How to Use Excel for an ACH

By James T Wood

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You can keep the records for your Automated Clearing House payments, also known as direct deposit, in Excel. The National Automated Clearing House Association controls the rules for ACH transactions, which are batched financial transactions between banks and other financial institutions. Direct deposit and direct debit are the most common applications of the ACH system. In order to use Excel for ACH you need to have your data formatted according to the NACHA standards, use an ACH formatting tool and have an active ACH account with a qualified financial institution.

Step 1

Type the following headings in row one of your Excel spreadsheet: "RDFI," "Account," "Type," "Amount," "Name" and "ID."

Step 2

Type the numbers of the Receiving Deposit Financial Institution, commonly known as the routing number, in column A. Type the account numbers in column B. The "Type" asks for either "Checking," "Savings" or "GeneralLedger" as the result. Enter the amount of the transaction on column D. Deposits are positive numbers and debits are negative numbers. Type the name of the person or business in column E and the identification number assigned to the payee through your internal accounting.

Step 3

Save the Excel spreadsheet in the file format recommended by your software. Typically it will be either in the Excel format or a comma-separated value format with a CSV extension. Some options for ACH conversion software are ACH File Pro, EZ-Direct Deposit and Direct Pay ACH.

Step 4

Close Excel and open the conversion software. Browse to the location of the Excel file you saved -- or the CSV file -- and import it for conversion to the ACH format. Follow the steps for your software to upload the converted ACH file to your financial institution.

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