Guide
Stripe payout breakdown: what every line inside a payout means
Stripe's dashboard shows a payout as one number. Behind it is a list of balance transactions that add up to that number exactly. Reading that list is the whole skill of payout reconciliation.
Charge
A successful payment. The gross amount the customer paid. Each charge carries its own fee, shown on the same line.
Fee
Stripe's processing fee on a charge, refund or dispute. Negative. The sum of the fees in a payout is the number the QuickBooks connector never records.
Refund
Money returned to a customer. Negative. It appears in the payout available when the refund was issued, which is usually not the payout that carried the original charge.
Dispute
A chargeback. Negative, plus a dispute fee on its own line. If you win, a 'dispute reversal' appears in a later payout as a positive line.
Adjustment
A manual correction made by Stripe. Rare. Always worth reading the description.
Reserve
Money Stripe holds back from a payout, or releases later. Common on new or high-risk accounts. A held reserve makes a payout smaller with no sale or refund to explain it.
Transfer
Money moved to a connected account on Stripe Connect, or an application fee collected from one. If you do not use Connect, you will never see one.
Fee math on a real payout
Eighteen charges come to $5,000.00, and Stripe's fees on them total $150.00. One refund of $37.67 was issued in the window. The payout is $5,000.00 minus $150.00 minus $37.67, which is $4,812.33. The deposit line in your bank says exactly that and nothing else, which is why the three numbers behind it have to be written down somewhere.
Reading a payout in one pass
Charges minus fees minus refunds minus disputes equals the payout on an ordinary week. If the list has only those four kinds of line, the payout is matched and the only thing to book is the fee total. If it has refunds or disputes from charges that were paid out earlier, that is timing. If it has adjustments, reserves or transfers, read them today.
Check yours
Does the money Stripe paid you match your books?
Upload a Stripe export or paste a read-only key. Every payout in the last 90 days, matched to the cent, usually in under a minute. Nothing stored.
Run the free audit →Questions people ask
- Where do I see the balance transactions for a payout?
- In the Stripe dashboard open Balance, then Payouts, then the payout. The transactions tab lists every line. The API returns the same list filtered by payout id.
- Why does the payout never equal my charges?
- Because fees are deducted on every charge, and refunds and disputes from earlier sales are deducted from whichever payout is next.
- Does Conciliq read these lines?
- Yes. That list is exactly what the daily check rebuilds each payout from.
More guides
- Why your Stripe payout doesn't match your sales (and how to check it)
- QuickBooks' Stripe connector imports payouts, not fees. Here is what that does to your books
- Why a Stripe refund comes out of a later payout
- How a Stripe dispute hits your payout, and how to record it in your books
- A customer's card expires before their next Stripe renewal. What happens, and what to do
- Stripe debited your bank account. Why your balance went negative, and how to book it
- Stripe says the payout is Paid, but the money isn't in your bank. What each payout status means, and what to do
- How to reconcile Stripe payouts in Xero: what Xero matches on its own, and what it can't
- Stripe fee calculator: what your payouts really cost