| name | reconcile-payment-processor-payouts |
| category | money |
| description | Reconcile payment-processor transactions, fees, reserves, disputes, refunds, currencies, and settlement timing to payouts and bank deposits. Use when closing merchant cash or investigating settlement differences. |
reconcile-payment-processor-payouts
Prove the bridge from gross customer activity to each net bank deposit.
When to use
- Use for card, wallet, marketplace, or payment-service settlement reconciliation.
- Do not collect or expose full card numbers, security codes, credentials, or unnecessary customer data.
Preconditions
- Obtain read-only transaction, balance, fee, dispute, reserve, payout, and bank reports for the same merchant accounts and dates.
- Record processor time zone, settlement windows, currencies, and payout identifiers.
Procedure
- Preserve source exports and document report filters, extraction time, account, entity, and currency.
- Normalize charges, captures, refunds, reversals, disputes, fees, taxes, reserves, adjustments, and currency conversions without losing source IDs.
- Group activity by the processor's payout or balance-transaction identifier.
- Calculate the bridge from gross collections to expected net payout for each settlement.
- Match expected payouts to processor reports and bank deposits using IDs, dates, currencies, and amounts.
- Separate cutoff and settlement timing from true missing, duplicate, or misclassified activity.
- Reconcile processor clearing, fee, refund, dispute, reserve, and cash ledger accounts.
- Investigate unmatched items through approved support channels while preserving evidence.
- Record authorized entries and verify that later settlements clear carried timing items.
Worked example
A processor report shows $120,000 of charges while the bank received $112,340. The bridge identifies $3,200 in refunds, $2,160 in fees, a $1,500 reserve hold, and an $800 dispute. The remaining $0 is reconciled by payout ID. A second bank deposit is unmatched because it belongs to another merchant account, so it remains an exception rather than being forced into the period.
Done
- A payout reconciliation report links gross activity, deductions, expected payouts, processor balances, and bank deposits by stable identifiers
- Ledger totals reconcile and every timing item, reserve, duplicate, missing payout, or unexplained adjustment is recorded with status and owner
