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For live payroll processing only

Positive Pay is a service that allows you to electronically share your check register with a selected bank. The bank will then pay only checks listed in, and using the same specifications as, that register, thereby reducing the likelihood of check fraud.

You can automatically create Positive Pay files to send to your bank but, currently, this feature is supported only for firm impound banks, and only using the Citizens or Citizens with Payee Name format. 

Once you have registered with the bank to use Positive Pay, follow the steps below to set up the bank to create Positive Pay files.

Setting up the bank account

1. To set up Positive Pay information for the firm impound bank account, choose Setup > Firm Information > Impound Bank Accounts.
2. In the Impound Bank Accounts screen, select the appropriate bank account and click the Edit button.
3. In the Positive Pay section, specify the file format to use by selecting it from the drop-down list.
4. In the Transaction start date field, select the date on which you want to begin including transactions from this bank account in Positive Pay files.
5. Click Enter to save your changes.

Creating and managing Positive Pay files

Follow these steps to create Positive Pay files to send to your bank.

1. Create and print checks from the bank account as usual.
2. Choose Actions > Process Positive Pay > Impound Bank Accounts.
3. In the Process Positive Pay Impound Bank Accounts screen, transactions are listed in the grid by bank account. Expand the list of transactions using the plus signs to view the transactions and select individual transactions by marking their checkboxes, or mark the checkbox next to the bank account to select all transactions from that bank account.
4. Preview the files by marking the checkbox next to the bank account or next to individual transactions and clicking the Preview Selected button.
5. With all applicable transactions selected, click the Create Files button to create the Positive Pay files and store them in the default file location, which is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

   Note: You can change the default file location for Positive Pay files in the File Creation tab of the Setup > File Locations dialog.

6. If necessary, preview the created files by clicking the Manage Files button to open the Manage Files dialog.

Positive Pay file structure

Some banks may not accept the Citizens Bank file format, but they may, perhaps, be willing to work on converting files to that format. The following table provides the positioning and maximum character information that a bank will need to accomodate the file structure.

*The first 15 positions of additional data, for each check, are displayed on the reconciliation reports and on the CD-ROM product.

**The Payee Name field is applicable only if the customer has subscribed to the Payee Positive Pay feature of Positive Pay.

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