A new standard is in the works for the messages that banks useto report cash management information to corporate treasuries, andaccording to a recent survey of finance executives, that newstandard can't arrive too soon.

Messages about things like bank account balances, lockboxservices and controlled disbursements currently use a BankAdministration Institute (BAI) format that was last updated in1987. In the more than two decades since then, banks have respondedto changes in the services they offer by independently adjustingthe messaging format, forcing treasuries to make alterations totheir workstations and other technology to deal with the variationsin the messages from different banks.

Eighty-four percent of the more than 1,100 finance professionalssurveyed by the Association for Financial Professionals say theywant the BAI format to be standardized across all banks, and 44%would also like to see the tags standardized and the informationmade readable by both machines and humans.