Reconciling Stripe payouts with bank deposits before a sale

If your SaaS bills through Stripe, a buyer will eventually ask a simple question: did the money Stripe says you earned actually arrive in your bank account? Answering it is called reconciliation, and doing it yourself before you list is one of the highest-value hours you can spend preparing a sale.

The good news is that Stripe payouts are well suited to it. Each payout is a single transfer of a specific amount to your bank, so it should appear as a deposit of exactly the same amount. The work is in understanding timing, what is netted out of each payout, and the handful of legitimate reasons a payout will not match.

How Stripe payouts work

Stripe does not send each customer payment to your bank individually. Payments land in your Stripe balance, first as pending and later as available. On your payout schedule, Stripe sends the available balance to your bank account in one transfer.

• Schedule. Most accounts use automatic payouts on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Some use manual payouts, where you trigger each one.
• Timing. Payments generally take a couple of business days to become available for payout in many countries, including the US, though this varies by country, industry and account history. New accounts often have a longer initial delay.
• Arrival. Each payout has an expected arrival date. Banks sometimes post the deposit a day later than that date, and weekends and bank holidays push things back further.
• Instant payouts. If you have used instant payouts, they arrive much faster and carry a fee, which shows up as a separate amount.

The details of your schedule are in your Stripe payout settings. Check them before you start, because they tell you what gap to expect between payout and deposit.

What is netted out of each payout

A payout is not the same as the sum of your customer payments. By the time it leaves Stripe, several things have been subtracted or added:

• Processing fees on each charge
• Refunds issued since the last payout
• Disputes (chargebacks), which pull the disputed amount and a dispute fee from your balance, and any dispute you win, which returns funds
• Stripe fees for other products you use, such as Billing or Tax, where charged from the balance
• Adjustments, for example corrections or reserve releases

This is why you should never try to match individual customer charges to bank deposits. Match payouts to deposits, and use Stripe's balance transactions to explain what each payout contains.

Balance transactions: what is inside a payout

Every movement in your Stripe balance is recorded as a balance transaction: a charge, a refund, a fee, a dispute, a payout. For automatic payouts, Stripe can show which balance transactions were included in each one. In the dashboard, open a payout to see its breakdown. Stripe also offers a payout reconciliation report in its reporting section, and the API lets you list balance transactions for a given payout.

You do not need that level of detail for every payout. You need it for the ones a buyer asks about, and for any month where the numbers look odd.

How to match payouts to deposits

1. Export your Stripe payouts for the period the buyer will review, typically the last 12 to 24 months. You need the payout ID, amount, currency, created date, arrival date and status.
2. Export your bank transactions for the same period, plus a week on each side to catch deposits that land late.
3. Filter the bank side to deposits from Stripe. Stripe deposits usually carry a recognizable description, often including "Stripe" and sometimes a reference.
4. Match by exact amount within a window of a few days. Match to the cent. A window of three days either side of the arrival date catches most timing differences. If two payouts share the same amount, match on the date closest to arrival.
5. List what did not match on either side, and explain each one.

Common reasons items do not match

Most unmatched items have ordinary explanations. What matters is that you find them first and write them down.

• Payouts to a different bank account. If you changed banks or had payouts go to a personal account for a while, those payouts will not appear in the business account statements. Provide the other account's statements, or at least a note with dates.
• Failed payouts. If a payout could not be delivered, for example because the bank account was closed, its status becomes failed and the funds return to your Stripe balance. They are then included in a later payout. The failed payout will have no matching deposit; the later payout will be larger than usual.
• Canceled or reversed payouts. Manual payouts can sometimes be canceled before they are sent, and some payouts can be reversed. Either will show on the Stripe side without a matching deposit, or with a matching debit.
• Debits from your bank. If your Stripe balance goes negative, for example after a large refund or a dispute, Stripe may debit your bank account to cover it. That appears as a withdrawal, not a deposit.
• Multiple Stripe accounts. A second product, an old account, or a separate currency account produces deposits the buyer cannot trace to the account they are looking at.
• Currency conversion. If Stripe pays out in one currency and your bank account holds another, the bank may convert the amount and the deposit will not match to the cent. Note the currency and rate.
• Bank fees on incoming transfers. Some banks charge for receiving certain transfers, particularly international ones, so the deposit is slightly less than the payout.
• Timing at the edges of the period. A payout at the end of December may land in January. Extending your bank export by a week on each side avoids false gaps.

Writing up unmatched items

For each unmatched item, write one line: the payout or deposit, the amount, the date, and the reason. Attach evidence where you have it, such as the other bank account's statement or the Stripe payout detail showing it failed. A reconciliation where 98 payouts match and two have a clear written explanation reads as a well-run business. A reconciliation with no explanations reads as a problem, even if the underlying reason is harmless.

If a large share of payouts do not match and you cannot explain why, stop and work it out before you list. A buyer will find it, and it is the kind of issue that ends deals rather than adjusting their price.

Why buyers care

MRR and revenue figures come from the billing system. Reconciliation connects them to money in a bank account, which is much harder to fake. It is the step that makes the rest of the numbers credible. See how buyers verify MRR for how this fits into the wider revenue check, and the due diligence checklist for everything else buyers will ask for.

Doing it in Arrhis

Arrhis reads your Stripe payouts through a read-only restricted key and your deposits through a read-only Mercury connection, then matches them by exact amount within three days of the arrival date. Buyers see matched items, and unmatched items with your written explanation next to each one. If you would rather have us do the write-up, the Exit Pack includes a reconciliation with notes on every unmatched item; see pricing. Or create a deal room and run it yourself.