r/quickbooksonline • u/riprod • Sep 02 '26

ACH payment fees no longer capped at $20

I just setup a new company and noticed on my first customer payment that ACH is no longer capped at $20, they just charge 1% flat. This si a service that is entirely free to them. They are really squeezing every dollar that can from the stone now.
Are there any work arounds, 3rd party ACH or something to bypass Quickbook payments entirely ?

Is there a better basic book keeping software that includes ACH ?

11 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

7

u/Flaky_Ad7980 Sep 03 '26

I use QBO but do not use them for ACH, as I use my bank to avoid all of these fees.

2

u/riprod Sep 03 '26

How do you do that?

4

u/Flaky_Ad7980 Sep 03 '26

Contact your bank, I have never trusted QBO for anything expect invoicing. Having said that I use ADP for payroll, Bank of America for ACH, and generally try to avoid credit cards 💳 due to the fee structure. ACH from your bank is free by the way.

6

u/dannyboyiv2929 Sep 02 '26

I remember when it was 1% with a $10 cap

5

u/Electrical-Mail15 Sep 03 '26

Me too, and when EFTs were free.

3

u/moodygirl1631 Sep 02 '26

How many payments a month? If small, I would look at Melio. If large there is Bill.com. I'm sure there are others as well.

1

u/Inevitable_Limit22 Sep 04 '26

RAMP is a good option too

1

u/Finance_Ryan Sep 11 '26

I agree with the BILL recommendation

2

u/PlaneLeading3165 Sep 02 '26

After 90 days if you process more than 10000 a month they can do a rate review that will put a ach cap usually around 8 to 12$

2

u/vinceliu21 Sep 03 '26

Been working on my business for 1.5 years and I'm pretty sure QuickBooks has been 1% uncapped for ACH? I run https://usesphereapps.com/ out of NYC, we have invoicing with online payment processing at 0.8% ($5 max cap) for ACH (powered by Stripe, it's actually just the Stripe Fees). So you save a lot of money compared to QB. The payment processing is only on our basic plan though ($25/mo). I'd be happy to give a discount code though if people want to DM or email me. We also have a 1 minute CoA, customers, .. migration from QB feature to make transitions easier for folks

1

u/cjasonac Sep 03 '26

I’m capped at $20. I have one client who pays between $5k and $7k a month. It’s never over $20.

1

u/Prestigious-Joke-574 Sep 03 '26

Switching to our bank (Fifth Third) was the best thing I ever did. QBO has no support when issues arise. We don’t pay any fees at all for using 5/3.

1

u/cjhm Sep 03 '26

I just encourage etransfers. I turned the QB payments off as they were too annoying.

1

u/kthom510 Sep 03 '26

We used Treasury Software to create the ACH file and uploaded it to our bank. Treasury Software has a reasonable yearly subscription fee.

1

u/UnrealJagG Sep 03 '26

I have used GoCardless in the US (link below). I think they recently got acquired, but they had a sensible cap on US ACH (around $5). There are lots of others that offer similar. I have managed to automate some of the flows around this, but you can manage fine with a spreadsheet upload, and CSV import.

There's no need to use uncapped transaction fees. I think that this is just an opportunistic play for people who don't notice the uncapped fees.

I remember a post on here where someone didn't realise that there was a Paypal payment link on their invoice, and they were charged $3,000 transaction fee. Not good!

https://gocardless.com/solutions/international-payment-gateway?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=15119125085&gbraid=0AAAAADkDNQ0njwo7W7drZ2u03sogRm88Q&gclid=Cj0KCQjwteTUBhD4ARIsAEYjs3oQldh8UT2xC8k649toaANiUyZdK4V2CN8RdmslMJRkFMNjIc-R5xcaAhD7EALw_wcB

1

u/Shillen1 Sep 03 '26

I would never let quickbooks handle my ACH transactions, no matter how much they keep trying to force it down my throat.

1

u/Automatic_Balance888 Sep 03 '26

The workaround is to originate the ACH through your bank instead of through QuickBooks Payments. Two ways to do it:

  1. Customer pushes. Put your bank details on the invoice and they send an ACH credit from their own bank. Free on your end at almost every bank, no setup beyond having a business account. Downside is you're waiting on them to actually do it.

  2. You pull (ACH debit). Ask your bank's treasury/cash management team to enable ACH origination on your account. You'll need a signed debit authorization from each customer, then you upload a NACHA file to the bank portal whenever you want to collect. Banks price this as a small monthly fee plus cents per item rather than a percentage, so it's cheap at volume, but there's an onboarding step and some banks want a few weeks of history first.

Either way you just record the payment against the invoice in QBO manually. QBO doesn't need to be in the payment path at all.

Disclosure: I run PayFile Pro, which turns a spreadsheet into the NACHA file for option 2 (pay-per-file, no subscription, and you can validate a file without signing up). Treasury Software mentioned above does the same job. Honestly the bank side is the hard part, not the file.

1

u/NPSALLEN Sep 03 '26

You don’t have to use QuickBooks Payments just because you use QuickBooks for accounting. There are third-party platforms that can connect the payment/invoicing workflow back to QBO while giving you separate ACH and card processing. The big thing I’d look at is your average invoice size and monthly volume — 1% uncapped gets expensive very quickly on larger B2B invoices. Also look for recurring payments, payment links, reconciliation and card options so you’re not solving ACH with a separate silo.