When the amount on an invoice is higher than your MaterioPay application estimates or your typical past processing volume, our underwriting partners may require some additional documentation from you before they complete an ACH payment for the invoice.
To ensure large payments run smoothly and without delays, we recommend completing the below pre-approval process before sending unusually large invoices to clients.
Pre-Approval Steps
Step One: Notify Us
Once your invoice is fully drafted, open the in-app support chat and send us a quick message telling us which invoice number you are starting the ACH pre-approval process for.
Step Two: Upload Documents
Upload the following documents to our secure document portal:
Business bank statements from the most recent three months
Business tax returns from the most recent two years
Profit & Loss statements from the prior year and current year-to-date
Balance sheet as of your most recent month-end
Step Three: Wait for Review
We'll have our underwriting partners review your documents and we'll notify you as soon as they return an approval decision. Review typically takes around two business days and we recommend waiting for the decision before sending the invoice to your client.
No Time for Pre-Approval? Other Options
If you need to move forward without completing the pre-approval process, here are three other options:
Invoice in smaller installments over time
You can invoice for a smaller portion now and send additional invoices later. Receiving regular payments for smaller dollar amounts offers your firm greater protection against later disputes and chargebacks versus receiving a large one-time payment. Materio’s philosophy of invoicing is “get paid early and often,” and this is how we recommend structuring client payments in the majority of cases.Request payment via wire transfer or check instead of ACH
Share your firm’s routing and account number with your client and ask them to initiate a wire transfer. Or, ask them to pay by check. Make sure to toggle off the MaterioPay ACH payment option on the invoice to avoid confusion.Proceed without pre-approval (with caveats)
You can still send the invoice as-is and allow your client to initiate an ACH payment. If it triggers additional review, we’ll reach out to request the same documentation. Note that this may delay processing, and our underwriting partners may decline the payment.
Why This Happens
When we request additional documentation, it is not a sign that anything is wrong with your account or with MaterioPay. It simply means that a transaction exceeds the amount our underwriting partners have previously reviewed for you.
This requirement does not come from Materio but rather is a result of how the ACH system works. Under NACHA rules, banks are financially liable for ACH disputes or reversals for up to 60 days after settlement. For example, if a client disputes a $250k ACH payment, the full $250k must be returned to the client.
To manage this legal and financial exposure, banks apply internal risk controls to large or atypical transactions. When we request supporting financial documentation, it’s to help advocate for your payment to be approved. Our underwriting partners review account activity, balances, and liquidity to confirm the receiving business could cover a payment if a refund or chargeback were ever required.
Thankfully, as you provide documentation and build more processing history, additional documents may be requested less frequently in the future, and the pre-approval process may be faster when it does occur.
For additional support, contact support@materio.co with any questions about this process; we are here to help!