The payout is a summary of a dozen things. Recording it as one number loses most of them.
Your store reports one sales figure and your bank shows another, smaller one. The platform is not wrong. A payout is a net figure with several components already removed.
What is inside a payout
- Gross sales, including the sales tax you collected
- Processing fees, deducted before the money moves
- Refunds and chargebacks from earlier orders
- Shipping charged to customers, and shipping labels you purchased
- Discounts and gift cards, which behave differently from each other
- A reserve or rolling settlement period that delays part of the money
Why recording the net figure hurts
Booking only what hit the bank understates revenue, hides your true fee load, and makes sales tax liability nearly impossible to track. It also makes year-over-year comparisons meaningless, since your reported revenue moves whenever fee structures change.
The cleaner method
Record gross sales, then record each deduction to its own account, and reconcile the payout to the platform report every period. Sales tax collected belongs in a liability account, not revenue, because it was never your money.
One more thing worth watching
Inventory. Many stores track cash well and inventory poorly, which means gross margin is an estimate rather than a fact.
Books that close on time, reconcile to the penny, and are ready when you need to make a decision.
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