Simmons Bank Positive Pay and Check Issue Files
Simmons Bank offers positive pay to its business and commercial customers as part of its treasury management services, listed on the bank's site as Positive Pay & ACH Filters. The service compares the checks presented for payment against a file of checks you actually issued, then flags anything that does not match so you can decide whether to pay it or return it. This page explains how positive pay works at Simmons Bank, what a check issue file generally contains, and how to build a file that matches what the bank expects.
If you already know your column order and just need to produce a clean file, you can do that with the free check issue file generator. If you are new to the concept, start with what is positive pay and the positive pay glossary.
How positive pay works at Simmons Bank
Simmons Bank delivers positive pay through its treasury management online portal, Treasury Connect. You log in at simmonsbank.com, choose the business login, and open Treasury Connect to reach the Positive Pay area. The bank describes both Check Positive Pay and ACH Positive Pay (referred to as ACH Filters), so the platform covers fraud screening on both check and ACH activity. This is standard positive pay rather than reverse positive pay, meaning you send the bank a list of issued checks up front instead of reviewing every paid item after the fact.
Inside Treasury Connect, positive pay runs through a Positive Pay widget. From the bank's own resources, the things you do there are Manually Create Check Issues, Upload Check Issue Files, and Make Decisions on Exceptions. When a presented check does not match your issued list, it becomes an exception, and you choose Pay or Return before the daily cut-off.
What goes in a Simmons Bank check issue file
A check issue file is the list of checks you wrote, sent to the bank so it knows which items are legitimate. Across banks, including Simmons Bank, a check issue file generally carries these elements:
- Account number: the checking account the checks are drawn on.
- Check or serial number: the number printed on each check.
- Amount: the dollar amount of the check.
- Issue date: the date you wrote or released the check.
- Action code: an indicator marking the item as issued or void.
- Payee name (optional): included only when your account uses payee positive pay, which checks the payee name as well.
Simmons Bank does not publish a single fixed layout that applies to every customer. Instead, the bank provides a Positive Pay File Format and Mapping reference, and Treasury Connect lets you map your file's columns to the fields the system expects. Because the exact order, delimiter, and amount format can be set per account, treat your own mapping as the source of truth, not a generic template. For background on the general structure, see the positive pay file format reference.
Uploading a check issue file in Treasury Connect
The general workflow at Simmons Bank looks like this:
- Log in to Treasury Connect and open the Positive Pay widget.
- Choose Upload Check Issue Files to import your file, or Manually Create Check Issues to key items in by hand for small batches.
- Select the import map that matches your file's layout, then submit the file.
- Review any errors the system reports, correct them, and re-upload if needed.
- Each business day, open the exceptions and decision them as
PayorReturnbefore the cut-off time.
Cut-off times matter. The bank grays out the Pay and Return options once the established cut-off has passed, so unreviewed exceptions follow your account's default rule. Read more on timing in positive pay cut-off times and on handling flagged items in positive pay exceptions.
Mobile decisioning and exception details
Simmons Bank also supports positive pay in its Treasury Management mobile app, where you can pay or return both ACH and check exceptions from a phone. On the Check Exceptions screen, each item displays the issued or paid amount, the account number, the check number, the date, and an exception reason, and you can open an individual item to view its check image. You select Pay or Return for the items you want, then select Review and confirm your decisions on the next screen. A bar counter at the bottom keeps a running tally of items still to decision, items to pay, items to return, and the total number of items.
Build a matching file from your check register
If your accounting software does not export a Simmons Bank ready file, you can build one from a check register using the free custom format builder. The steps are straightforward:
- Export your check register to CSV from your accounting tool.
- Open the generator and map your columns to account number, check number, amount, issue date, and an issued or void code.
- Match the exact column order, delimiter, and amount format your Treasury Connect mapping expects. If amounts are stored without a decimal point, confirm whether Simmons Bank uses whole-dollar or implied decimal values.
- Check the result with the file validator before you upload.
QuickBooks users can follow the dedicated steps in QuickBooks positive pay.
Verify your first file with the bank
Always confirm your first file directly with Simmons Bank before you rely on it. The bank assigns and approves the exact mapping at setup, and a column in the wrong place or a misread amount can cause the file to be rejected or, worse, let a bad check through. Send a test file, confirm it imported cleanly, and keep that approved layout. If you hit a rejection, see why a positive pay file gets rejected. For setup help, Simmons Bank lists Treasury Management Customer Service at 1-800-551-4471 and [email protected]. You can review the bank's own description of the service on the Simmons Bank Positive Pay & ACH Filters page.