Your sales figure and the money that reaches your bank almost never match, and most of the time that is not a mistake. A payout is what is left after fees, refunds, disputes and timing have done their work. Here is every reason Shopify documents, a worked example, and how to check your own.
Sales and payouts measure different things
A payout was never meant to equal your sales, and Shopify says as much about its own reporting. Of the Shopify Payments activity report, the Help Center states that “the report isn’t a statement of revenue for accounting purposes”: revenue in your Finance reports comes from orders and sales activity, which can use different timing and different totals.
Two consequences. Timing: an order placed today is a sale today, but the money settles days later, into whichever payout is being assembled then. Scope: a payout only ever holds money that went through Shopify Payments, so orders paid with PayPal, Amazon Pay or any other provider never appear in it. The activity report excludes the same things, along with Shopify billing fees.
The nine reasons a payout is lower
Shopify’s Help Center lists nine.
1. Processing fees
Every card transaction carries a Shopify Payments processing fee, deducted before the payout is sent, at a rate that depends on your plan. It is the largest and most predictable part of the gap, and the only one you can estimate in advance. The export gives it its own column.
2. Refunds
A refund is deducted from your next available payout, not from the payout that held the original sale, so this week can be smaller because of an order from three weeks ago.
The part that catches people out: “the original credit card transaction fee isn’t refunded to you when issuing a refund”. You return the full $100 to the customer, which is money you had received and are giving back - but the fee you paid on the original sale is not returned, so the refund costs you that fee.
3. Timing and the payout schedule
Settlement time is the gap between a payment being captured and the funds being available to pay out. It counts business days only, and payments captured on Friday, Saturday and Sunday are grouped into one payout. The minimum is about three business days across most of Europe and North America, two to three in Australia and New Zealand, five in Japan, seven in Mexico. Your bank may take one to three more days to show it.
4. Chargebacks
When a customer disputes a charge, the payment amount and the associated dispute fees are deducted: Shopify Payments is debited the full charge along with a chargeback fee. Win the dispute and the disputed amount comes back - but in a later payout, which is why a dispute and its reversal usually sit in two different files.
Whether the fee comes back too, Shopify’s pages put differently. Its chargebacks overview says that if you win, Shopify “might refund the chargeback fee” depending on your country or region, and does not say which; its page on managing chargebacks in the admin says the full amount, including the fee, is returned. Our guide to Shopify chargebacks goes through the fee, wins and partial wins in detail.
5. Reserves and payout holds
A reserve is money held back temporarily against potential losses from disputes. A payout hold usually delays the whole payout, but sometimes only part of the funds is held and the rest is paid, which produces a payout that is lower rather than missing.
6. Currency conversion
If you receive payouts in a different currency from the one you sell in, the amount is converted and fees might apply. Worth checking against your own expectation, because a conversion applied across a whole payout is not a line item you can point at.
7. A negative balance
If past fees or refunds have exceeded your earnings, your account carries a negative balance and a payout is reduced to cover it. When a refund is larger than your available balance, the shortfall is debited from your bank account in a list of countries that includes the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most of western Europe, on a day outside your regular payout schedule. Elsewhere it comes out of later payouts until covered.
8. Taxes on processing fees
In certain regions, applicable taxes might be deducted from your processing fees. Easy to miss when you check a fee total against a rate card, because the fee charged is not quite the fee the rate implies.
9. Adjustments
An adjustment can move a payout either way. Shopify names chargeback_fee, chargeback_protection, shopify_collective_debit, shopify_collective_credit, seller_protection and tax_adjustment as examples. Each carries its own type in the payout breakdown, so an unexplained difference is often an adjustment you have not read yet.
A worked example
Illustrative numbers, made up for this guide to show the shape of a payout and not taken from any real store. US dollars.
| Line in the payout | Amount |
|---|---|
| Card sales captured in this payout period | $4,820.00 |
| Shopify Payments processing fees on those sales | -$148.30 |
| Refund issued this period, for a sale in an earlier payout | -$180.00 |
| Chargeback on an earlier order | -$95.00 |
| Chargeback fee | -$15.00 |
| Reserve held back this period | -$240.00 |
| Paid out to the bank | $4,141.70 |
A gap of $678.30, every dollar of it accounted for. The $180.00 refund goes back to the customer, so that much is money returned rather than money lost - but the original sale sat in an earlier payout, and the fee charged on it is not returned, which is what the refund actually costs. The chargeback is different again: a sale you had already banked, taken away with a fee on top.
How to check your own payout
- Open the payout. From your Shopify admin go to Finance, and in the Payouts section click View payouts. Click a payout date for the total, the status, the bank account, and a breakdown of charges, refunds, adjustments and reserves.
- Export the transactions. Go to Settings, then Payments, click View payouts, then View Transactions, then Export. Choose the range and the type of CSV, then click Export balance transactions. Shopify sends the finished file by email, to you and to the store owner, rather than downloading it in the browser.
- Read the three columns that matter. Amount is the transaction, Fee is what Shopify charged on it, Net is the difference. Net is what moved your balance, so Net is the column to add up. Every documented column, and what Shopify publishes about the Type column, is in our guide to the payout export.
- Total one payout at a time. The export carries Payout Date and Payout Status, so you can pick out the rows for a single payout. Their Net should sum to the payout.
- Treat pending rows separately. Transactions not yet in a payout carry a Payout Status of pending and an estimated Payout Date. Counting them in is a common way a reconciliation goes wrong.
One caveat: Shopify is rolling out a new payouts view to some merchants, and warns your Payouts page might differ from the documented steps meanwhile. The export and its columns are the stable part.
When the gap is not normal
Everything above is ordinary. These are worth a second look:
- A fee far above your usual rate on one order, with nothing about that order to explain it.
- A refund larger than the sale it refers to - the same order refunded twice, or a full refund after a partial one.
- Duplicate rows: the same order and amount, twice.
- A chargeback you won with no reversal in any later payout.
- A reserve with no release date, or one that never comes back.
- A payout whose Net column does not add up to the amount that reached the bank.
None proves an error on its own. Each is a question the file itself can answer, once it is open.
Checking it in a minute
Doing that by hand across a few hundred rows takes an afternoon, which is why it often gets skipped. PayoutCheck reads the export exactly as Shopify produces it, adds up every row, and reports the ones that do not account for themselves. It will not tell you Shopify owes you money. It tells you where to look.
A second opinion on your payout in a minute. No app to install, no subscription. The preview is free and runs on your real file: every transaction read and classified, the totals reconciled, and the number and kind of potential discrepancies, before you are asked for anything.
Questions
Why is my payout always lower than my sales?
Because a payout is not a sales figure. Processing fees come off every transaction, refunds are deducted from the next payout rather than the one holding the original sale, and settlement timing means a payout covers a different set of transactions than a calendar week of orders.
Do I get the processing fee back when I refund an order?
No. Shopify states that the original credit card transaction fee isn't refunded to you when issuing a refund. You return the full amount to the customer, which is money you had received and are giving back, and you pay no additional fee to process the refund itself - but the fee you paid on the original sale is not returned, so that fee is what the refund costs you.
Can Shopify take money from my bank account?
Yes. If refunds or fees exceed your earnings, your account carries a negative balance. When a refund is larger than your available balance, the shortfall is debited from your bank account in a list of countries that includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most of western Europe, on a day outside your regular payout schedule. Elsewhere it is deducted from later payouts until it is covered.
Should my payouts match the revenue in my accounts?
Not directly. Shopify says of its Shopify Payments activity report that the report isn't a statement of revenue for accounting purposes, and that revenue in your Finance reports is based on orders and sales activity, which might use different timing or totals. It also excludes Shopify billing fees and any third-party payment processor or payment method.
Sources
- Navigating your Shopify Payments payouts to resolve lower or missing payouts: help.shopify.com
- Shopify Payments refunds: help.shopify.com
- Chargebacks and inquiries: help.shopify.com
- Managing chargebacks in the Shopify admin: help.shopify.com
- Understanding Shopify Payments payout timing: help.shopify.com
- Shopify Payments activity report, previously published as the payout reconciliation report: help.shopify.com
- Viewing and exporting your Shopify Payments payout details: help.shopify.com
This guide describes Shopify’s own published documentation. It is not accounting, tax or legal advice, and PayoutCheck is not affiliated with Shopify.