How Mercury works
Mercury is your bank. SKU.io doesn't hold money and has no account of its own at Mercury: it asks your Mercury account to send a payment, and records what happened. This page explains the pieces that decide how that works.
The life of a payment
A payment always goes through the same stages, wherever it's approved.
- You send it. From a bill, purchase invoice or vendor deposit, you choose the amount, the Mercury account to pay from and the method. SKU.io creates one payment for that supplier and links it to the bill.
- Someone approves it. Until then, nothing reaches the supplier. The bill shows the payment as in progress, and it can't be paid a second time.
- Mercury sends the money. By ACH (usually 1–2 business days), domestic wire (same business day) or check (mailed, about a week).
- SKU.io records it. When Mercury confirms the money was sent, SKU.io adds the payment to the bill or deposit, dated on the bank date, and the bill becomes Paid or Partially Paid.
If the payment is declined, it ends as Not approved and the bill is free to pay again. If Mercury reports that a sent payment failed or was returned, SKU.io removes the payment it recorded, so the bill shows as unpaid again, and tells the person who sent it.
Where payments are approved
Every Mercury payment is approved before money moves. You choose where, once per connection, in Settings → Where are payments approved?
| In Mercury (recommended) | In SKU.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Who approves | An admin in your Mercury account, in Mercury's own app | Anyone in SKU.io with the Approve payments permission, including the person who sent it |
| Where | Mercury's approvals queue | The Payments tab of the Mercury page |
| Status while waiting | Awaiting Mercury approval | Awaiting approval in SKU.io |
| Mercury's own approval rules | Apply | Don't apply: approval in SKU.io is the only check |
| What the token needs | Permission to send money with approval | Permission to send money directly, with SKU.io's servers on the token's IP allowlist |
With In Mercury, SKU.io checks Mercury for the approver's decision regularly, at least once an hour, so the status can take a little while to change after someone approves in Mercury. With In SKU.io, approving sends the payment straight away.
Approval policies. If you use a bill payment or vendor deposit approval policy (Settings → Purchasing → Approval Policies), the policy's approval counts. A Mercury payment that the policy already approved goes straight to Mercury when you send it, without asking a second time. See Set up deposit and bill payment approvals.
What you can pay
| You can pay | From | Before you can pay it |
|---|---|---|
| A purchase invoice | The invoice's Add Payment | Its payment is approved (or the bill payment approval policy allows the amount) |
| A landed-cost bill | The bill's Add Payment | None beyond being unpaid |
| A vendor deposit | The purchase order's Deposits tab, or the deposit itself | The deposit is Approved or Partially Paid, and its payee bank details are verified |
You can pay part of what's owed: the rest stays open, and you can pay it later. One supplier is paid at a time, and a bill or deposit can only have one Mercury payment in progress, so it is never paid twice.
Recipients: who gets paid
Mercury pays recipients, the payees saved in your Mercury account. Each supplier you pay must be linked to one. Link a supplier once and SKU.io remembers it. SKU.io never sees or stores your suppliers' bank account numbers: either the recipient already exists in Mercury, or you invite the supplier and Mercury emails them a secure form to enter their own bank details. See Link suppliers to Mercury recipients.
Bank transactions and your accounting
SKU.io mirrors every transaction in your Mercury accounts on the Bank transactions tab and matches the outgoing ones to your bills, purchase invoices and vendor deposits:
- A payment SKU.io sent is matched automatically.
- A payment already recorded in SKU.io for the same amount, to the same supplier or with the bill's number on the transfer, is matched automatically too.
- Anything else that fits a bill or deposit is suggested, and a person confirms it. SKU.io never records money on its own.
This keeps your payables and each purchase order's cash flow in step with the bank, including wires you sent straight from Mercury.
Your accounting bank reconciliation still happens in QuickBooks or Xero. The payments SKU.io records sync to your accounting software as bill payments, like any other payment. Your accounting software also receives the same money from Mercury's bank feed, and you match the two there, as you would for a payment made any other way.