Positive pay is a treasury management tool to prevent fraud. When you cut checks in Accounts Payable you communicate a list to your bank. The list includes the check numbers, date of payment, payees and amounts. The bank will only pay checks presented that are on the list and that match. According to the Knowledgebase,Financial Edge does not handle positive pay. It seems to me to be a matter of creating an export that includes the data in a format the bank can read. Has anyone created such an export?

We just went through this with Wells Fargo. Each bank has a little bit different approach to this file. We got with the folks at WF to determine the fields the wanted, then designed a query to pull that info and exported it into an excel spreadsheet. The data requires a bit of manipulation after that, but it's not too bad. I would suggest you determine what fields they want, and would they accept the excel spreadsheet. I believe the excel spreadsheet can be imported by the bank into their positive pay software.

I agree, I would think that since most banks do this now, that Blackbaud would make this as easy as a click of a button. We had to create a query to pull this info and our IT department wrote a separate program that converts the info into a format that the bank can read. We found that when using any criteria or output fields in the query that pulled info from invoices resulted in checks being listed multiple times in the query, which then had to be manipulated later to get what we needed. It has made Positive Pay a very tedious process.

In theory this is a great service, and don't know why I haven't heard about it until today. Is it necessary to use "SafeChecks" with Positive Pay, or do you find that you can use any kind of check stock you want? What other kinds of costs/headaches are involved in setting this up other than those already lamented? This question originates based on the limited research I have done in the past five minutes. Thanks.

You can use any kind of check stock. There is a fee associated with the service - at least as Wells Fargo.

Blackbaud does have a 3rd party product for positive pay that runs as a plug-in. It is provided by Palmetto Tech Jeff Montgomery www.palmettotech.com . They are listed on Blackbaud's development partner portion of the website. http://www.blackbaud.com/company/partners/find_devpartners.aspx . We have used them and their product is simple to use and works very well right from within FE. Envision For Non-Profits Consultant for Blackbaud products [Email Removed] 727/442-1996 www.EnvisionFNP.com