[ARCHIVE] Clarification on transaction times

Archived 2024-07-31. See CDS Guide, Data Formats, Schemas - DateTimeString

Question

What transaction time should a Data Holder (DH) provide in a case where the DH does not have the time of transaction available and it is not presented to customers in online banking or on statements?

Answer

This is up to the Data Holder. The recommendation is to pick a time (e.g. 00:00:00) and use that time consistently for all situations that meet these conditions.

Question

What is the expectation in a case when a transaction time is captured as a system time on infrastructure which is not located in Australia?

Answer

The DateTimeString allows for the specification of UTC time or a timezone based offset so all of these scenarios can be handled.  The date time should be correct according to the normative RFC so that the date/time can be correctly interpreted.

Question

If some (not all) transactions are stored as the local system time in one time zone and are not shown in DH’s digital channels or on statements – are DH’s required to share these times, potentially creating an inconsistent experience?

Or would returning the value "00:00:00" be considered compliant, as the data presented via API would be commensurate to digital channels?

Answer

Times stored in local system time in a specific timezone can be easily represented using a DateTimeString as you can simply include the timezone information.

Question

Note: this is a specific scenario requested by the community

Our source systems do not capture time components for a number of fields. In these cases we adopt an approach to use "00:00:00" as the time component for those fields.

This leads to the following situation where we have a date/time field of "2020-12-24T00:00:00" (which is in Adelaide time). But according to the CDR guidelines, it should offset relative to UTC, so that would mean "2020-12-23T13:30:00+00:00". Is this a correct approach?

Answer

While the scenario you describe is at the discretion of the Data Holder, the approach you are using would be considered appropriate.