EffectiveTime (FIX tag 168)

UTCTimestampFIX 4.4FIX 4.2FIX 5.0 SP2

EffectiveTime (tag 168) is an UTCTimestamp field defined in FIX 4.4, FIX 4.2 and FIX 5.0 SP2. It appears in 10 message types, always optionally.

At a glance

Tag: 168
Name: EffectiveTime
Datatype: UTCTimestamp (String)
Format: YYYYMMDD-HH:MM:SS[.sss]
Dialects: FIX 4.4, FIX 4.2 and FIX 5.0 SP2
Messages: 10

What the specification says

Time the details within the message should take effect (always expressed in UTC (Universal Time Coordinated, also known as "GMT")

Descriptions are quoted from the FIX Orchestra sources under the Apache 2.0 licence.

A real message using tag 168

NewOrderSingle · FIX 4.4

Tag	Field	Wire value	Meaning
8	BeginString	FIX.4.4
9	BodyLength	137
35	MsgType	D	Order – Single
49	SenderCompID	BOARTEAM
56	TargetCompID	COUNTERPARTY
34	MsgSeqNum	2
52	SendingTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
11	ClOrdID	ORD-10042
54	Side	1	Buy
60	TransactTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
40	OrdType	1	Market
168	EffectiveTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
10	CheckSum	225

Edit and decode it yourself

Shown with | separators for readability. On the wire FIX uses SOH (0x01), an invisible control byte — and because BodyLength and CheckSum are computed over the actual bytes, the two forms have different checksums. Both are valid and both decode here.

Open in the full decoder →

Generated from the FIX 4.4 dictionary and verified at build time: it parses and validates with no issues. Open the decoder to try your own message.

Where tag 168 appears

Requiredness is a property of the message, not of the field: the same tag can be optional in one message and conditionally required in another.

Message	MsgType	FIX 4.4	FIX 4.2	FIX 5.0 SP2	Where in the message
CrossOrderCancelReplaceRequest	t	Optional	—	Optional	directly on the message body
ExecutionReport	8	Optional	Optional	Optional	directly on the message body
MultilegOrderCancelReplace	AC	Optional	—	Optional	directly on the message body
NewOrderCross	s	Optional	—	Optional	directly on the message body
NewOrderList	E	Optional	Optional	Optional	inside the ListOrdGrp component
NewOrderMultileg	AB	Optional	—	Optional	directly on the message body
NewOrderSingle	D	Optional	Optional	Optional	directly on the message body
OrderCancelReplaceRequest	G	Optional	Optional	Optional	directly on the message body
SettlementInstructionRequest	AV	Optional	—	Optional	directly on the message body
SettlementInstructions	T	Conditional	Optional	Optional	inside the SettlInstGrp component
SettlementObligationReport	BQ	—	—	Optional	inside the SettlObligationInstructions component

Wire format

A UTC date and time. The fractional-seconds part is optional, so two timestamps can be equal but not byte-identical. @boarteam/fix keeps the value as a string; format rules are checked by validate(), which reports validate/invalid-value rather than throwing.

Read tag 168 in TypeScript

decode.tsts

import { createFixEngine } from "@boarteam/fix";import { dictionary } from "@boarteam/fix-dict-fix44";const fix = createFixEngine(dictionary);const { message, issues } = fix.parse(raw);const field = message.fields[168];field?.name;   // "EffectiveTime"field?.raw;    // the verbatim wire stringfield?.value;  // coerced to a string

Decode this in your own code

The same engine that produced the decoded example above is an Apache-2.0 npm package with zero runtime dependencies. It runs in Node and in the browser, and parse() returns problems as data instead of throwing.

npm i @boarteam/fix @boarteam/fix-dict-fix44

Try the decoder Source on GitHub