How to create a Wintrust positive pay file for i-BusinessBanking
Wintrust Financial Corporation and its community banks offer Check Positive Pay to business and commercial customers through treasury management. You manage it inside i-BusinessBanking, the web-based treasury platform Wintrust uses across its banks. Each time you cut a batch of checks, you send Wintrust a check issue file listing every check you wrote. When a check is presented for payment, the bank matches the check number, the dollar amount, and (if you use payee match) the payee name against your file. Anything that does not line up becomes an exception you review and decide to pay or return.
Wintrust also offers Reverse Positive Pay, where you review every check presented for payment and choose to pay, return, or adjust it without sending an issue file first. This page covers standard Check Positive Pay: where the layout comes from, the upload workflow, and how to build a matching file from a check register.
Where the exact Wintrust file layout comes from
Wintrust does not publish one universal positive pay format. Instead, i-BusinessBanking lets you define your own import layout through a Check Issue File Definition, and the bank's setup materials point you to a Check Issue File Guideline for the file type you need. The exact arrangement is account-specific. Confirm it with your Wintrust Treasury Management contact during setup, then build the file to match.
When you create a file definition, i-BusinessBanking asks you to set the same details that make up any positive pay file:
- File Type:
DelimitedorFixed - Field delimiter for delimited files: comma, dash, semicolon, or tab (comma is most common for a CSV saved from Excel)
- Text qualifier: double quote, single quote, or none
- Amount format and Date format
- Field Properties, meaning the position of each field. For a delimited file this is the column order (Column A is position 1). For a fixed file it is the start and end character of each field, so an
MMDDYYYYissue date starting at position 1 ends at position 8.
The data follows the general shape of a check issue file: account number, check (serial) number, amount, issue date, an issued or void action (i-BusinessBanking calls these Issue Type and Issue Action, where Add is the default), and an optional payee name required if you use payee match. You can also set defaults for the routing number (ABA/TRC) and account if your export omits them. Take field order and positions from your bank's guideline, not from a blog. The general field rules are on our positive pay file format reference.
The upload workflow inside i-BusinessBanking
Once your layout is defined and you 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 file definition describes.
- In i-BusinessBanking, go to Account Services > Positive Pay, then Import Issues, and upload your file against the matching definition.
- If your company requires it, the file routes for approval by another user before it is validated.
- Check the file status. Wintrust reports each import as
Completed,Completed with errors,Completed with notes,Pending Approvals,Rejected invalid format, orProcessing. You can view files imported in the last 40 calendar days. - Each day, review any exceptions and make a pay or return decision before the cutoff.
Two Wintrust specifics are worth a calendar reminder. The final cutoff for Check Positive Pay is 12 p.m. CST, and any exception left without a decision by then defaults to Return. Users with the right entitlements get an alert around 9 a.m. CST and a reminder about an hour before cutoff. Submit issue files the same day you print checks so a legitimate check is never flagged because the bank had no record of it yet.
Build the file from your register, free
Accounting software rarely exports a positive pay file. QuickBooks, for example, has no native positive pay export. You can map a check register to a Wintrust-style issue file with our free, browser-based 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, payee names, and amounts are never uploaded to a server.
Because Wintrust's layout is account-specific, use the custom format builder to set the column order, date format, delimiter or fixed-width positions, and the issue and void values to match the definition you set up in i-BusinessBanking. 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.
Verify your first file before you rely on it
One step you should never skip: verify the very first file you generate with Wintrust. Import it, confirm the status comes back Completed rather than Rejected invalid format, and check that the item count and dollar total match your register. A single wrong column or date format can cause records to reject. Once the first file clears cleanly, later runs are routine. To void an already-issued check, note that i-BusinessBanking does not let you flip an issue to a void directly. You delete the original item and re-enter it as a void.