Payment Reconciliation

A store records $100,000 of card sales, but its bank receives $96,800. The difference may be processing fees, refunds, unsettled transactions or an error, and payment reconciliation traces the amount through the provider's ledger to the payout and bank statement.

Start with stable identifiers by linking order ID, charge ID, balance transaction and payout reference where available, because a shared identifier makes it easier to distinguish a legitimate second purchase from a duplicate charge. Choose the period and currency, since sales recorded at checkout on Friday may settle on Monday, and if one report uses transaction date and another uses payout date, daily totals can differ without any missing cash.

Stripe's payout reconciliation report matches bank payouts to batches of payments and other transactions, including an ending unsettled balance, and its documentation distinguishes automatic payouts from manual or instant ones, where different reconciliation approaches may be needed. Adyen's transaction-level settlement guidance likewise tracks captured payments, fees and other adjustments through settlement, and since provider fields differ, document the exact exports a business uses instead of assuming all gateways report the same way.

A successful authorisation is not the same as capture or settlement, because some businesses authorise when an order is placed and capture on shipment while others use immediate capture, so reconcile to the correct stage for the business model. Account for refunds separately, since a refund can be initiated today but reach the customer later or be netted against a future payout, and match its provider reference to the original sale and the accounting treatment.

Fees may be withheld before the deposit: if gross settled charges are $100,000 and fees are $2,000, the bank may receive $98,000 before other adjustments, and the fees should be posted to the correct expense account rather than reducing sales blindly. Chargebacks and disputes can move funds after the original sale period, so record the case reference, provisional debit, fee and final outcome, and do not treat an open dispute as permanently lost or won before the provider closes it.

Foreign-currency settlement adds another layer, so capture currency, provider conversion rate, settlement currency and bank receipt, and separate exchange differences and conversion fees from missing transactions. Build a three-way check where feasible: order system to provider transaction, provider payout to bank deposit, and provider activity to accounting ledger, because a match at one boundary does not prove the entire path is correct.

Set tolerances for small rounding differences, but do not use a broad tolerance to hide systematic loss, and group exceptions by type and age, since a repeated small fee mismatch can become material over many orders. An illustrative reconciliation completion rate is matched payout lines divided by all eligible payout lines, so if 980 of 1,000 are matched the rate is 98%, and the remaining twenty lines need investigation, not a conclusion that the books are accurate.

Investigate duplicate IDs, refunds without original orders, old unsettled charges and payouts that never reach the expected bank account, and escalate patterns suggesting integration failure or fraud through the appropriate process. Automate matching rules for clean cases and then review exceptions, because a rule based solely on amount and date can pair unrelated payments when many customers buy the same item, so require strong references where possible.

Keep audit evidence of source exports, matching rules, exception notes and approvals, restrict payment data and avoid storing sensitive card information in ordinary spreadsheets, and close the period after reviewing unresolved items so that the next period begins with a carried-forward balance that matches the prior close, otherwise an old difference can disappear from view. For owners, reconciliation answers a practical question, which is whether the business received, refunded or still awaits the money it thinks it did, and a clear trail supports cash planning and customer support as well as financial statements.