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Guide

Why your Stripe payout doesn't match your sales (and how to check it)

You sold $5,000 this week. Stripe paid you $4,812.33. Nothing on the payout line says where the other $187.67 went. Most of the time it is not an error, but you cannot know that from the deposit alone.

1. Fees come out before the money lands

Stripe deducts its processing fee from every charge before it reaches your balance. For a US card that is 2.9% plus 30¢ per charge, so eighteen charges carry eighteen fees. A payout is always net of fees, which is why 'payout equals sales' never holds, even on a perfect week.

2. A refund from an earlier sale lands in this payout

Stripe takes a refund out of your next available payout, not the payout that carried the original sale. A refund issued on the 30th comes out of the deposit on the 2nd. It looks like a gap until you line it up with the charge it belongs to. This is the single most common reason a payout 'doesn't match'.

3. A dispute took the money and a fee

When a customer disputes a charge, Stripe pulls the disputed amount out of your balance immediately and adds a dispute fee on top. Both come out of the next payout. If you win, the amount comes back in a later payout, which creates a second 'gap' in the other direction.

4. Reserves, adjustments and transfers

Less common, but these are the ones worth a look the same day: a rolling reserve Stripe holds back, a manual adjustment, or a transfer to a connected account. They are not timing. They are decisions Stripe or you made, and they belong in the books as what they are.

5. Currency conversion

If you charge in one currency and pay out in another, Stripe converts at its rate and adds a conversion fee. The payout is correct and still will not equal the charge amounts you see in your sales report.

How to check a payout in two minutes

Open the payout in Stripe and look at the balance transactions it carries: every charge, fee, refund and dispute inside that deposit, each with its own line. Add them up. They equal the payout to the cent, by construction. The question is never 'does it add up' but 'what is inside it'. If every line is a charge or a fee, the payout is matched. If it carries refunds or disputes from earlier sales, it is timing. If it carries adjustments, reserves or transfers, it needs a look.

Do this every morning without opening Stripe

Conciliq reads your payouts with a read-only key, rebuilds each one from its balance transactions and classifies it as Matched, Timing or Unexplained. You get one email. Most days it says every payout matched. The day it does not, you know which one and why.

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.

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Questions people ask

Is a payout that is smaller than my sales a sign of fraud?
Almost never. Fees and refund timing explain nearly all of it. Fraud shows up as disputes, which Stripe lists separately inside the payout.
Should I record the payout amount as revenue?
No. Record the gross charges as revenue, the fees as an expense and the refunds as refunds. Recording the payout as revenue understates revenue by exactly your fees.
How long after a charge does Stripe pay out?
Two business days for most US accounts on the default schedule, longer for new accounts and some countries. The payout carries whatever settled in that window, not what you sold in it.

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