Payout records represent lump sums of money that you receive into your bank. They're a group of multiple payments. Payouts are sometimes referred to as "batches" in other systems.
You might receive payouts from a variety of different sources:
Online:
Stripe
GoCardless
JustGiving
Offline:
Many cheques paid into the bank at once
Collection tin donations
Regardless of whether you're receiving payouts from digital or non-digital channels, the principle is the same - payout records help you group together many payments you receive at once.
In this article:
Example of a payout record
Below is an example of a payout from JustGiving:
Any payments within the payout will show up automatically in the sidebar:
You'll be able to see summary information about the payments in this payout. The Net amount should match up with what you see on your bank statement!
Auto-creating payout records (online channels)
For online (digital) channels, Beacon will automatically create payout records in your database when they're paid to you. You don't need to do anything - they'll automatically appear in your database!
Beacon auto-creates payout records from:
After payouts are created, all of the contained payment records in Beacon will automatically have the Payout set, to link them to the newly created payout record.
Note: Beacon only sets the payout on payments that exist in your database. If you're using the same Stripe or GoCardless account to accept payments elsewhere - the total on your payout records might not match your bank statement.
Offline channels (cheques)
If you regularly receive cheques from your supporters, you're probably familiar with paying in batches of cheques into the bank.
While each cheque should be an individual payment in Beacon, payouts are useful for keeping track of your batches.
Logging batches of donations into Beacon is quick and straightforward:
Create a new payout record, setting the key information about your payout:
Fields like the reference are particularly important - this should be the same reference that appears on your bank statement:
Once you've set all of the fields on your payout record, you can create your payments via the sidebar.
Note: Beacon will automatically pre-fill fields from your payout records into each payment (e.g. campaign, fund) when creating.
When creating each payment, use the Create and new button to quickly create multiple records:
After creating your payments, check the financial section. The Net amount should be the same as the amount on your bank statement.
Frequently asked questions
Does Beacon auto-create payouts from PayPal?
Not currently - but this is planned for the future.
The financial amounts in my payout don't match my bank statement!
For Stripe and GoCardless, this is most likely because the account you're using to take payments on Beacon forms is also being used with another provider. We don't automatically import payments from other providers - so the payment records in Beacon won't account for all of the payments in this payout.
Refunds and other miscellaneous debits/credits in Stripe can also cause the numbers not to match exactly.
You can use the 'Adjustments' field to add or subtract any extra values that are not in Beacon so that your totals match. For example, if you've had a chargeback fee of £15 your total in Beacon will be out by that much (as we don't store those additional items). Add '-15' to the adjustments field to balance the totals!
Why don't Stripe payout references match our bank statement?
Unfortunately, Stripe don't provide a guaranteed "reference" anywhere in their API or on the payout screen within their dashboard. For most banks, only STRIPE is shown on the bank statement.
Given this limitation, when building the payout record type, we thought the most helpful thing would be to set the Stripe payout ID (po_XXX) as the reference on payout records auto-created.
When reconciling a Stripe bank lines against your bank statement, you will need to find the corresponding payout (can be done in either Stripe or Beacon) to get the ID of the payout that it corresponds to.