Positive Pay for ADP Payroll Checks
If your bank requires a positive pay file and you pay employees through ADP, you have probably noticed the gap: ADP can print checks, but it does not hand you a file formatted for your bank's positive pay system. The payroll register has every number the bank wants. It just is not arranged the way the bank reads it. This page walks through pulling the right report out of ADP, lining it up with your check numbers, and turning it into the issue file your bank will accept.
What positive pay needs, and what ADP gives you
A positive pay file (also called a check issue file) is the list of checks you actually wrote. You send it to the bank after each payroll run. When checks come in to clear, the bank matches them against your list. Anything that does not match the check number, amount, or payee gets flagged before it pays. It is one of the cheaper fraud controls a small business can run, and many banks now require it on business checking accounts.
Every bank's file is built from the same handful of fields:
- Account number
- Check (serial) number
- Check amount
- Issue date
- Payee name (required by some banks, optional at others)
- A void or issued status flag (banks that accept voids)
ADP records all of this. The catch is that ADP's payroll products, including RUN Powered by ADP and Workforce Now, are built to run payroll and file taxes, not to format a treasury file for your specific bank. The reports menu gives you the data in a general report or spreadsheet. The bank wants those same fields in a fixed column order, a particular date format, and often fixed-width columns or a specific delimiter. Bridging that difference is the whole job.
Step 1: Export the payroll register from ADP
The report you want lists each paycheck with its net amount and pay date. In RUN Powered by ADP it is usually the Payroll Details report; in Workforce Now look for the Payroll History or detailed payroll register report. Both live under the Reports or Reports & Analytics menu.
- Open Reports and choose the payroll details or register report.
- Set the date range to the check date for the run you just processed. Match one positive pay file to one payroll run so check numbers stay clean.
- Choose all employees, or filter to those paid by paper check (direct deposit lines do not belong in a positive pay file).
- Export to Excel or CSV rather than PDF. You need editable columns, not a printout.
What you get is one row per employee with net pay and a pay date. That covers the amount and the date. What it usually does not include is the physical check number printed on each stub, which is the next piece to solve.
Step 2: Get the check numbers in
This is the part that trips people up. ADP assigns or you assign check numbers when the checks print, and the bank matches on that serial number. If your export does not carry the check number for each employee, you have a few options:
- Pull check numbers from the check register. If ADP is printing the checks, the check detail or check register report shows the serial number next to each net amount. Export that alongside the payroll register and match on employee and amount.
- Match against your accounting system. If you record ADP checks in QuickBooks or another ledger, the check number lives there per transaction.
- Hand-enter a known range. If checks ran in a continuous sequence from a known starting number, you can fill the column in order. Verify the sequence against the printed stubs before you trust it.
The goal is a single spreadsheet with at minimum: check number, amount, issue date, and your account number. Add the payee name column if your bank uses payee matching. Keep it to the checks in this run only.
Step 3: Convert it to your bank's format
Once you have a clean register with check numbers, it has to become the exact layout your bank expects. That is where a free tool helps. PositivePayMaker runs entirely in your browser, takes your CSV or Excel register, maps your columns to the bank's fields, and writes the issue file. Your check data never leaves your computer, which matters when the file holds account and check numbers. It is free, with eleven built-in bank layouts, a custom format builder for any bank not on the list, and a file validator to catch problems before you upload.
If your bank is one of the published layouts, pick it and convert. If it is not, open the custom format builder, set the column order, date format, and delimiter or fixed-width positions your bank's specification calls for, and save it so the next run is one click. Get the spec itself from your bank's treasury or business banking portal, or from your treasury contact. Banks publish their own positive pay file format, and that document is the source of truth; do not guess at field positions.
The Excel trap to avoid
One warning that applies to every ADP positive pay workflow: be careful editing the file in Excel. Excel likes to drop the leading zeros that banks expect on account and check numbers, and it rewrites date formats on its own. A check number of 00123 can silently become 123, and the bank rejects the row. Do your column matching in the converter rather than retyping numbers into raw Excel cells, and if you must touch a CSV in Excel, format the number columns as text first. After the file is generated, do not open and re-save it; even a small change can break the format the bank parses.
Verify the first file with your bank
The first time you run a new layout, treat it as a test. Generate the file, then confirm with your bank that it loaded cleanly and matched your checks before you rely on it for every run. Upload it through your bank's online banking or treasury portal, usually under a positive pay or check management section, and watch for an acceptance confirmation. Small businesses have until a posted cutoff each day to submit issue files, so build the export into your post-payroll routine.
When a paid tool makes sense
For most ADP shops running one payroll at a time, a free browser converter is enough. If you process high volumes or want the file pulled straight from QuickBooks, paid desktop tools exist. Big Red Consulting's PositivePay File Creator runs about $119 the first year and $99 a year after that, is Windows-only, and the QuickBooks Online edition needs Excel installed. Treasury Software's Bank Positive Pay is a Windows install in the roughly $29.95 to $89.95 per month range and ships with 350-plus bank layouts. MoneyThumb and ProperSoft sell paid desktop converters as well. Those tools earn their fee at volume or when you want tight accounting-system integration. If you mainly need to turn an ADP register into a bank file now and then, start free and verify the result.