Positive Pay is an automated fraud detection service offered by most banks. It compares the account number, check (or debit filter number for ACH payments), and amount of pending payments against a list of previously approved payments issued by the client. If your bank offers Positive Pay and you elect to use it, you'll need to approve payments made on your behalf by the AutoFile team in advance.
The AutoFile team uses your bank account to submit payments on your behalf to state agencies (read All about AutoFile and How to maintain your AutoFile account for more). You'll need to tell your bank which agencies will be debiting your account, typically by providing a fraud filter or a debit filter number for electronic transactions; and/or, which checks will be presented against the account for debit, typically by providing an itemized document. If you don't provide this information or edit any payment amounts that change, your bank will deny the payment. Sovos has no liability for late or rejected payments due to failure to manage the Positive Pay process correctly.
Setting up Positive Pay
No setup is needed to activate Positive Pay on Sovos's side. You'll need to tell your bank to set up Positive Pay on their end.
Make sure to notify your AutoFile representative that you're activating Positive Pay.
If your bank is not on the list of institutions below, reach out to ShipCompliant Support to inquire about adding it.
Banks currently supported for Positive Pay:
- Wells Fargo
- U.S. Bank
- Bank of America
- Rabobank
- City National Bank
- Bank of the West
Downloading a Positive Pay export
The Positive Pay export is a list of pending checks from the AutoFile team that you can provide to your bank.
This export only becomes available after returns are sent to the AutoFile team. It only includes checks, since the debit filter number is used to confirm ACH payments.
- In ShipCompliant go to Reports and click Accounting.
- Click Export.
- Select your bank's export and click Download.
Testing your Positive Pay setup
If you'd like, you can test that Positive Pay is working correctly before you need to use it to submit a payment. The process will vary depending on your bank.
- Download your bank's template (attached at the end of this article).
- Edit the template with the date (in the format indicated on the template), your account number and check information. Use a sample check number that can be approved by your bank.
- Delete the row of headers from your template. You should be left with just columns of data.
- Send this test file to your bank.