Paying Approved Invoices

Once supplier invoices are approved, the finance admin needs to pay them. AI Finance Team turns the approved, still unpaid invoices into a payment list you can download and take to your bank. This article is for the person who pays: the finance admin or the owner.

Money never moves through AI Finance Team

A payment file is a proposal. You import it into your own netbank, check it there and sign it there, exactly as you would sign a transfer you typed by hand. AI Finance Team never holds your bank login and never sends a transfer.

An invoice counts as paid only when the bank transaction arrives and is matched to it. Being in a payment file does not mark an invoice paid.

Where it is

Open Payment file in the sidebar, right under Approvals. Approvals → Overview also has a Payment file button, for people holding "Manage approvals". You need the permission "Export payment file"; by default the accountant admin, the finance lead and the finance admin have it, and your workspace admin can give it through a role or a per-member exception to anyone who also holds "View invoices and bank transactions" - the payment file is one of the permissions that needs it. See Roles and Permissions.

The page works only when payment approvals are switched on for the company. Otherwise it says Payment approvals are switched off; see Setting up approvals.

What you see

1. The two tabs: To pay and Payment files.
2. The filter bar.
3. One group per paying account and currency, with the account's name and full number.
4. The line's account check, its Due and Execution dates, and its Reference.
5. A line that cannot go into a file yet, with the reason and the next step.

The page lists the supplier invoices that are still unpaid (open or partially paid) and were approved, or need no approval (a rule or a person marked them No approval needed; their line says so), grouped by the bank account that will pay them: one group per paying account and currency, so a shared cash-pool account is one group for every company that uses it. Invoices waiting for a decision or declined never appear here, and neither do rejected invoices or duplicates. Each line shows:

• Payee and the invoice number, with a link to the invoice.
• Payee account: the account the money goes to, and its check state.
• Due and Execution: the payment date on the invoice, and the date the transfer is requested for (see below).
• Amount: what is still owed. For a partially paid invoice, the remaining balance.

The page has two tabs: To pay (this list) and Payment files (every file you made, see below). Lines already written into a file are hidden on To pay; tick the In a file status to see them, marked In file #N. A released line comes back without the mark, and after a partial payment the invoice comes back for the rest.

The filter bar above the list narrows it by Due date (Overdue, Next 7 days, Next 30 days, a month, your own range, or Until a date for everything due by a day, overdue included), Paying account, Company, Payment method and a search on the payee, the invoice number and the reference. The due-date filter is there for cash flow: you can pay what is due this week and leave the rest for later. It does not follow the focused period in the sidebar, because due dates look ahead.

The account check

Paying the wrong account is the most common invoice fraud, so every payee account has to be confirmed before it can go into a file. A person holding "Manage approvals" confirms it on the partner page. An account typed in by a person holding "Manage approvals" is confirmed in the same step, with no second person; its line is marked Typed by hand, and when you make a payment file, the window lists these accounts and asks you to tick I checked these accounts before it can make the file. Where the company register check is switched on for your workspace, the register can also confirm an account the first time it is seen: for an invoice that arrived after the check was switched on, from an active company that is not a sole trader, when the names agree.

• Confirmed: the line can be paid. Under the account the page says who confirmed it, or on which date the register listed it. The downloaded spreadsheet shows who confirmed it and when in its last column.
• First time seen: this supplier's account has not been confirmed yet. Open the partner and confirm it after you checked it with the supplier.
• Account changed: the account on this invoice differs from the one confirmed before. The line stays blocked until someone confirms the new account. Call the supplier on a number you already know before you do.
• Several accounts on the invoice: the invoice prints more than one bank account and marks none of them for payment, so nobody can tell which one it asks for. Open the invoice and pick the right one, or confirm it on the partner page.
• Account currency unclear: the account may not be in the invoice's currency. Either it is held in another currency, or the supplier has a confirmed account in the invoice's currency and this is a different one. Check the invoice before you pay; this is how a forint invoice gets paid to a euro account.
• No account, Invalid account, No verified partner: the line cannot be paid yet; the reason and the next step are shown under it.

Blocked lines sit in their own group, Cannot be included yet, with links to the partner and the invoice. Three more reasons can put a line there: the paying company has no bank account in that currency (add one under Master data, Companies), nothing is left to pay on the invoice, or the invoice is not paid by bank transfer (see Payment method below). Only someone holding "Manage approvals" can confirm an account, so a payer who can only export files asks them.

Where the company register check is on, every line also shows what the register says about the account: listed since a date, not listed, or cannot be checked and why, with the date of the last check. A changed account is never confirmed by the register: it always waits for a person, and the register's answer is shown next to it so the decision is informed. "Not listed" is not proof of fraud: a bank has eight days to report a new account. See Company register check.

Paying account and payment reference

Every supplier invoice that can still be paid has a Payment instructions card at the bottom of its Matching & payment tab, below the payment status and the matched transactions. You can fill it in while you review the invoice, before or after it is approved.

• Supplier's account (payee): where the money goes, with its state and, where the company register check is on, what the register says about it. If the invoice was read wrong, for example the euro account was taken from an invoice that also prints a forint account, pick the right one: the list holds the supplier's accounts and the ones printed on the invoice. You can also type a new number. If you hold "Manage approvals", it is confirmed when you save it and marked as typed by hand; otherwise it is added to the partner unconfirmed until someone who holds it confirms it. Back to automatic drops your choice. Show the invoice beside puts the invoice image next to the card on a wide screen, so you can compare the number with the document.
• Pay from: the bank account that pays the invoice. It starts as the company's Default for payments for the currency (set on the company's Recognition tab), or its oldest account in that currency when there is no default. Pick another account to pay this one invoice from it; the invoice then appears in that account's group here.
• Payment reference: the text (közlemény) that goes to the bank with the transfer. It is filled in automatically with the invoice number, and you can change it; a character counter shows how long it is, and Reset to automatic brings the invoice number back.
• Payment method: an invoice paid by card, voucher or another non-transfer method is left out of payment files, and shows under "Cannot be included yet". Switch on Include anyway if it has to be paid by transfer after all. An invoice without a stated payment method is treated as a bank transfer.

Changes are saved with Save and appear on the invoice's history. You can change them at any time: a file that was already made keeps what it was written with, and the card says so when the two differ. To get the new reference into the bank, release the line and put the invoice into a new file.

Creating a payment file

1. Tick the lines to pay, in one group or in several. Select all in this group ticks a whole group.
2. Click Create payment file on a group, or the button at the top, which counts every ticked line across groups.
3. In the window that opens, check each file:

   • Pay from: the paying account, preselected from the group. The full account number is shown under it.

   • Lines and payment references: what goes into the file and the reference the bank will get.

   • Format: the one this account used last time is preselected. The first time, it is the bank file where the bank has one, otherwise the spreadsheet.

     • Spreadsheet (XLSX), any bank works with every bank.
     • Bank file (pain.001 XML) is offered when the paying account's bank is recognised and has a file import (not at OTP, MagNet, Revolut or Wise).
     • Electra file (.HUF) is offered on HUF groups at the banks that run an Electra-based netbank: K&H, Erste, MBH and Gránit.

     A hint under the format says how far that bank's import is verified.

4. Choose the Execution date: On the due date (recommended) or As soon as possible.
5. Click Generate and download.

1. Pay from, with the full account number under it.
2. The Format: the one this account used last time is preselected, with the note on the bank's import under it.
3. Lines and payment references: each payee with the reference the bank will get and the date the transfer is requested for.
4. The Execution date.
5. Generate and download.

One file is made per paying account and currency, because your bank signs each account separately. A shared cash-pool account makes one file for all the companies that use it; see Cash Pool. When your selection covers several accounts, all the files are made at once and download together as one ZIP.

AI Finance Team records a numbered payment file, marks each invoice In payment file #N with the date, and downloads the file. The window then shows Payment file ready and reminds you that the invoices are not paid until the bank books the transfers.

The file is named after the paying account, the date and the file's number, for example Main-account-HUF_2026-10-01_0003.xml, so the files of different accounts are easy to tell apart in the netbank. Accents and spaces are left out of the name.

• The spreadsheet has a header block (paying account, account holder, currency, total) and one row per payment with the payee, the account, the amount, the execution date and the invoice number, under English and Hungarian column headers. Key it into any netbank, or use your bank's own import if it accepts a spreadsheet.
• The bank file is pain.001.001.03 XML in the Hungarian HCT profile: import it in the netbank's file upload, check the lines and sign there. The remittance text of each line is its payment reference: the invoice number unless someone changed it. In EUR (SEPA) transfers accented letters are replaced (á becomes a), because SEPA accepts only unaccented letters.
• The Electra file is the fixed-width "Forint átutalási megbízás" record. K&H accepts at most 40 lines per file; above that the download button is disabled. The file holds a payment reference of at most 96 characters; a longer one is refused with a reason, never cut.

With On the due date, the execution date is the due date, or the next banking day when the due date falls on a weekend, a public holiday, a rest day set by decree or in the past, so nothing is paid early. With As soon as possible, every transfer is requested for the next banking day. A bank does not accept a date in the past, so an invoice that is already overdue is requested for the next banking day either way; when you pick invoices like that, the window says how many there are and the date. All three formats use the same dates; the bank file carries them to the bank, while in the spreadsheet they are for whoever keys the transfers in.

Following up on a file

The Payment files tab lists every file: number, date and time, who made it, the paying account, the format, the total, and how many of its lines are paid, with a small bar. Each file shows one state:

• Generated: nothing has appeared at the bank yet.
• Partially paid: some lines are paid.
• Paid: every line that was not taken back is paid.
• Needs attention: a line has not appeared on the bank statement 10 days after its execution date.
• Released: every line was taken back.

Paid means proven: a line counts as paid when a bank transaction is matched to its invoice, and the file's page links each paid line to that transaction. Open a file to see its lines, Download again, or take lines back. The number of lines that need attention is shown on the tab. The State filter shows how many files are in each state, and the counts add up to the total.

1. The file's state, and how many of its lines are paid.
2. Download again and Release the whole file.
3. A paid line, linked to the bank transaction that proves it.
4. A waiting line and its Remove from file link.

Taking a line back

A payment file is a proposal, so sometimes the transfer does not happen: the file was never uploaded, the bank rejected the import, or nobody signed it. Open the file on the Payment files tab, find the line and click Remove from file. Choose a reason (Not uploaded, Rejected by the bank, Not signed or Other), add a note if you like, and the invoice goes straight back to the list of invoices to pay. Release the whole file, on the file's page, does the same for every line of a file that is still waiting; lines that were already paid are kept.

You can also take a line out from the invoice itself: under Payment status on its Matching & payment tab, the Payment file: row names the file and offers Remove from file.

Removing a line here does not change the file you already downloaded. If you imported that file into your netbank, delete the line there too, or delete the file there and make a new one without it. Otherwise the invoice can be paid twice.

A line whose payment already arrived at the bank cannot be released, and releasing never changes the approval. On the invoice, the payment file row then reads Released from payment file #N with the date and the reason. If a matched payment is later unmatched, its line goes back to waiting and can be released again.

A line marked Not seen at the bank yet has had no bank transaction for more than 10 days after its execution date, and its file shows Needs attention. Nothing is released automatically, because the transfer may have gone through while the bank feed lags, and an automatic release would let the invoice be paid twice. Check the netbank; if the transfers were never made, Release all unseen lines on the file takes them all back with one reason. The Monday summary email also counts these lines.

How the payment finds its invoice

When the bank transaction arrives, AI Finance Team first looks among the lines it wrote into payment files. It knows the paying account, the payee's account, the amount and the date, so it can match the payment without any scoring:

• the amount may differ from the line by at most 10 Ft (0.05 in other currencies);
• the booking date must fall between 1 day before and 10 days after the execution date;
• when the bank line carries no payee account, the payment reference in the bank text (in older files, the invoice id) or a matching payee name stands in for it.

If two exported lines could fit the same payment, the payment reference in the bank text decides; if that does not settle it either, the normal matching takes over. On the match detail page the match reads Matched from payment file #N, and on the invoice the payment file row says the payment arrived and is matched. A transfer made by hand and matched the normal way settles its line too. See Invoice matching.

Everything else on the statement (customer receipts, tax, bank fees, transfers made by hand) is matched exactly as before.

Which file works with which bank

The spreadsheet works with every bank, because a person keys it in or the bank imports a spreadsheet. The bank files depend on the bank, and each bank is listed as verified only after one real test import on a client's account.

"Bank documentation" means the bank publishes the format; "verified in the product" means we tried it.

Questions people ask

Can I pay an invoice that is not approved? Only if it needs no approval: an invoice a rule or a person marked as not needing approval appears here like an approved one. An invoice still waiting for a decision, or declined, does not.

An invoice is approved by everyone and still is not here. A checkpoint can hold it before the payment approver ever sees it: where filing or bookkeeping approval is switched on, the payment card reads Waiting for filing or Waiting for bookkeeping instead of offering Approve. Such an invoice is not yet approved for payment, so it appears nowhere on this page, not even under "Cannot be included yet". See Filing and Bookkeeping Approval.

The page says "Payment approvals are switched off". The list is built from approvals, so it stays empty until payment approvals are switched on for the company under Settings, Approval rules. See Setting up approvals.

I already paid an invoice by hand in the netbank. Close it on the invoice's Matching & payment tab with Mark as closed and a reason, so it leaves the list and cannot be put into a file. When the bank debit arrives, it is matched to the invoice automatically. See Invoice matching.

I generated a file by mistake. Nothing happened in the bank. Simply do not import it, and release the file (see "Taking a line back") so the invoices return to the list at once.

The amount is not what the invoice says. The list shows what is still owed. A partially paid invoice shows the remaining balance, and Hungarian forint amounts are whole forints.