The BACS Businessmaster file is a sequential ASCII file containing a number of records.

The file type only supports the generation of a payment instruction in which all remittances have the same date.

Records can be a continuous string, or each record can be terminated by a carriage return and line feed.

Each record is 100 characters long, and contains all the information needed to generate a single remittance.

Any records that are more than 100 characters long are ignored, as is any record with the text “contra” at characters 65-70.

Barclays BusinessMaster Help Line state that the additional columns not mentioned in the layout, e.g. 15, 18 -35 etc. are used for other applications and can be ignored.

The maximum number of records per file is 999. If there are more than this number of payments, Access Accounts will create sequentially numbered files for import.

BusinessMaster can only accept records that contain a Header and Trailer with a field length of no more than 80 characters.

The Barclays BusinessMaster Help Line state no data is required to populate the header and trailer fields but can be used for internal purposes if required.

Fields within a record are not separated by delimiter characters.

This information is provided for guidance only; you should always confirm the details before passing the file to BACS software.