How to reconcile Stripe payouts to your bank statement

Reconciling a payment processor to a bank account is one of those tasks that feels like it should take five minutes and reliably takes an afternoon. The reason is simple: the two documents describe different things. The processor describes sales, the bank describes deposits, and between them sit fees, refunds, disputes and a settlement delay that shifts money across period boundaries.

The numbers you are trying to tie together

Three figures matter on every payout: gross, what customers paid, fee, what the processor kept, and net, what arrived. The full explanation is in gross, fee and net in a payout. Reconciliation is really just proving, batch by batch, that gross minus fees equals the deposit on the bank statement.

The monthly routine

1. Download the payout report for the calendar month from the processor, not the summary dashboard view.
2. Download the bank statement for the same month.
3. Group the payout lines by payout identifier so each group corresponds to one deposit.
4. Match each group to a bank credit on the settlement date with the same net total.
5. Record gross as income and fees as an expense rather than posting the deposit as one lump.
6. List the leftovers. Anything unmatched on either side goes on a short exceptions list.
7. Explain each exception before closing the month. Every one has a cause, and most of them recur.

The exceptions you should expect

• Timing. Sales at the end of the month settling in the next one. This is normal and should not be adjusted away.
• Refunds. A negative line in a later payout, usually without the original fee coming back.
• Chargebacks. The disputed amount plus a dispute fee, often reversed again weeks later if you win.
• Reserves. A share of the payout held back, released later.
• Currency conversion. Gross in one currency, net in another, with a rate on the line.
• Combined payouts. Two batches paid as one bank credit, which breaks a naive one to one match.

Where people go wrong

The most damaging shortcut is booking the bank deposit as revenue. It is quick, it balances, and it is wrong in three directions at once: revenue too low, costs too low, and invoices left permanently open. The second most common is reconciling only the total for the month, which hides two errors that happen to cancel out.

A subtler one is comparing a sales report to a payout report and expecting them to agree. They describe different periods by design. Compare payouts to the bank, and sales to invoices, and the picture stays clean.

Doing it with Karchu

Upload the payout report and the bank statement together. Karchu recognises the common processor exports, writes each fee as its own line so gross, fee and net all appear, flags transfers so they do not distort totals, and gives you money in, money out and fee totals in pay in and pay out. The provider detail is on the processor analyzer page, and the wider document support is on the business document analyzer page.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my Stripe payout not match my sales for the month?

Because payouts settle on a delay and net of fees. Sales in the last days of the month usually settle in the next month, and every payout is reduced by processing fees, refunds and any disputed amounts.

Should I record the gross sale or the net deposit?

Record the gross sale as income and the fee as an expense. Recording only the net understates both revenue and costs, and leaves invoices that never match the payment.

How do I handle a refund issued after the original payout?

It appears as a negative line in a later payout, and the original processing fee is normally not returned. Record the refund against income and leave the fee as a cost of the original sale.

What if a payout has no matching bank deposit?

Check the settlement date first, since it may land after the period end. If it still does not appear, look for a reserve, a failed transfer to a closed account, or a payout combined with another batch.