Record Format:
The format of a primary Parsing command is as follows:
{=,<,>,x{Report[Section,Position,Length,Width,Column}][Value]Text}
Compare(=,<,>,x) and Value
Use these optional parameters to compare the value of the data in a section and add Text based on whether the comparison was equal to, less than, greater than, or not equal to the Value. If the comparison finds a match, then the additional Text will be included.
Section
Section identifier names are different for each bureau.
If a section occurs more than once, it will have a decimal number appended to it. For example, Experian Current and Prior Address information occur in the 336 section. If the report contains three addresses, they will be designated as 336.1 336.2, and 336.3. You can use .numbers to identify specific data items. If your segment only contains one data item, you may omit the decimal number.
If you want to specify just the first/current address, use {Report[336,37,{Report[336,35,2]}]} and only the first address will be returned. {Report[336,35,2]} is an embedded merge field and is used to get the length of the address.
If you want to specify all addresses, use {Report[336.*,37,{Report[336,35,2]}]} and all addresses listed in the 336 segments will be returned. The .* returns all 336 subsegments.
Consult the appropriate documentation provided by your credit bureau.
Position
The starting position of the data you want to read. You can use an embedded parsing merge field here.
This can be another parsing merge field if you need to pick out specific data from within a section. For example, you can use arithmetic operations to count to a specific position in the section.
For example, in an Experian ARF report, the primary applicant’s name is immediately followed by the year of birth within the 335 segment.
335=335002815JOHN C TESTFILE1951@
The length of the name is highlighted in bold. The name begins at the 10th position.
The following parsing command would get the year of birth by adding 10 to the length of the name and grabbing the next 4 characters:
{Report[335,10+{Report[335,8,2]},4]}
This will return {Report[335,10+{15},4]} which equals {Report[335,25,4]} and will return 1951
This essentially says: go to section 335, count over to the 25th character and grab characters 25, 26, 27, and 28.
Length
The length or number of characters you want to read. You can also use an embedded parsing merge field here.
Typically names, addresses, etc., differ in size. If your credit bureau reports provide the lengths of their data fields in a fixed position, you can use an embedded parsing command to read that number and pass it to your primary parsing command.
The numbers in bold are the number of characters in the name and occupy positions 10 and 11 in the section.
If one report had this name:
335=335002812JON CONSUMER1951@
And another report had a longer name:
335=335002824JONATHAN QUINCY CONSUMER1951@
You could use an embedded parsing command to pick out any name without lengths with one command.
For example:
{Report[335,10,{Report[335,8,2]}]}
{Report[335,8,2]} is the embedded parsing command and will return either a 12 or a 24. This makes the primary parsing command read either {Report[335,10,12]} or {Report[335,10,24]} which will return JON CONSUMER or JONATHAN QUINCY CONSUMER without having to specify the length of the data field.
Everything enclosed within the braces {….} will return a single data item, be it a name, address or risk score.
Width
The width of the output report field. You can use this to format the output of a printed report. Useful for lining up columns.
Column
Experian Parsed Reports separate address information with a slash (/). You can use the optional Column field to select the data before (A) or after (B) the slash delimiter. Refer to this example.
Example 1:
Scores are stored in the following Sections, depending on the bureau:
Experian – 125.1 Equifax – CP.1 TransUnion – SC01.1
You could use the following Record Format to pull out Fair Issac scores from your Experian reports.
NAME: “{Report[335.1,10,24]}”,SSN: {Report[322,9,9]},SCORE: {Report[125.1,9,3]},SCORE: {Report[125.2,9,3]}
This would be stored in a file with the following text:
NAME: “JONATHAN QUINCY CONSUMER”,SSN: 999999990,SCORE: 700,SCORE: 502
Example 2:
If you took out the field labels (NAME, SSN, SCORE) and used just Report like this:
Your textfile output would look like this:
“JONATHAN QUINCY CONSUMER”,999999990,700,502