Payouts: when the money actually lands

It is the first question every owner asks about taking cards, and it is usually asked on a Friday: the customer paid on Tuesday, so where is it? The honest answer has two halves — one about who holds the money, and one about when it moves.

LakeOps never holds your money

That has a consequence worth knowing before it surprises you: the payout schedule is Stripe's arrangement with you, not ours. We cannot speed one up, hold one back, or see anything about it that you cannot see yourself in your own Stripe dashboard.

When it lands

Stripe pays out on a rolling schedule it sets for your account. For a new account in the United States that usually means the first payout takes seven to fourteen days — Stripe holds the earliest payments a little longer while the account establishes itself — and after that payouts arrive on a rolling basis, typically two business days behind the payment.

Card and bank transfer do not settle at the same speed. A card payment is authorised in seconds and settles in a day or two. A bank transfer (ACH) takes several business days to clear before it can be paid out at all — which is the trade for it costing you less, and is why LakeOps offers bank transfer before card on the payment page. A customer who pays by bank on the Monday of ice-out week is not money in your account that Friday.

Weekends and bank holidays are not business days, and this trade's busiest fortnight sits either side of a holiday at both ends of the season. Plan the spring float on the assumption that a week of installs lands the following week.

Where to look

Payouts live in your Stripe dashboard, not in LakeOps. Settings → Payments has the link to it. Stripe shows every payout, the payments inside each one, and the date it was sent to your bank — that last screen is the one to open when a bookkeeper asks you to reconcile a deposit against invoices.

What LakeOps shows you is the other side of the same coin: who owes you money, what each job was priced at, and every payment recorded against it — including the checks and cash you record by hand, which Stripe knows nothing about. Neither view is complete on its own, and they are answering different questions: LakeOps says what your customers owe you, Stripe says what has reached your bank.

What the service fee does to the number

LakeOps charges 1% on payments taken through it, on top of Stripe's own card and bank rates, and it is shown as its own line so you always know what it was. It comes off the charge itself, so the payout you receive is the payment minus Stripe's processing and minus that fee — you are never invoiced for it separately and there is nothing to reconcile.

If you bill your customers your own way and only use LakeOps to say what the work was, there is no service fee at all. See what LakeOps costs.

When a payout does not arrive

Almost always one of three things, and all three are visible in your Stripe dashboard rather than here: Stripe is waiting on verification it asked you for and you have not finished; your bank details were entered wrong or the account was closed; or a chargeback or refund has taken the balance below zero and the next payout covers it.

LakeOps will tell you when Stripe says your account needs attention — Settings → Payments shows it, because a shop that cannot be paid out needs to know before it finds out from its bank. But the fixing is done in Stripe, with your own details, and that is deliberate: nobody at LakeOps can or should be able to change where your money goes.