The open standard specification (maintained by Intuit, Microsoft, and CheckFree) that defines the OFX and QBO file formats for exchanging financial data between institutions and software.
Understanding Open Financial Exchange (OFX)
Open Financial Exchange (OFX) is the open standard specification that defines how financial data should be structured for exchange between financial institutions, software applications, and services. It is maintained by a consortium originally formed by Intuit, Microsoft, and CheckFree (now Fiserv).
The OFX specification covers multiple data domains: banking (statements, transfers, wire), credit cards (statements, closing), investments (positions, transactions, balances), tax reporting (1099 forms), and bill presentment. The banking and credit card portions are the most commonly used by ecommerce sellers.
OFX is the standard that spawned the QBO file format (QuickBooks' variant) and the QFX file format (Quicken's variant). Both are essentially OFX files with platform-specific metadata added. Understanding the OFX standard helps explain why QBO, QFX, and OFX files are structurally similar and often interconvertible.
Why It Matters for Ecommerce
OFX is the standard behind QBO files, QFX files, and bank feeds. Understanding that these are all variations of the same standard demystifies financial file formats and makes it easier to troubleshoot import issues. When a QBO import fails, knowing the underlying OFX structure helps you identify malformed data, missing required fields, or encoding issues.
Practical Example
The OFX standard requires specific header fields: OFXHEADER, DATA, VERSION, SECURITY, ENCODING, and CHARSET. It then wraps all financial data in structured elements like <BANKMSGSRSV1> (bank message set) containing <STMTRS> (statement response) containing <BANKTRANLIST> (transaction list). QBO and QFX files follow this same structure with minor variations.
Related Terms
OFX (Open Financial Exchange)
An open standard XML-based format for exchanging financial data between institutions, software, and services. Supports bank statements, credit card statements, and investment data.
File FormatQBO (QuickBooks Online / Web Connect)
A variant of the OFX format used by QuickBooks to import bank transactions via Web Connect. Despite the name, QBO files work with both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop.
File FormatSGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)
A meta-language for defining markup languages, and the original basis for OFX 1.x file format (before OFX 2.x moved to XML). OFX 1.x files use SGML syntax without closing tags.
File FormatXML (Extensible Markup Language)
A text-based markup language for structuring data with custom tags, used by OFX 2.x, CAMT.053, and many other financial data standards. Human-readable and machine-parseable.
Related Tools
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