Conciliq vs reconciling Stripe by hand
Doing it yourself in QuickBooks or Xero works and costs nothing. Here's what it takes, and what a daily check adds.
By hand
$0 + your time
Download Stripe's payout reconciliation report from Reports in the Stripe Dashboard (it needs automatic payouts). For each payout, record the gross sales, Stripe fees, refunds and disputes against a Stripe clearing account in QuickBooks or Xero, then match the net deposit in the bank feed. No new tool, and you see every line yourself.
Conciliq
Free · $39/mo
Conciliq does the matching every morning: each payout rebuilt from its balance transactions and marked Matched, Timing or Unexplained, with one email every morning giving each payout's status. You still record the entries. The free plan checks payouts every Monday; Monitor checks them daily.
| Feature | By hand | Conciliq |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing to connect: no key, no new vendor | — | |
| The entries get recorded in your books | — | |
| Every payout checked, every morning | — | |
| Refunds and disputes from earlier sales marked as timing | — | |
| Email the morning a payout doesn't add up | — | |
| Failed payments and expiring cards flagged | — | |
| Several clients in one morning email | — |
Where doing it by hand is the better pick
- The client has a few payouts a month and nothing unusual. Matching them at month-end is quick, and a daily check adds little.
- You need the entries made, not only checked. Conciliq never writes to QuickBooks or Xero, so someone still records them.
- The client won't create even a read-only key. By hand you only need their report export. (Conciliq's free check can also read an uploaded export once, without a key.)
The verdict
By hand is free and fine while payouts are few and nothing odd happens. The work grows with volume and with clients: every refund that lands in a later payout, every dispute and every adjustment has to be traced at month-end. Conciliq does that tracing every morning, so month-end starts with the gaps already named. Either way, you make the entries.
Stripe report details from docs.stripe.com, checked October 19, 2026.
No credit card. No account. Nothing stored. Results usually in under a minute.
Bookkeeper with several Stripe clients? See the Bookkeeper plan →