In a previous MSDynamicsWorld.com article “Tear up those paper checks! Dynamics 365 Business Central makes ACH easy”, I showed how easy it is to move from paper checks to ACH with Business Central. However, some of you may be stuck writing paper checks for some, if not all of your payment transactions. If this is you, Positive Pay is an important feature you should consider using.

Here is a good definition of positive pay:

Positive pay is an automated cash-management service employed to deter check fraud. Banks use positive pay to match the checks a company issues with those it presents for payment. Any check considered suspect is sent back to the issuer for examination. The system acts as a form of insurance for a company against fraud, losses, and other liabilities. There is generally a charge incurred for using it, although some banks now offer the service for free.

Problems implementing Positive Pay – a thing of the past?

First introduced with Dynamics NAV 2016, the early functionality was a bit of struggle, to put a positive spin on it (pun intended). Creating the export file for the bank required a developer, simply put. On top of that, even though banks were aggressively selling this service, their support and documentation to get positive pay up and running was not very good. The person that sold the service typically had no idea how to implement it and getting correct information as well as your file tested was difficult. Fortunately, we’ve made great progress in the past few years.

If you use Dynamics NAV 2018 or Business Central, you’re in luck! Not only does your system provide you with the functionality you need, but it is designed for a user to configure, test and implement – no developer needed. Banks are quickly catching up as well, and a simple search on “positive pay [BANK NAME]” may provide you with all the information you need to get started. If you tried and failed in the past, it’s a good time to have another go!

Example from Chase Fraud Protection Services Guide easily downloadable from the web.

Let’s set up Positive Pay

Setting up Positive Pay with your bank is a three-step process – you’ll need to set up the Data Exchange Definition, define the Bank Export/Import Setup, and assign the Positive Pay definition to your bank account.

Step 1 - Set up the Data Exchange Definition