Payment Run Builder: From Approved Invoices to a Bank-Ready Payment File
Turn your pile of approved invoices into a clean weekly check/ACH run — sized to the cash you actually have, with the controller approving the batch before any payment file is generated.
A web tool where you import approved invoices, the AI proposes a payment batch by due date and discount opportunity, you tune it to your available cash, the controller approves, and the tool exports a bank-ready ACH/check file plus remittance — and posts the payment entries.
Before you start
- A Supabase account (free)
- A Vercel account (free)
- An approved-to-pay invoices export (CSV) from your accounting system
- Your bank's payment file format (NACHA/ACH or check layout)
- Claude Code or any AI coding agent
The problem this kills
Every week the AP lead does the same anxious dance. Pull the list of approved invoices. Eyeball which ones are due. Worry about the ones with an early-pay discount about to lapse. Cross-check that nothing on hold or in dispute sneaks into the run. Add it all up, compare it to the cash the controller says is available, and start cutting things until the total fits. Then build the ACH or check file by hand — or worse, re-key it into the bank portal — and pray nothing got paid twice.
It's high-stakes, repetitive, and exactly the kind of work where one slip means a double payment, a missed discount, or a vendor who got paid while in dispute. You do not need to be a developer to put guardrails around it.
What you'll build
A simple internal web tool for your payment run. You import the week's approved-to-pay invoices. The tool proposes a payment batch — everything due inside your window, with early-pay discounts flagged so you grab the ones worth taking and don't miss the deadline. It shows the batch total against your available cash, and lets you tune the run: drop a vendor, defer an invoice, take or skip a discount, or make a partial payment until the total fits. Held and disputed invoices are blocked from ever entering a batch. When the run looks right, the controller approves it — and only then does the tool generate a bank-ready ACH/check file, produce remittance advice for each vendor, and post the payment entries.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The downloadable plan is a step-by-step file you paste into an AI coding agent. It opens by interviewing you about your business — your accounting system, the exact columns in your approved-to-pay export, your bank's file format, how you express discount terms, how you flag holds and disputes, and your real approval rules — so the tool is tailored to how you cut a payment run, not a generic template. From there it walks the agent through the data model, the import, the batch proposal, the cash-tuning screen, the controller approval gate, and the bank-file export. Every step ends with a ready-to-copy prompt. There's also a "No API yet?" path: import a CSV from your accounting system and export a clean bank file plus a payment-posting CSV, so you can build and use the whole thing today.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
This is real money, so the plan builds in the controls a finance team needs: login so only your AP team can use it; row-level security so you only ever see your own organization's invoices; a complete audit trail of who imported, edited, approved, and exported what, and when; a hard human-approval gate where the controller signs off on the batch and the total before any payment file exists; and duplicate guards so the same invoice can never land in two open batches — or get paid twice.
Who it's for
AP leads, AP managers, and controllers who own the weekly check or ACH run and are tired of doing it in a spreadsheet with their fingers crossed. If you can describe how you decide what to pay this week, you can build this.
You've got this — start with the plan, paste the first prompt, and answer a few questions about your run. Your first proposed batch is minutes away.