The Hash Total does not match the content of this file

When uploading your batch file to your bank for processing you sometimes get the error message "The Hash Total does not match the content of this file" (this version is from BNZ, but other banks will have similar messages) in conjunction with other errors about bank account numbers.

The Hash Total error is always a byproduct of another error - fix the other error(s) and this one will go away.  In almost every case it is the result of a bad customer bank account number.  You will usually have other reported errors about bank account numbers being missing or invalid.  You may need to open your upload file in a text editor to find the line number with the bank account error.  If you can't read the file easily, change the file extension to .csv and open in Excel - BUT DO NOT SAVE THE FILE IN EXCEL (as this will corrupt the data). 

The solution is to get the correct bank account number and update this (Xero users this is stored in the Xero Contact Bank Account field). Then you can download the batch again from the Collection History page and resubmit to the bank. If your bank account number is valid then the batch will be accepted and processed.

If you can't get a valid bank account number then you need to contact uCollect Support - we can remove this line from the batch, but that needs to be done manually (we recommend doing your uploads early in your day to ensure that support has time to respond to questions - we are not 24 hours).

Another common cause of error is opening the file in Excel and saving it before uploading to the bank. Excel always corrupts these files. If you think that this may have happened, download a clean version from the Collection History page and upload directly to your bank and see if this solves the issue.