How to Create a Positive Pay File from AccountEdge
AccountEdge is desktop accounting software for U.S. small businesses, descended from the long-running MYOB product line for Mac and Windows. It records checks and supplier payments through the Spend Money and Pay Bills windows, and it keeps a running record of every disbursement in the Bank Register. What it does not do is produce a positive pay file in your bank's format. This guide shows how to pull your issued checks out of AccountEdge and turn them into a file your bank will accept.
A positive pay file is a list of the checks you issued, usually account number, check number, date, amount, and often payee name, that your bank matches against checks presented for payment. If you are new to the concept, see what positive pay is. The work is the same regardless of accounting package: get the issued-check data out, then map it to the bank's layout.
Does AccountEdge have a built-in positive pay export?
No. AccountEdge has no native positive pay or electronic-payments format feature. This is worth stating plainly because some larger systems do have one. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, for example, ships an Electronic reporting positive pay format that can generate the file from within the system. AccountEdge is not one of those systems. Its banking tools are limited to recording transactions, reconciling accounts, importing bank statements, and exporting transaction data to plain text. So you will export the check data yourself and convert it with a separate tool.
Even with systems that do have a built-in format, the canned layout often does not match what a specific bank wants, since field order, headers, and the date and amount formats vary by bank. When the built-in format does not match, you are back to exporting and reformatting, which is exactly the path below.
Step 1: Find the report or export that lists your checks
You have two reliable sources in AccountEdge for the data you need.
- Bank Register report: From the Reports menu, open the Banking tab and choose Bank Register. This report lists all checks, withdrawals, and deposits for the selected checking account within a date range, with a running balance. You can filter by account (a single account, not all of them) and by a Dated From and Dated To range, and sort by date or ID number. Available columns include the date, ID number, payee, and the withdrawal amount.
- File > Export Data: For a cleaner data file, go to File in the menu bar and choose Export Data. Pick Disbursements, and AccountEdge lets you choose which type to export: Spend Money, Pay Bills, Pay Employees, Customer Refunds, or All. Choose comma-separated, set the first record as a header, then select the fields you want such as check number, date, amount, and card name.
The Export Data route is usually better for positive pay because you get a clean CSV with just the fields you choose, instead of a formatted report you have to clean up.
Step 2: Filter down to issued checks only
Your bank wants the checks you wrote, nothing else. Watch these gotchas before you export:
- Set the date range tightly. Use the Dated From and Dated To filters to cover only the period you are reporting, typically since your last upload.
- Pick the right disbursement types. If you export All disbursements you will pull in electronic payments and Spend Money entries that were never printed checks. Limit the export to Pay Bills and printed Spend Money checks, and drop any payment recorded as an electronic or direct transfer.
- Exclude voided checks. A voided check in AccountEdge still appears in transaction history. Most banks want voids reported with a void status code, not silently dropped. Confirm how your bank handles them and see voids in positive pay.
- Remove deposits and receipts. If you used the Bank Register report rather than the Disbursements export, delete deposit rows so the file contains only outgoing checks.
Step 3: Watch the column and format details
AccountEdge text exports have a few quirks that trip up bank uploads:
- Date format. AccountEdge exports dates in the format set on your computer, usually
MM/DD/YYYY. Many banks require a different format such asYYYYMMDDorMMDDYYYYwith no slashes, so you will almost always have to reformat the date column. - Amount format. The export gives a decimal amount like
1250.00. Some banks require the decimal removed and the value zero-padded, an implied decimal, so1250.00becomes000125000. - Check number. The check number lives in the ID or Cheque No. field. Confirm it exported as a clean number and not a label like
CR000123. - CSV over tab-delimited. AccountEdge can export both tab-delimited and comma-separated text, and the comma-separated format is usually the cleaner choice for handing off to a converter.
For more on how layouts differ, read about fixed-width versus CSV files and the general positive pay file format.
Step 4: Convert the file with the free browser tool
Once you have your AccountEdge export, open the free positive pay generator in your browser. Upload the CSV, map your columns to the fields your bank expects, and the tool builds the output file. Everything runs in your browser, so the check data never leaves your computer.
Because every bank's layout is slightly different, use the custom format builder to set the exact column order, the date format, the amount format including any implied decimal, and whether the file is delimited or fixed width. Save your format once and reuse it for every upload. If your first file is rejected, the guide on a rejected positive pay file walks through the usual causes.