Payment Runs

Payment Runs

A payment run bundles several open vendor bills into one approval and accounting workflow. Instead of recording bills paid one-at-a-time, you build a list, get approval, authorize the payments through your bank or payment provider, and post the run. Eclipse records each payment, updates each bill, and posts the related ledger movement. It does not transmit funds.

Find them under AP → Payment Runs at /finance/accounts-payable/payment-runs.

The Pay Bills workspace at /finance/accounts-payable summarizes draft and approved payment runs next to bill review, vendor setup, W-9 readiness, a guided lifecycle rail for intake, extraction, approval, scheduling, payment, posting, and audit evidence, a Payment queue for approved bills that should be paid next, a Scheduled payments queue for draft and approved runs by run date, and a Paid history queue that shows recent vendor payments with ledger and bank-match evidence. Vendor blockers name the exact vendors missing payment info, approval, or W-9 follow-up, vendor detail summarizes payment method, masked account/routing detail, open and overdue bills, transaction activity, notes, W-9 status, and statement access, and bill rows plus bill detail show source, extraction, coding, approval, ledger-posting, payment, audit timestamp, journal-entry trace evidence, and AP recommendation controls for source document visibility, extraction confidence, human approval, and ledger guardrails. Approving an existing draft commits its accounting-basis-appropriate ledger state, bill linkage, approved state, and audit evidence together; approving a vendor invoice from the Review Queue creates the complete bill before the queue item can resolve. Deleting a draft rechecks that it is still unpaid and unposted before removing it.

Creating a bill as Draft or Pending does not change the ledger. On accrual books, creating it as Approved or Unpaid requires expense-account coding and commits the complete bill, its Accounts Payable journal, and audit evidence together. On cash-basis books, approval validates and preserves the coded bill without posting expense or Accounts Payable; the expense is recognized when payment is recorded. Retrying the same request returns the original bill; changing a retried request is blocked instead of creating a second document.

When to use a payment run

Use a payment run when you have authorized checks, ACH payments, or wires for multiple vendors—typically during an end-of-week or end-of-month AP cycle. For a single bill, record the externally authorized payment from the bill’s detail page.

Lifecycle

A payment run moves through three states:

1. Draft — you’ve created the run but not yet sent it for approval. You can add or remove bills, change the payment date, change the source bank account.
2. Approved — the run has been signed off. No more bills can be added. Eclipse is ready to post.
3. Posted — Eclipse has recorded each bill’s payment, marked each bill paid (or partially paid), and posted its GL entry for the recorded bank movement. The run is now an immutable audit artifact.

You can cancel a draft run. An approved run cannot be cancelled because posting may already be in progress; post it after external authorization or leave it approved while resolving a blocker.

Create a payment run

1. From /finance/accounts-payable/payment-runs, click New payment run.

2. Pick the payment date and source bank account. Eclipse uses these for the GL posting.

3. Pick the payment method—Check, ACH, Wire, Credit Card, Other. This records how payment was authorized; it does not initiate that payment.

4. Add bills to the run. The bill picker shows open bills (status = awaiting_payment or partial). For each bill you can:

   • Pay the full open balance (default).
   • Pay a partial amount — the bill stays partial after posting.
   • Skip — leave the bill out of this run.

5. Eclipse shows a running Total as you add bills. Verify the source account has enough cash before approving.

6. Save the draft. Eclipse creates the run and every bill line together, so a validation or database failure cannot leave a partial run. A bill can belong to only one active payment run at a time. The run lives at /finance/accounts-payable/payment-runs/[id].

Approve and post

If your org has approval rules (/approvals/rules) that match this payment run, the run goes through that approval chain first. Approvers see the run on their Review Queue at /approvals.

Once approved (or if no approval is required), the run is ready to post. From the run’s detail page:

1. Confirm that the payments were authorized outside Eclipse, then click Post payment run.
2. Eclipse iterates each line:
   • Records a payment against the bill via recordPaymentWithLedger.
   • Marks the bill paid (or partial) and writes a bill_payment_id backlink.
   • Posts a GL journal entry: debit Accounts Payable, credit the source bank account.
3. The run flips to posted only after every item is posted. The total amount, bank account, and posting date are then permanent.

Each bill payment is replay-safe. Eclipse commits the payment, balanced journal, updated bill balance/status, and audit evidence together. Accrual books debit Accounts Payable; cash-basis books allocate the payment across the bill’s expense accounts using cumulative exact-cent rounding, so partial payments tie to the complete bill when it is fully paid. Retrying the same item returns its original evidence; changing the amount, account, date, or accounting lines under the same retry key is blocked. Pending or reversed payment evidence is excluded from the bill’s paid total.

If a single bill in the run fails to post (for example, a closed period or inactive account), Eclipse keeps the run in the approved state, marks the failed line with the error, and leaves already-posted lines attached to their bill_payment_id so the operator can retry only the failed items.

Cancel or correct

• Cancel a draft — marks the run cancelled, retains its audit history, and releases its bills for another run. No GL impact (nothing was posted).
• Correct a posted payment — use the linked payment’s reversal workflow. Eclipse does not currently offer a run-level void that reverses every item at once.

Common workflows

Weekly AP cycle

1. Friday morning: review /finance/accounts-payable/bills?status=awaiting_payment for bills due in the next 7 days.
2. Click New payment run, set payment date = next Tuesday, source = Operating Checking.
3. Add the bills. For each, take the full balance unless partial.
4. Save draft. Email the link to your CFO for approval if your org requires it.
5. Authorize the payments through your bank or provider, then post the run to record the accounting result.

Pay one vendor multiple bills

If you owe one vendor four bills and send one check, create a payment run with those four bills. Eclipse records one payment and journal entry per bill with the same payment date, source account, and method; it does not create one consolidated journal.

Approve, post, and retry actions also appear in Automation History with sanitized status, amount, and posted/failed counts.

Related

• Bills — create the bills that flow into a payment run.
• Approvals — payment runs honor your org’s approval rules.
• Vendor portal — vendors can view their AP payment history (and submit W-9s) without a login.

Posting is permanent

A posted payment run can’t be edited or voided as a batch. Correct a posted item through its linked payment reversal so the original evidence and reversing entry remain visible.