How to create a Texas Capital Bank positive pay file for BankNow
Texas Capital Bank offers Check Positive Pay to its commercial and business clients as part of its treasury fraud suite, alongside ACH Positive Pay and Reverse Positive Pay. You run it through the bank's online treasury platform, BankNow (BankNow Treasury Services). Each time you cut a batch of checks, you upload a check issue file listing every check you wrote. When a check is presented for payment, Texas Capital matches it against your issued items, and anything that does not line up becomes an exception you 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 Texas Capital expects, because accounting software rarely exports it. QuickBooks, for example, has no native positive pay export at all. This page covers where the layout comes from, the upload workflow, and how to build a matching file from a check register.
Where the exact file layout comes from
Texas Capital Bank does not publish a single universal positive pay file format on its public site, and it should not be assumed from a blog. The exact layout for your account is set up by the bank, and BankNow stores it as a named File Mapping Type that you select at upload time. Because the mapping is configured per client, the field order, delimiter, date format, and action codes can vary by account and by the options you enabled, such as payee name verification. Get your spec, or confirmation of your mapping, in writing from your treasury contact before you build anything.
That said, a Texas Capital check issue file follows the same general shape as positive pay files everywhere, with these core fields:
- Account number, the disbursement account the checks were drawn on
- Check (serial) number
- Check amount
- Issue date
- Issued or void action code, marking whether the row is an issued check or a void
- Payee name (optional, present when payee match is active)
The bank's own guidance describes the upload as a CSV file, and one of its listed rejection reasons is an "invalid value/amount entered within the CSV file." Field order and the exact codes must come from your mapping, not a template. For background on how these fields behave, see the positive pay file format reference.
The BankNow upload workflow
Once your file is built, Texas Capital's user guide describes the BankNow upload steps as follows:
- Log in to BankNow.
- In the left navigation menu, click Fraud Prevention, then select Positive Pay.
- Select the Submit Issued Check File tab.
- Select the File Mapping Type from the drop-down list.
- Click Choose File to select your file, then click Process File to upload.
You can confirm the result afterward. From Fraud Prevention, then Account Reconciliation, the Positive Pay portal includes an Issued Check Processing Log under System Reports. A file shows as Unprocessed, Processed, Processed with Exceptions, or Rejected. A rejection commonly means a mismatch between the screen totals and the file's contents, an invalid value in the CSV, or a format that did not match the mapping you selected. Duplicate checks are flagged too, with codes such as 1002 (check already in system) and 1000 (check already paid).
Voids and exceptions
Texas Capital lets you handle voids two ways. You can void a check manually in the Positive Pay portal under Void a Check, where the Check Number, Check Amount, and Issued Date are all required to find and void the item. You can also include voids in your check issue file, but the bank's guide says you should contact Treasury Support for assistance first, since the void action has to be configured in your mapping. Do not guess at a void code; confirm it first. For more on void handling, see how voids work in positive pay.
Exceptions are reviewed in BankNow's Quick Exception Processing view, reached through Fraud Prevention and Account Reconciliation. Items needing a decision appear under Decisions Needed, and you click Pay or Return on each one. If you enabled payee match, the screen shows the payee comparison too. Work through these each day before your cutoff. For more on what triggers a flag, see positive pay exceptions explained.
Build the file from your register, free
You can map a check register to a Texas Capital style issue file with our free tool. PositivePayMaker takes a CSV or Excel export of your register and writes out a positive pay file. It runs entirely in your browser, so your check numbers, payees, and amounts never reach a server.
Because the layout is tied to your assigned BankNow File Mapping Type, use the custom format builder: set the column order, date format, delimiter, and action codes to match what Texas Capital configured for your account, then save that arrangement and reuse it every cycle. If the bank gives you a sample file, the built-in validator can check your output against the same shape before you upload.
One step you should never skip: verify the very first file you generate with Texas Capital Bank. Upload it, check the Issued Check Processing Log for a clean Processed status, and confirm the item count and dollar total match your register. A single wrong column or date format can sink the whole batch. Once the first file clears, later runs are routine.