and denotes the day when the entire transaction should be processed. The date has to be given as DD.MM.YYYY and will be translated into the resulting bank file literally. It may not be younger than the creation date of the file which will automatically be inserted by dtaus(1). The processing date also may not be more than 15 years later than the creation date.

Explanation of type

One of the following:

LK

Lastschrift Kundenseitig

GK

Gutschrift Kundenseitig

LB

Lastschrift Bankseitig

GB

Gutschrift Bankseitig

Explanation of transaction

One of the following:

Einzug

Bankeinzug

Gutschrift

�berweisung

Verm�gen [JJJJ]

Verm�genswirksame Leistung mit Sparzulage. Als Argument kann das Jahr angegeben werden, f�r das diese Leistung gilt. Wenn es weggelassen, wird, verwendet dtaus das aktuelle Jahr. Vom Jahr wird nur die letzte Ziffer verwendet, es mu� daher auch nicht vollst�ndig angegeben werden.

Vermoegen [JJJJ]

Wie Verm�gen, jedoch ohne Umlaut.

E-Cash

Lastschrift aus Verf�gung im elecctronic Cash-System

E-Cash-A

Lastschrift aus Verf�gung im elecctronic Cash-System mit ausl�ndischer Karte.

You may only use one of these for the entire file. You are not allowed to switch between Einzug and Gutschrift within the same file. If you require the credit institute to process both types, you'll have to provide two separate diskettes.

Support for Euro

From January 1st 2002 the currency in many European countries, Germany is among these, changes to Euro. Hence, money transfer changes from DM (formerly known as ``Deutsche Mark'') to Euro. The format specification of DTAUS was meant for DM but was modified in 2001 to support Euro as well. The current version of dtaus(1) supports both currencies. It defaults to using Euro, however. To switch to DM, simply add the keyword DM (or Euro respectively if this version was compiled without Euro support as default) to the BEGIN record. If no currency keyword is given, the compiled in decides (upstream source defaults to Euro).

Character Encoding

German Umlauts are converted into two 7-bit characters on the fly so you don't need to care about them. Since the DTAUS0.TXT file only uses uppercase letters every text is also converted to uppercase.

Except for the way records are delimited the format should be self explanatory.

RELATED TO dtaus…

dtaus(1).

DTAUS files use a special but simple and publically documented format. It is included in the distribution of dtaus(1) as dtaus.txt.