Why your Stripe payout doesn't match FreeAgent

You open FreeAgent, find the Stripe payout in your bank feed, and the number doesn't match anything. It's not the total of last week's invoices, and it's not what Stripe's dashboard said you'd taken. Somewhere between your customers paying and the money arriving, the amount changed.

There's almost always a sensible explanation. Here are the usual suspects, roughly in the order they catch people out.

1. The payout is net of fees

A payout is what's left of your sales after Stripe has taken its fees. If you sold £1,000 worth of goods, the payout will be less than £1,000, and the difference is a real business expense that needs recording.

If you're comparing a payout to your invoices or sales, you'll always be short by the fees. We cover how to account for them properly in how to reconcile Stripe payouts in FreeAgent.

2. A platform took its cut too

If you take payments through software built on Stripe, such as a community, booking or ticketing platform, it may charge an application fee on each sale. That fee comes out before the money reaches your balance, on top of Stripe's own fee.

So a payout can be short by two sets of fees. More on this in taking payments through a platform built on Stripe Connect.

3. Refunds and disputes came out of it

Refunds come straight out of your Stripe balance, so a refund issued this week reduces this week's payout, even if the original sale was months ago.

Disputes work the same way, with an extra cost. When a customer disputes a payment, Stripe takes the disputed amount and a dispute fee out of your balance straight away. If you win, the disputed amount comes back. The fee for receiving a dispute doesn't, unless you're in Mexico or your Stripe contract says otherwise.

Handling Stripe refunds in FreeAgent goes into how to record them.

4. The payout covers different days than you think

Stripe doesn't pay out today's sales today. Funds sit in your pending balance until they settle, and only then become available to pay out. In the UK, the default settlement time is 3 business days, so a daily payout contains sales from a few days earlier.

A few other timing quirks:

• Your first payout takes longer. Stripe typically schedules it 7 to 14 days after your first live payment.
• Weekends and bank holidays. A payout scheduled for a weekend arrives the next business day.
• Stripe works in UTC. During British Summer Time, a payment taken just after midnight is dated the previous day in Stripe.

If you're trying to match a payout to "this week's sales", it'll rarely line up. Match it to the transactions Stripe says are in it.

5. Some of it was in another currency

If you hold more than one currency in Stripe, each one has its own balance and its own payouts. A payout in GBP won't include anything sitting in your EUR balance.

FreeAgent's own Stripe feed only imports payouts in your FreeAgent base currency, so a EUR payout into a GBP FreeAgent account is skipped altogether. And if Stripe converts money between currencies for you, the converted amount and any conversion fee change the total too. We go into this more in handling multi-currency Stripe payments in FreeAgent.

6. Stripe held some money back

You can set a minimum balance in Stripe, so some money always stays in your account to cover refunds, disputes and fees. If you've set one, Stripe holds that amount back from each payout and releases it later.

Stripe can also hold funds in reserve on your account to manage risk. Either way, the payout ends up smaller than your available balance.

7. Stripe adjusted your balance

Adjustments are additions or deductions to your balance that sit outside the normal flow of charges and refunds. Common ones include a refund that couldn't reach the customer's card being returned to your balance, and dispute amounts going out or coming back.

They're easy to miss because they don't look like sales. Stripe describes each one in your balance transactions.

8. The money was already in Stripe before you started

If you start reconciling Stripe partway through the year, your first few payouts will include sales from before your start date. Those sales won't be in FreeAgent yet, or they were recorded some other way, so the payouts look too big.

The fix is to record the balance that was already in Stripe on your start date as an opening balance. It's worth asking your accountant how those earlier sales were recorded, so you don't count them twice.

How ClearingHouse handles it

ClearingHouse records every Stripe balance transaction in a clearing account in FreeAgent, so the payout is never the starting point.

• Fees. Each Stripe and platform fee is recorded as its own expense, under Bank & Finance Charges.
• Refunds and disputes. Refunds are explained as sales refunds. Disputed amounts are recorded when they're taken and again if they come back, and the dispute fee is recorded separately.
• Currencies. There's a clearing account for each currency in your Stripe balance. Currency conversions are recorded under Currency Exchange Gain/Loss.
• Failed payouts. If a payout fails or is cancelled, the money returned to your Stripe balance is recorded too.
• Opening balances. If there's money in Stripe on your sync start date, ClearingHouse adds it as an opening balance for you to explain.

By the time a payout arrives, it's explained as a transfer from the clearing account to your bank. You can also compare your live Stripe balance with the FreeAgent clearing account from the Connections page, and our help article covers what to do if they don't match.

Getting started

If you're reconciling payouts by hand, start with Stripe's list of balance transactions for the payout. Every difference above shows up there.

If you'd rather not do it every week, ClearingHouse takes a few minutes to set up.