Why your payout is smaller than your sales, and how it differs from profit

You sold $300 this week. Then the money lands in your bank and it's noticeably less, which is expected: a payout is what's left after the platform and the payment processor have taken their share, plus a few things that only show up some weeks.

And even once you understand the payout, there's a second gap: the payout still isn't what you kept. This article walks through both.

What comes out before the payout

Look at any payout report and you'll usually find the same few lines between "sales" and "paid to you."

1. Payment processing. Every card sale costs a percentage plus a flat amount. Stripe lists "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards" on standard US pricing. On Shopify's Basic plan, the online standard card rate with Shopify Payments is "2.9% + 30¢" (Grow is 2.7% + 30¢, Advanced 2.5% + 30¢). If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a third-party transaction fee of 2% on Basic.

2. Channel fees. Marketplaces charge for the sale itself. Amazon's referral fee is, in its words, "a percentage of the total price or a minimum amount, whichever is greater." For the "Everything Else" category that's 15% with a $0.30 minimum. Amazon also notes that an item's total price "includes its list price, as well as shipping costs and any gift-wrapping charges," so the shipping your buyer pays gets a fee too. On the Individual plan there's another $0.99 per item sold.

3. Returns and disputes. Money you give back to a customer comes out of a later payout. Disputes (chargebacks) cost extra: Stripe charges a $15.00 dispute received fee for each dispute you receive.

4. Payout fees. Standard payouts on Stripe are free, but Instant Payouts cost 1.5% of the Instant Payouts volume.

5. Monthly charges. Plan fees, like Amazon's $39.99 Professional plan or a Shopify subscription, can land in whichever payout period they're charged. That makes one week look worse than the others for no reason related to sales.

Timing makes it look worse

A payout doesn't always cover the same days as your sales report. Stripe, for example, lets you receive transfers "on a rolling basis, weekly, or monthly." So Monday's payout might include last Thursday's sales and miss today's. If you compare a payout to "this week's sales," the numbers won't match even when every fee is correct.

Compare sales and payouts over the same dates, and read the payout report line by line, not only the total.

One example week, from sales to payout

Example (made-up round numbers). A seller takes 10 orders at $30.00 each through a Stripe payment link, standard US pricing. Sales: $300.00.

• Processing: 2.9% × $30.00 = $0.87 + $0.30 = $1.17 per sale, × 10 = −$11.70
• One customer disputes a $30.00 charge. Dispute received fee: −$15.00. In this example we'll assume the $30.00 is also held back while the dispute is open: −$30.00
• Before payout fees: $300.00 − $11.70 − $15.00 − $30.00 = $243.30
• The seller picks an Instant Payout: 1.5% × $243.30 = −$3.65
• Payout: $239.65, about 79.9% of what they sold

Your processor's payout report shows what happened to a disputed charge. If it goes your way, some of that money may come back in a later payout, which is one more reason payouts don't line up week to week.

Why the payout still isn't your profit

The payout only covers what the platform and processor took. Your own costs haven't come out yet.

Continuing the same example:

• Shipping the seller paid: $4.00 × 10 = −$40.00
• Ads for the week: −$25.00
• Cost to make or buy each item: $9.00 × 10 = −$90.00
• Kept: $239.65 − $40.00 − $25.00 − $90.00 = $84.65

So: $300.00 sold, $239.65 paid out, $84.65 kept. Three different numbers; the last is what the week kept. More than half of the $239.65 deposit had already been spent.

A four-line check you can do each week

1. Sales for the dates you're checking.
2. Minus everything the platform took (processing, channel fees, disputes, payout fees, plan fees). The result should match your payouts for those dates, give or take timing.
3. Minus your own costs (shipping you paid, ads, cost of goods).
4. What's left is what you kept. That's the number to track.

If line 2 doesn't match your payout, look for a dispute, a return, a plan fee or a payout that covered different days.

Check one sale first

The free calculator at lunithlabs.com/calculator takes one sale and shows what's left after channel fees, payment processing, shipping, ad spend and your item cost, with each deduction listed. It runs in your browser and the page says nothing you type is stored. Use the rates from your own statement, since they vary by plan, category and country.

Doing it every week

When you sell in more than one place, running this check by hand every week takes time. Lunith Commerce OS is a business operating system that runs in Notion. You type each sale in, and it works out the fees and what each sale kept, by channel. It's a one-time purchase; the current price is on its page. See what's inside.

Or start with one sale in the free calculator.