How do you pay vendors by ACH and check from an AP automation platform?

In MakersHub, you pay vendors by ACH or check by batching approved bills into payments, which an authorized person releases in a workflow separate from bill approval. MakersHub debits your account once per payment, sends an ACH credit or a check protected by positive pay, emails the vendor a remittance listing every invoice number and credit, and writes the payment to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage Intacct or NetSuite.

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A payment credit is the unit MakersHub meters payments in: one standard ACH or one mailed check is one credit, a batched payment covering 10 bills to one vendor is still one credit, and faster delivery uses more.

When this applies

You approve bills in one place and pay them in another: a check run printed from the accounting system and signed by a partner who has to be in the office, a bill-pay tool that pulls one lump sum and leaves your bank statement unreadable, or a bank portal where a vendor's bank details were changed by someone who should not have had access. Vendors call to ask where their money is, and all you can say is that it left your account.

The owner of a countertop fabricator signing about 300 checks a month: 

"We just wanted to get into 2026 with online bill pay, wanted to be able to stop printing and signing and mailing." 

On what a file-based bill-pay tool took away: 

"We lost the ability to include remittance information. We'll pay a check to a vendor, and that could be for 20 POs." 

A CPA firm manager on the lump-sum problem:

"That honestly was kind of a deal breaker for us. Our clients aren't going to want to see this lump sum."

How vendor payments work in the accounting system alone

QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Xero all record a bill payment, but only some of them move money, and the ones that do route it through their own bill-pay feature with its own fees, speeds and approval limits. Checks are printed in-house on check stock and signed by hand. Approval of the bill and release of the payment collapse into whoever has the login, and the audit trail is the email thread.

Add-on bill-pay tools solve the signing problem and create two others. Many debit your account in one batch and pay vendors from a clearing account, so your bank feed shows one transaction with the tool's name instead of one per vendor. And the vendor's remittance often loses the invoice detail, so a payment covering twenty invoices arrives as a single amount.

How MakersHub pays vendors.

1. Approved bills land in Accounts Payable with payment details attached. A bill reaches the AP tab after its approval workflow. Each vendor record holds a payment method: ACH details and a supporting document, a check address, or nothing yet. 
   
   Where nothing is on file, one click sends the vendor a single-use encrypted link that references the invoice; the vendor enters bank details or a mailing address and uploads a voided check, you are notified, and the method locks. Changing it means archiving the method and requesting again, with every step time- and IP-stamped. MakersHub does not import bank details from your accounting system, by design. 
   
   Payment fraud against businesses is large: the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports more than $55 billion in exposed losses to business email compromise, scams that target the people who send legitimate payments. MakersHub is SOC 2 Type II certified, with Positive Pay protection on check payments and encrypted collection of vendor bank details. SOC 2 is an independent audit of how a company protects customer data.

2. Bills are scheduled into payments, batched by vendor. Select 200 bills across 25 vendors and MakersHub creates 25 payments, each covering that vendor's bills; a toggle schedules bills individually instead. Vendor credits are read like bills, show as negative lines and reduce the payment. An early-payment discount within its window is applied in one click, with a terms-discount line written to the accounting system. Partial payments leave the balance open.

3. Two dates control timing. The payment date is when MakersHub debits your account; the remittance date is when the vendor should have the funds. Same-day delivery uses Same Day ACH, the faster settlement option from Nacha, the organization that governs the ACH network.. A lead-time setting backs the payment date off the bill's due date so funds land on the due date. Each payment's speed is chosen on its own, regardless of the size of the run.

4. Authorization is a separate workflow. Scheduling creates a payment with a status of scheduled, not authorized; no funds move until the authorization rules are met. Rules key on amount, vendor, Location or Class and stack: any payment needs the controller; payments over $50,000 need the controller; and the owner, a specific vendor needs two signers. Authorizers act from email or the app. Each user has a payment limit, and an admin override can be disabled. A rejected payment returns the bills to AP with a note.

5. One debit per payment, no clearing account. On the payment date MakersHub pulls the payment amount from your account by ACH debit, one debit per vendor payment, with a descriptor naming MakersHub, the vendor and the invoices. Your bank statement shows a line per vendor, so the bank feed matches the accounting system one for one. Every debit carries its creation, Fed submission and trace-number timestamps.

6. The vendor is paid by ACH, check or e-check. An ACH payment is a credit to the vendor's verified account. A check is printed and mailed from one of two mailing centers, with your memo line and up to six pages of supporting documents, and travels by first-class mail; it is registered with the bank under positive pay by API, so it clears only for that payee and amount. 
   
   An e-check is the same check as a PDF the vendor prints and deposits, for the vendor who needs funds today and has no ACH on file.

7. The vendor gets a remittance that explains the payment. The email states the amount, the payer, the method and the payment date, lists each invoice number and amount, each credit taken and each discount applied, and links to the original documents. Vendors stop calling to ask what a payment covered.

8. The payment record posts to your accounting system. When funds are pulled, a bill payment record is created in QuickBooks Online or Desktop, NetSuite, Sage Intacct or Xero against the bills it covers, so the bank feed matches and the bills close. 
   
   A payment made outside MakersHub is handled with Approve and Mark as Paid, which creates the bill and a payment record against the bank or card account used; a payment entered in the accounting system flows back and marks the bill paid in MakersHub.

9. Every check is tracked to deposit. A mailed check moves through created, processed, mailed with an image, delivered and deposited with an image of the endorsed check. A filter shows checks delivered but not deposited, so stale checks over 90 days can be stopped in bulk. A stop payment holds the funds in MakersHub; the payment is reissued to a corrected address, converted to ACH, or refunded to your account.

Accounting-system specifics

Funding. Payments fund from one or more verified US bank accounts per entity; a routing and account number plus a voided check or statement verifies in minutes. International vendors are paid in local currency at a live rate or in US dollars by SWIFT from the same account.

Proof

The CFO of a commercial HVAC and mechanical contractor, paying a 49-vendor, $263,000 run through MakersHub in one sitting, on the bank statement afterward: 

"Every debit says MH. I know it's MakersHub. It's got the name of the vendor, it's got the amount. It's as if all of my checks cashed the next day."

His outsourced finance partner, months later: 

"I love MakersHub on the payment side. It's so easy to get payments out the door and get people paid. Once you've had electricity, you can't go back." 

And on vendors without bank details: 

"Oh, you don't have ACH? Let me get you an e-check."

An accounting firm scaling bill pay for restaurant and medical clients, unable to export vendor bank details from its current tool, is moving its clients to MakersHub for individual debits with no clearing account, check images at mail and deposit, W-9 collection before payment and the 1099 flag set in QuickBooks automatically: 

"Pretty much a definitive answer that we are going to switch to you guys."

A bookkeeper whose client lost $9,400 when a remote-access intruder changed vendor bank details inside the accounting system's bill-pay feature, on MakersHub's locked vendor methods, single-use links and separation of approval from authorization: 

"Looks like the security is definitely tighter on your end." 

And after the demo: 

"It makes me feel like there's something safe out there."

What it doesn't do

MakersHub pays from your bank account by ACH debit; it does not charge a credit card as a payment rail today, so card-paid bills are recorded with Approve and Mark as Paid against the card account. Payments fund from a US bank account, so a Canadian or UK entity approves and codes in MakersHub and releases payment from its accounting system today.

Checks travel by first-class mail without a tracking number, and the e-check exists for the vendor who cannot wait for the mail. And vendor bank details are collected fresh through the vendor link rather than imported from your accounting system, which is slower on day one and the reason a changed account number cannot slip through.

Frequently asked questions