How to create a Hancock Whitney positive pay file for Treasury Manager
Hancock Whitney runs positive pay through Treasury Manager, its commercial online banking platform for business and treasury customers, available on the web and through a mobile app. Positive pay works the way it works everywhere: each time you cut a batch of checks, you send the bank a check issue file listing every check you wrote. When a check is presented for payment, Hancock Whitney compares it against your issue file, and anything that does not match becomes an exception you review and decide to pay or return.
The hard part for most bookkeepers is not the bank screens. It is producing the upload file in the layout Hancock Whitney expects, because accounting software rarely exports it cleanly. This page covers where the layout comes from, the shape of the file, the upload workflow, and how to build a matching file with a free tool.
How positive pay works at Hancock Whitney
With Check Positive Pay, you transmit a file of check issuance information to the bank before disbursing checks. Hancock Whitney describes that file as carrying check numbers, amounts, and payee names. When each check is presented, the bank matches it against your file, and on a discrepancy an image of the suspect check is referred to you for a pay or return decision. Hancock Whitney also offers payee name verification, which checks the payee on the presented item against the name you listed.
Hancock Whitney offers two related options worth knowing about:
- Reverse Positive Pay. Instead of sending an issue file, you let all checks that posted the previous night come back for review the next morning, and you make pay or return decisions on each one. No issue file data is used. See positive pay vs. reverse positive pay for the trade-offs.
- ACH Positive Pay. This gives you a daily, online review of incoming ACH transactions so you can return fraudulent items inside the window allowed for businesses. More on this in our ACH positive pay overview.
Where the exact Hancock Whitney file spec comes from
Hancock Whitney does not publish a single universal positive pay file layout on its public website. The exact format for your account is provided by the bank at setup, through your treasury services contact or relationship manager, and it can vary by account and by the options you turned on, such as payee name verification. That is the honest answer: get your spec in writing before you build anything. Do not copy field positions from a blog.
That said, a check issue file generally carries the same core data, and a Hancock Whitney file will be built around these:
- Account number, the disbursement account the checks were drawn on
- Check (serial) number
- Check amount
- Issue date
- Action code indicating whether the item is issued or voided
- Payee name, optional, used when payee verification is active
One Hancock Whitney specific note: items with a stop payment status should not be loaded into your positive pay upload, since the bank treats those as ineligible and the file can fail. Stop payments are entered separately in Treasury Manager, which generates a file each morning that updates the positive pay status of outstanding checks. The field order, date format, delimiter or fixed-width positions, header or trailer rows, and exact action code values must come from your bank's document. Treat the list above as the shape of the file, not a finished spec. You can read the general field rules on our positive pay file format reference.
The general upload workflow
Once you have your layout and have run the check batch, the routine looks like this:
- Pull a register of the checks you issued: check number, payee, amount, and issue date.
- Convert that register into the format your spec describes, with the right action codes and date format, leaving out any stop payment items.
- Sign in to Treasury Manager and go to the positive pay section.
- Upload the file and confirm the bank accepted it, with totals and item counts matching your register.
- Each day, review any exceptions and make a pay or return decision. Hancock Whitney sets a 12:30 p.m. Central Time deadline for deciding on suspect items in Check Positive Pay, and decisions can be made from the Treasury Manager mobile app.
Submit issue files the same day you print checks, and always before your cutoff, so a legitimate check is never flagged simply because the bank had no record of it yet. See positive pay cutoff times for why timing matters.
Build the file from your register, free
You can map a check register to a Hancock Whitney style issue file with our free, browser-based tool. PositivePayMaker takes a CSV or Excel export and writes out a positive pay file. It runs entirely in your browser, so your check numbers, payee names, and amounts never get uploaded to a server.
Because the layout is account specific, use the custom format builder: set the column order, date format, delimiter or fixed-width positions, and action codes to match the document Hancock Whitney gave you. Save that arrangement and reuse it every cycle. If the bank sends a sample file, the built-in validator can check your output before you upload.
One step you should never skip: verify the very first file you generate. Confirm the bank accepts it cleanly and that the item count and dollar total match your register exactly. A single wrong column or date format can cause every check to reject. If you hit a rejection, our guide on why a positive pay file gets rejected walks through the common causes.