An Automated Clearing House (ACH) transfer is the electronic transmission of a file which contains information pertinent to the movement of funds between accounts. An ACH transfer is commonly used to expedite direct deposit of payroll, pay bills, concentrate funds from other financial institutions or collect membership dues. An ACH transfer generally consists of multiple transactions and is referred to as a "batch."

The steps for setting up and submitting an ACH batch are typically as follows:

1. Define participants (Participant Maintenance)
2. Define batch attributes (Batch Template Maintenance)
3. Assign participants to the batch (Transaction Entry Maintenance)
4. Submit the batch (Initiate Batch)
5. (Optional) Check on pending/recent activity
6. (Optional) Edit and resubmit the batch

The above steps are typical for an ACH user. For an ACH administrator, the main action occurs after batch submittal. If the batch requires approval for any reason (if it exceeds the user’s per-transaction or daily limits), it is given a status of Pending. The administrator then uses the ACH Admin/Approval Activity function either to approve the batch as-is or to deny it and send it back to the user for modification.

Note that a batch may be used many times once the setup steps (1-3) are completed. In fact, you will need to redo the setup steps only when something changes (you need to add new participants, modify existing or remove old ones); in typical usage, simply submitting an ACH batch (as in step 4) will be sufficient. Note also that participants may be used in more than one batch.

All ACH payments must be received by the cut off time for same day processing.