Why is the deposit never the same as the sale?
A processor such as Stripe or Square collects from the customer and pays you later, after taking its part. Four things sit between a sale and a deposit:
- Fees. Taken out before you are paid.
- Refunds and chargebacks. Taken out of a later payout.
- Batching. One deposit covers many sales.
- Timing. Sales on the 30th are paid on the 1st or 2nd.
So matching one deposit to one sale cannot work. What works is tying totals.
How do I book it with a clearing account?
Use the processor’s report for the period and one merchant clearing account. Example numbers: gross sales 5,000.00, refunds 100.00, fees 150.00, deposits received 4,750.00.
From the processor’s report:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant clearing | 5,000.00 | |
| Sales | 5,000.00 | |
| Sales refunds | 100.00 | |
| Merchant clearing | 100.00 | |
| Merchant fees | 150.00 | |
| Merchant clearing | 150.00 |
From the bank, each deposit:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Cash | 4,750.00 | |
| Merchant clearing | 4,750.00 |
Clearing was debited 5,000.00 and credited 100.00, 150.00 and 4,750.00. It holds 0.00.
If the gross amount includes sales tax or tips, credit those parts to their liability accounts, not to sales.
What if it does not come to zero?
At month end it usually should not be exactly zero, because the last days of sales are still unpaid. The balance must equal what the processor owes you on that date. Compare it with the processor’s balance or payout report.
If it does not agree, check in this order:
- A deposit coded to sales instead of clearing.
- A refund or chargeback missing from the entry.
- Fees booked from an estimate instead of the report.
- A second processor or a reserve the processor is holding back.
Why not record it deposit by deposit?
You can, when volume is small: split each deposit into gross sales and fees. It gets slow quickly, and refunds that reduce a later payout are easy to miss. One entry per period from the report, plus the bank deposits, is faster and ties to a document.
This is the same idea as any clearing account: two records of the same money meet in one place.
What does a close check here?
That the clearing balance is explained. In LedgerDock an account set up as a clearing account blocks the lock while it has a balance, until it is zero or the reason, for example “payouts in transit, ties to the processor report”, is written into the close. See when a month is really closed.