hTrade

hTrade

hTrade is a proposed new microformat that would provide a common means of representing financial transactions.

Introduction

There are many examples of financial transactions across the web and in desktop applications, including bank statements, purchase receipts, wishlists, PFM applications, etc. A standardized format would facilitate integration between vendors, financial institutions and applications to provide for far more robust financial accounting integration.

Format

There are many data formats used in financial systems to represent transactions. The vast majority of these are proprietary, typically resulting from an evolution from paper-based accounting to mainframe computing to electronic interchange networks to the web and now to mobile systems.

In General

A simple semantic format using (like hCard) object/property names in lower-case for class names. Financial transaction attributes would be mapped to nested XHTML elements.

Root Class Name

The root class name for an hTrade is "record". An element with a class name of "record" is itself called an hTrade.

Properties and Sub-properties

The properties of an hTrade are represented by elements inside the hTrade. Elements with class names of the listed properties represent the values of those properties. Some properties have sub-properties, and those are represented by elements inside the elements for properties.

Property List

hTrade properties (sub-properties in parentheses like this)

Required:

• date-posted (date-transacted, dated-created, date-scheduled)
• to-account to-account-number (to-account-holder)
• amount-posted

Optional:

• from-account (from-account-number, from-account-holder)
• date-hold-start (date-hold-end, amount-held)
• status
• type
• reference-number (card-type, periodic-rate)
• fee-amount (fee-type, fee-description)
• category-name (category-id, category-amount)
• image-type (image-front-url, image-back-url)
• tax-flag (tax-flag-type, tax-flag-amount)

Singular vs. Plural Properties

Singular properties: 'date-posted', 'date-transacted', 'dated-created', 'date-scheduled', 'from-account', 'from-account-number', 'from-account-holder', 'to-account', 'to-account-number', 'to-account-holder', 'amount-posted status', 'type', 'card-type', 'periodic-rate'. For properties which are singular, the first descendant element with that class should take effect, any others being ignored.

All other properties can be plural. Each class instance of such properties creates a new instance of that property.

Copyright

Per the public domain release on the authors' user pages (Clay Newton) this specification is released into the public domain.

Public Domain Contribution Requirement. Since the author(s) released this work into the public domain, in order to maintain this work's public domain status, all contributors to this page agree to release their contributions to this page to the public domain as well. Contributors may indicate their agreement by adding the public domain release template to their user page per the Voluntary Public Domain Declarations instructions. Unreleased contributions may be reverted/removed.

To Dos

• Complete survey of financial transaction attributes
• Draft