Templates

Bank Accounts

Data Contract Template

Ensure data from bank accounts is fresh, complete, and reliable before it is used for payment orchestration, account verification, financial reconciliation, and downstream data consumption.

Data contract description

This data contract is designed for GoCardless, where bank account information is treated as a governed data product within a contract-driven data infrastructure that can provision and manage downstream interfaces such as BigQuery and Pub/Sub. For this use case, the contract gives GoCardless a reliable way to standardize sensitive bank account data by anchoring it to a defined contract_name, schema_version, owning team, a 24-hour freshness expectation on event_time, and core account fields such as bank_account_id, account_balance, and account_holder_name, helping the company preserve trust, ownership, and operational consistency for data that supports payment-related workflows and downstream consumption.

Dataset

Defines the dataset this contract applies to, including its source and scope. This is the single point of reference for what data is being validated and protected.

Dataset checks

Validations that apply to the dataset as a whole, including schema stability, data freshness, and overall structural guarantees. This contract includes a schema check that prevents unexpected columns and unexpected column reordering, a row count check to ensure the dataset is not empty, and a freshness check that requires data to be less than 24 hours old based on event_time.

Column checks

Column-level rules to ensure completeness, correctness, and consistency for individual fields. This contract enforces that bank_account_id, event_time, schema_version, contract_name, and data_owner_team are not missing, and it requires bank_account_id to be unique. It applies a length guardrail to bank_account_id, restricts schema_version to approved values, requires contract_name to match bank_account_information, and requires data_owner_team to match Bank Data Team. It also constrains account_balance to a reasonable numeric range and applies a length guardrail to account_holder_name when present. Also, account_balance and account_holder_name are validated if populated, but this contract does not require them to be present.

bank_accounts_data_contract.yaml

dataset: datasource/database/schema/bank_accounts

variables:
  CONTRACT_NAME:
    default: "bank_account_information"
  SCHEMA_VERSION:
    default: "1"
  DATA_OWNER_TEAM:
    default: "Bank Data Team"

checks:
  - schema:
      allow_extra_columns: false
      allow_other_column_order: false
  - row_count:
      threshold:
        must_be_greater_than: 0
  - freshness:
      column: event_time
      threshold:
        unit: hour
        must_be_less_than: 24

columns:
  - name: bank_account_id
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - duplicate:
      - invalid:
          name: "Bank Account ID length guardrail"
          valid_min_length: 5
          valid_max_length: 20
  - name: event_time
    data_type: timestamp
    checks:
      - missing:
  - name: schema_version
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Valid schema versions"
          valid_values:
            - "1"
            - "2"
  - name: contract_name
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Contract Name must match"
          valid_values:
            - bank_account_information
  - name: data_owner_team
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Owner Team must be valid"
          valid_values:
            - Bank Data Team
  - name: account_balance
    data_type: float
    checks:
      - invalid:
          name: "Reasonable account balance range"
          valid_min: -1000000
          valid_max: 1000000
  - name: account_holder_name
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - invalid:
          name: "Account Holder Name guardrail"
          valid_min_length: 1
          valid_max_length: 128

Data contract description

Dataset

Defines the dataset this contract applies to, including its source and scope. This is the single point of reference for what data is being validated and protected.

Dataset checks

Column checks

bank_accounts_data_contract.yaml

dataset: datasource/database/schema/bank_accounts

variables:
  CONTRACT_NAME:
    default: "bank_account_information"
  SCHEMA_VERSION:
    default: "1"
  DATA_OWNER_TEAM:
    default: "Bank Data Team"

checks:
  - schema:
      allow_extra_columns: false
      allow_other_column_order: false
  - row_count:
      threshold:
        must_be_greater_than: 0
  - freshness:
      column: event_time
      threshold:
        unit: hour
        must_be_less_than: 24

columns:
  - name: bank_account_id
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - duplicate:
      - invalid:
          name: "Bank Account ID length guardrail"
          valid_min_length: 5
          valid_max_length: 20
  - name: event_time
    data_type: timestamp
    checks:
      - missing:
  - name: schema_version
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Valid schema versions"
          valid_values:
            - "1"
            - "2"
  - name: contract_name
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Contract Name must match"
          valid_values:
            - bank_account_information
  - name: data_owner_team
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Owner Team must be valid"
          valid_values:
            - Bank Data Team
  - name: account_balance
    data_type: float
    checks:
      - invalid:
          name: "Reasonable account balance range"
          valid_min: -1000000
          valid_max: 1000000
  - name: account_holder_name
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - invalid:
          name: "Account Holder Name guardrail"
          valid_min_length: 1
          valid_max_length: 128

Data contract description

bank_accounts_data_contract.yaml

dataset: datasource/database/schema/bank_accounts

variables:
  CONTRACT_NAME:
    default: "bank_account_information"
  SCHEMA_VERSION:
    default: "1"
  DATA_OWNER_TEAM:
    default: "Bank Data Team"

checks:
  - schema:
      allow_extra_columns: false
      allow_other_column_order: false
  - row_count:
      threshold:
        must_be_greater_than: 0
  - freshness:
      column: event_time
      threshold:
        unit: hour
        must_be_less_than: 24

columns:
  - name: bank_account_id
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - duplicate:
      - invalid:
          name: "Bank Account ID length guardrail"
          valid_min_length: 5
          valid_max_length: 20
  - name: event_time
    data_type: timestamp
    checks:
      - missing:
  - name: schema_version
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Valid schema versions"
          valid_values:
            - "1"
            - "2"
  - name: contract_name
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Contract Name must match"
          valid_values:
            - bank_account_information
  - name: data_owner_team
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - missing:
      - invalid:
          name: "Owner Team must be valid"
          valid_values:
            - Bank Data Team
  - name: account_balance
    data_type: float
    checks:
      - invalid:
          name: "Reasonable account balance range"
          valid_min: -1000000
          valid_max: 1000000
  - name: account_holder_name
    data_type: string
    checks:
      - invalid:
          name: "Account Holder Name guardrail"
          valid_min_length: 1
          valid_max_length: 128

How to Enforce Data Contracts with Soda

Embed data quality through data contracts at any point in your pipeline.

# pip install soda-{data source} for other data sources

pip install soda-postgres

# verify the contract locally against a data source

soda contract verify -c contract.yml -ds ds_config.yml

# publish and schedule the contract with Soda Cloud

soda contract publish -c contract.yml -sc sc_config.yml

Check out the CLI documentation to learn more.

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