Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll be exploring the latest improvements to Check Remittance in QuickBooks Bill Pay. Now you can more easily inform a supplier or vendor that their invoice has been paid.
Hey ProAdvisors; It's Jaclyn, and you're watching In the Know, where you get exclusive access to demos of Intuit product enhancements by the leaders who built them. Let's jump right in with Check Remittance.
Abby Chu: Thanks Jaclyn. I’m super excited to be here. My name is Abby. I'm a staff marketing manager for the QuickBooks Accountant Go-To Market Team. I'm very excited to share with you two updates where we've gotten a lot of accountant feedback around pay types in QuickBooks Bill Pay.
The first is Check Remittance and the second is Instant Delivery for ACH payments.
Let's jump into Check Remittance.
What we heard from accountants and their clients is that they need a way to confirm and prove when a check payment has cleared the vendor’s receiving bank. Lack of visibility into this has created some friction, and it's not anyone's fault in particular. When the check is sent, it may arrive at the office and a different team member than the project lead is the one who deposits that check into QuickBooks Bill Pay.
The project lead comes around a couple days later, and they're like, “What happened to that check?” They reach back out to your client who says, “Well, all I can see in my status is that it was sent.”
So now, customers can view and download those cleared check images directly in QuickBooks Bill Pay, which helps provide that concrete proof of payments. This can be used for your own status reviews or to provide to the vendor to make sure that they know what that check looks like, and to have the confidence that it was deposited into their account.
Let's jump into the Fast Facts:
- This is available to all QuickBooks Bill Pay users.
- It was fully available as of August 2025.
- It is available regardless of which QuickBooks Bill Pay plan you are on, or the roles and permissions your bill pay user is on.
So to view a cleared check, you'll navigate to the Bill Payments page in Expenses & Bills under My Apps, and click View Details next to the transaction you'd like to review. Click View check. If the bill payment is marked as complete, which you'll see in that green status bar at the top of the page—and the check image has cleared—the link will appear under clearance dates. You'd be able to view and download the check from here.
And that's it! Super straightforward.
We're glad to launch this. We think that it will help, again, build that trust with vendors and make sure that your team knows where the check is in the process.
The next update is around Instant Payment for ACH payments.
We know in this age of digital payment methods that ACH is becoming a lot more common and preferred by many vendors and clients. What we heard is that Bill Pay customers want more payment speed choices with the option to choose based on their cash flow situation or vendor preferences. Some like to schedule bills in advance, others pay what it's most convenient depending on the net terms with their vendor, and sometimes people need to send funds instantly.
And so we're excited to introduce Instant Payments. This is a new option that allows your clients to pay bills within minutes. This happens on business days until 5 pm PT.
So there are now three payment speeds in QuickBooks Bill Pay: Standard ACH (3-5 business days), Faster ACH payments for eligible customers (which is typically the next business day), and Instant Payment.
You and your clients can work with each other to figure out what's the best option for each of their vendors, and reduce any penalty fees and problems that might create issues from a vendor trust perspective.
Fast Facts:
- This is available to eligible Bill Pay accounts. As with any money movement, particularly when money is moving out of a customer's account, we need to put strict controls in place. So not all of your clients will have access or will all of their transactions be eligible.
- Access is subject to several criteria, including a customer's risk profile, the transaction details, and the financial institution associated with their bank accounts.
- We are also delaying access for new accounts just to make sure that they create a good, low risk profile with QuickBooks before we turn this on, so that we can protect Intuit, you, and your clients and their vendors from any fraud.
- This has been rolling out this month; you're getting a first look as our valued accountant partners. We know how important it is for you to know what's coming into your products before your clients do so that you can be the experts in guiding them when to use this versus when not to use it.
Alright, let's take a look at how this actually works. So to schedule an instant payment, navigate to the Bills page and select which bills to pay. That's right. You can combine multiple bills—up to 20—to make one payment per vendor. On the Schedule Bill Payment page, you'll click on “Payment Speed.” Select the “Instant” option, if it's available, to pay the bills with the new faster speed. All of the bills that are grouped together in this batch will be paid with the same payment speed.
There are additional processing fees in order to use this option, which is up to 1% of that payment amount, with a minimum fee of $10 and a maximum fee cap of $100.
We want to share that your ProAdvisor discount of 15% off transaction fees does apply here. And so if you've referred, recommended, or even added QuickBooks Bill Pay for any of your clients, you get to pass along that ProAdvisor discount of 15%, which will apply here, as well as to any of their other transaction fees that apply.
As you can see here, there are still three options. We want to reassure you that the Standard option will continue to be the default. This is just there as another option for those instances where you do need to pay a vendor more urgently than the standard processing time, which is 3-5 business days.
A couple of helpful tips as it relates to this feature:
The first is a reminder that QuickBooks Bill Pay—the Basic Plan—now comes included with all QuickBooks Online plans. This means that all of your clients have access to QuickBooks Bill Pay once they submit a short business form. The Basic Plan comes with five ACH payments provided at the standard delivery speed for free.
If your client is frequently using ACH payments to pay their vendors, they may want to consider upgrading to Premium, which provides 40 ACH payments at standard delivery speed. Or, they could upgrade to Elite, which actually provides unlimited ACH payments at that speed. And again, if they are eligible for Instant Payment, they would have direct access to this. All eligible customers will have this turned on with no additional action required.
The second tip is this: If you notice that your client is relying very heavily on instant payments or faster ACH payments for bills, it may actually serve as a good opportunity for you to engage them in your flow advisory services. Let's say that could look like having a conversation about navigating better payment terms with their vendors, or maybe automating more of their AP processes so bills are recorded well ahead of their deadlines. This will help you reduce the number of fees associated with each of those ACH payments, as well as incurring any late penalty fees from the vendor side.
The last helpful tip is around mitigating risk for your firm or your clients. We recommend that you set up the appropriate roles and permissions for your team through your QuickBooks Online Accountant account. In order to do this, where you're going to go is to Manage Your Team, and you'll want to select, we advise, the “Standard all access, can't pay bills” role. This will prevent your team from actually paying bills and letting that critical step live in the hands of your clients.
For additional protection for your firm or your clients, you can also use our Approval Workflows. My colleague Priyanjolie, just released a video about the new Payment Release Approvals, and I encourage you to go check that out.
So that's it for today's update. Thanks, Jaclyn. I really appreciate the time.
Jaclyn Anku: Thank you. And thank you for watching. If you find this update interesting or helpful, go ahead and like, comment, and subscribe. That's all we have for now.
For more updates and demos, check out our In the Know Hub or join us on our live monthly webinar. We'll catch you next time.
