🔔 Important

This article discusses the balances and settings of the Stripe Connect account, not your external bank account. However, adjusting some of these settings may require assistance from your Finance team.

Funds are either available ( meaning the funds can be paid out now), or pending ( meaning the funds are not yet available to pay out). The charged amount, less any Stripe fees, is initially reflected in the pending balance, and generally becomes available on a 2-day rolling basis. (This timing can vary by payment method, country and account.) Available funds can be paid out to your external bank account.

Negative balances

Some actions, such as refunds and chargebacks, create negative transactions in a Stripe account. If there are funds (of the relevant funds source) available in that holding account when you e.g. initiate a refund, those funds are used. If there are insufficient funds in the account for US-based accounts, the refund will be initiated anyway, and the balance in that account (or sub-balance for the relevant funds source) will become negative. Whenever an account’s balance becomes negative, Stripe temporarily claims a portion of our own Technolutions 'reserves' balance to ensure that the transaction can be covered.

While an account balance (or sub-balance) is negative (at the cut-off time), regularly scheduled payouts are, by default, suspended until the balance is again positive.

Handling negative balances

By default, our own 'reserve funds' cover a negative balance in your account on a short-term basis. Those funds are 'released' automatically some time after additional funds come in. If the negative balance is large enough, you will encounter a limit and won't be able to initiate additional refunds. It is also possible that some initiated refunds are held in a pending state (if your account has been placed under review).

There are two options for handling negative balances:

1. Two-way payouts (recommended): For clean reconciliation and convenience, the best option is to adjust the payout settings for your connect account so that withdrawals can be made directly from your external bank account (at the scheduled payout interval) to cover a negative balance. If a (sub-)balance is negative at the time of the scheduled transfer, a 'negative payout' will be recorded in Slate. All the individual transactions associated with it will be detailed via the familiar pre-filtered payment history view.
   
   To use the "two-way option," simply enable it in the Deposit Account configuration pop-up window, but make sure to review the detailed section below.

2. Invoice: If you cannot enable the two-way payout setting due to institutional restrictions, we can arrange for payment via invoice. If your negative balance is large enough we will reach out to you proactively and invoice to arrange payment!
   
   If your balance remains negative for 180 days, Stripe will permanently transfer our reserve funds into your account to restore the balance (or sub-balances) to zero. We will invoice you for that amount.
   
   For non-US accounts, our ability to transfer funds into your account is very limited. If you are expecting to run a negative balance for any length of time, you have to enable the 2-way account setup.

Two-way payouts

Enabling two-way payouts is the best option for smooth operation and reconciliation of your Slate Payments activities. You configure our deposit account and external bank account, so that Stripe can automatically debit your external bank account (at the scheduled payout interval) to cover a negative balance. 

This functionality works only for banks located in the US, Australia, Canada, and Europe (SEPA countries, which includes the UK). Stripe, at present, can’t correct a negative Stripe account balance using banks located in other countries.

For this to work, you (or your Finance team) will need to first contact your bank and 'allow' Stripe to debit and/or deposit into your bank account via ACH. The ACH company ID numbers you should provide are listed on Stripe's support site: https://support.stripe.com/questions/ach-company-ids-for-stripe.

• 1800948598  - Stripe Payments Company

• 4270465600  - Stripe Payments Company

After that first step is done, in the "Slate Payments Deposit Account" pop-up window, select the checkbox, then save:

🔔 Important!

Do not enable two-way payouts if your external bank account is not first set up properly to allow debits/withdrawals. If an attempted 'payout' (i.e. debit) fails, Stripe will halt all payouts for the account until the bank account information or the configuration is updated. Payouts need to then get re-attempted manually (you will need to open a Support ticket for this).