A payout is the action of sending the money from the payment gateway (Stripe)'s system to the provider's bank account. You can learn more about how payouts work in this dedicated article.
Where to find the state of a payout
For each transaction that involves online payment and payouts, you can see the payout state in the transaction card, in the Manage > Transactions tab. Clicking on the payout state will display more details and links.
You can also find the payout state (as well as more information about the payout) in the Transactions CSV export.
Payout states
The life of a payout consists of different steps or states.
Pending payout (pending
)
When a buyer makes a payment, a corresponding payout is created into Sharetribe's system. At that point, it is not visible in Stripe yet: it is only recorded in Sharetribe's back-end, and a proper payout will be created in Stripe as the transaction progresses time.
Pending payouts are for internal use only and hence are not made visible in Console. Some marketplaces may not even trigger an actual payout always.
Scheduled payout (due
)
Once a transaction has progressed and it is time to send their money to the provider, a payout is created and scheduled in Stripe. On the due date, the payout will run.
Canceled payout (cancelled
)
There are many reasons why a payout may be canceled, and the most common ones are:
The transaction expired or was canceled.
A refund was issued.
A party to the transaction was banned or deleted.
The provider's Stripe Connect account was changed.
Sent payout (paid
)
On the due date, the payout happens and, if everything goes well, is paid. At this moment, Stripe has sent the money to the provider. It may still take a few days for the money to reach the provider's bank account (usually 5-10 business days, often less) and the estimated date of arrival can be found in your Stripe dashboard.
Failed payout (failed
)
If something goes wrong with the payout, it fails. There are many reasons why a payout may fail, and you can learn more about these and how to fix them below.
Why payouts fail and how to fix them
Payouts can fail for many reasons and, whenever possible, the error code from Stripe is visible in Console. Here's one example:
You can find details about the payout error codes in Stripe's documentation. We've also listed some common cases below.
Insufficient funds
Payouts can fail if the provider's connected account does not hold enough funds to pay out a charge. Here are a few scenarios in which a connected account can have insufficient funds.
To fix these failed payouts, you'll have to compare the balance of the associated connected account to the PayoutTotalConverted
value of the transaction in the CSV export, and find out what is the missing amount of money. The missing amount can imply why the balance is not enough to pay out the charge. For manual refunds it's also good to take a look into the Payments of the associated connected account in Stripe Dashboard and see if there are any refunds found there.
In the case of insufficient balance the solution is usually to manually create the payout from Stripe Dashboard and in that payout take into account the reason what led to the lack of funds in the connected account.
Manual refund
Manually refunding a payment straight from Stripe usually fixes the transaction that is being refunded but it may lead to problems in forthcoming transactions, as not enough money may be left on the provider's account when a payout happens.
Therefore, you should never manually refund payments in the Stripe Dashboard unless you know what you're doing. Learn more about canceling and refunding transactions.
Disputes
Buyers can dispute transactions (learn more here) and wants a full refund. This will cause the payment being debited to the platform account with an additional chargeback fee, from Stripe, that varies between countries. The platform account is responsible for all disputed payments but it can also debit the connected account for the disputed payment if it appears to actually be fraudulent. This is done by reversing a transfer manually from Stripe.
When a transfer is reversed, funds are moved from a connected account to the platform account. If a transaction is already paid out from the connected account this can lead to a negative balance. In some countries Stripe can withdraw funds from a bank account associated with a connected account in order to cover a negative balance.
In countries where this is not supported, negative or insufficient funds caused by disputes can cause forthcoming payouts to fail.
The payout is too small
Stripe refuses to make a payout sometimes if the amount is too small. The minimum payout varies depending on the currency of the provider's account.
This is quite a rare problem as there is a minimum transaction size always defined, so smaller payments usually fail already at that phase.
To solve these failed payouts, wait for more transactions for the provider and manually bundle them together and pay out at once.
Stripe or the bank refuses the payout
Sometimes Stripe or the provider's bank can refuse a payout for varying reasons. In most cases it's due to some information being missing from the provider's connected Stripe account.
These require more investigations to understand the exact reason why the payout was refused, before it can be retried manually.
A party to the transaction has been banned or deleted
If a member of the transaction has been banned or deleted (as well as their payment details), the payout won't go through.
You'll have to decide if you want to manually send the payout to the party, based on the reasons why their account has been banned or deleted.
The provider's Stripe account has been blocked
It could be that the payment details are outdated, or Stripe has blocked the account for some reasons. In such a case, the payout may not run smoothly.
You should make sure that the provider updates their payment details before you can retry the payout manually.