QuickBooks Business Network: How Payable Members Receive ACH Payments

QuickBooks Online’s Business Network lets connected customers pay their vendors directly through QuickBooks Bill Pay, without either party exchanging bank details manually. But vendors who want to receive those ACH payments need to complete a setup process in their Business Network profile first — and the setting is buried deep enough that many users don’t find it until a payment goes missing or a customer asks why they aren’t showing up as a payable member.

How the Business Network payment flow works

When a customer connects to a vendor through the QuickBooks Business Network, the customer can pay that vendor’s bills using QuickBooks Bill Pay. The vendor doesn’t need to share ACH routing or account numbers directly. Instead, the customer creates a bill in their own QuickBooks Online account — either entered manually or generated from an invoice the vendor sent — and pays it through the network. The ACH payment then lands in whatever deposit account the vendor designated during their Business Network setup.

The catch is that vendors have to actively configure that deposit account. Without it completed, the network has nowhere to send the money.

Setting up your payable member profile

The full setup lives inside QuickBooks Online’s settings menu. After signing in, head to the gear icon, open Account and Settings, and select the Advanced tab. From there, choose Business Network and click through to your profile.

The setup walks through three sections. The first covers general business details — legal name, address, and similar identifiers. The second asks for owner or proprietor information. The third, and the one that matters most for actually getting paid, is the payment deposit section. Here you search for your bank, sign in with your online banking credentials, and connect the account where you want payments deposited.

Once that connection is established, the network routes incoming ACH payments to the selected account. Vendors receive an email notification each time a connected customer pays a bill through QuickBooks Bill Pay, and the deposit typically arrives within three to five business days.

Changing your deposit account

Vendors who need to reroute payments to a different bank account can do so from the same Business Network profile. Navigate back to Settings, open Account and Settings, select the Advanced tab, and return to your Business Network profile. Under the ACH payment info section, there’s an option to change the connected account — either by adding a new bank or selecting a different one that’s already linked.

This is worth knowing for businesses that switch operating accounts or want payments separated into a specific account for reconciliation.

Turning off incoming payments entirely

If a vendor decides they no longer want to accept payments through the Business Network, the toggle to disable it sits in the same ACH payment info section. Look for the setting labeled “Allow connections to pay me through the network” and switch it off. Once disabled, connected customers will no longer be able to route Bill Pay payments to the vendor through the network.

What the setup doesn’t do

The Business Network payment setup is separate from a full QuickBooks Payments account. Vendors who want broader payment processing — accepting customer credit cards, processing online invoice payments, or using other payment-processing features — still need to apply for QuickBooks Payments independently. The Business Network handles only the ACH bill-payment flow between connected QuickBooks Online users.

For businesses weighing whether the network’s ACH-only approach covers their needs or whether they’d benefit from the fuller payment-processing toolkit, the distinction matters. The network is designed for vendor-customer bill payment; it isn’t a replacement for a merchant services account.

A note on missing payments

Vendors who expected an ACH payment from a connected customer but haven’t seen it land should first verify that their deposit account setup is complete. The three-section form — business, owner, and payment deposit — needs to be finished before the network can route anything. An incomplete profile is the most common reason a payable member doesn’t receive funds they’re owed.

If the setup checks out and the payment still hasn’t arrived after five business days, the next step is confirming the customer actually submitted the payment through QuickBooks Bill Pay rather than recording it as a manual transaction outside the network.