How to Create a Positive Pay File from AppFolio
AppFolio is property management accounting software that prints checks, sends eChecks, and runs ACH bill payments. It does not produce a positive pay file for your bank. There is no menu item that exports the fixed-width or CSV check issue file that banks expect, so you have to pull a report of the checks you issued and convert it yourself.
The good news is that AppFolio already tracks every check number, payee, amount, and date, and it will export that list to Excel or CSV. Once you have the file, you can map it to your bank's exact layout using a free browser tool. This guide shows which report to run, where it lives, the column details to watch for, and how to finish the conversion. It follows the same approach as our other software guides.
AppFolio has no native positive pay export
Like most property management platforms, AppFolio leaves the positive pay file to a third step. The platform handles printing and payment, but the file your bank loads is account specific, so AppFolio does not try to guess at it. Every bank wants a slightly different set of fields and a different order, which is why a generic export plus a format builder works better than a fixed feature. If you are new to the concept, see what is positive pay and positive pay for property management.
Pull the Check Register report
The report that holds your issued checks is the Check Register, found under Reporting > Reports, then under the Transaction Reports group. AppFolio reports can usually be customized to add columns, including the bank account and cleared status, so you can shape the view to fit your needs. The report works for positive pay as long as it includes the check number, payee, amount, and check date.
- Open Reporting, then Reports.
- Under Transaction Reports, click Check Register.
- Set the date range to the period you are submitting, for example the day or week you printed checks.
- If the report offers a payment type filter, set it to
Checks Onlyso ACH and eCheck payments are excluded. Banks only want printed paper checks in a positive pay file. - If you run multiple bank accounts, filter to the single account tied to the checks you printed. Positive pay files are submitted per account.
When the report looks right, use the Actions button in the top corner and choose Export as Excel or Export as CSV. A spreadsheet download is what you want here, not the PDF print option.
Column details to check before you convert
AppFolio's export is clean, but a few things trip people up. Review these in your spreadsheet before uploading it:
- Check number column. Confirm the check number is a real column and not buried in a reference or description field. The Check Register lists it directly, but a customized report has more columns, so make sure you grab the right one.
- Amount sign and direction. Checks are money leaving the account. If your bank's layout treats amounts as plain positive numbers, strip any minus signs or debit and credit labels. Decide whether your bank wants
1250.00or an implied decimal like0000125000. See implied decimal amounts if you are unsure. - Date format. The AppFolio interface usually shows dates as
MM/DD/YYYY, while exports may carry a different style depending on your settings. Many banks require an exact format such asMMDDYYYYwith no slashes, so plan to reformat the date column. - Checks only. If your export still contains ACH or eCheck rows, remove them. Only paper checks belong in the file. Confirm the payment type filter did its job.
- Void checks. If you voided checks in the period, decide whether your bank wants them flagged with a void status code. Read void checks and positive pay for how to handle them.
Convert the file with the free browser tool
With the AppFolio export in hand, open the free positive pay file generator. Upload the spreadsheet, then map your columns to the fields your bank needs, usually account number, check number, amount, issue date, and payee name. The tool runs entirely in your browser, so the check data never leaves your computer.
Because every bank's layout is different, use the custom format builder to match the exact field order, widths, and delimiters your bank specified. If you do not have a spec sheet, ask your bank's treasury or cash management team for the positive pay file format, then enter it once and reuse it. To understand the building blocks, see our positive pay file format reference and the fixed width versus CSV explainer.
Submit and confirm
Save the converted file and upload it through your bank's positive pay portal before the daily cutoff. If the bank rejects it, the usual causes are a wrong field width, a date format mismatch, or a stray header row. Our guide on a rejected positive pay file walks through fixes, and positive pay cutoff times explains why timing matters. The exact AppFolio menu labels can shift slightly between accounts and updates, so if a name does not match, look for the check or payment reports under the Transaction Reports area rather than a feature called positive pay, which does not exist in AppFolio. You can confirm the reporting features on the official AppFolio accounting and reporting page.