Understanding Payouts and Distributions
The Merchant Dashboard allows you to view all Payout and Distribution details for orders placed through Violet on your connected Sales Channels. A "Distribution" represents the funds transferred to your bank account for each order, along with a breakdown of any associated fees. Additionally, Violet generates a Distribution for the Sales Channel related to your order, so you can see the final breakdown of how funds were split and where they were transferred for each specific order.
A Payout to your bank account is an aggregate of all Distributions across a given time period, usually each business day, that is triggered automatically by Stripe.
How Funds Flow to Your Bank
Understanding the payment timeline helps you know when to expect funds:
1. Transfer (Immediate)
When a shopper completes checkout, Violet processes the payment and creates a Stripe Transfer to your connected Stripe account. This happens programmatically within seconds of order submission.
2. Settlement / Clearing (2-3 Business Days)
Although the transfer posts immediately, Stripe holds funds as "pending" until the original card payment clears. This is standard for card transactions and reflects Stripe's risk and settlement window—not a delay in transferring your money.
Why do funds show as "pending"? This is normal. Stripe marks funds as "pending" until the card payment settles (typically 2-3 business days). During this time, the money is in your Stripe account but not yet available for payout.
3. Bank Payout (Per Your Schedule)
Once funds become "available," Stripe automatically initiates a payout to your bank based on your payout schedule:
New accounts: 7-day rolling basis after your first sale
Established accounts: 2-day rolling basis
Bank processing: Additional 1-2 business days for the bank to post the deposit
Example Timeline
Order placed
Monday 2pm
Transfer to your Stripe
Monday 2pm (~30 sec later)
Funds become "available"
Wednesday-Thursday
Stripe initiates payout
Thursday evening (2-day rolling)
Funds hit your bank
Friday-Saturday
Total time: ~5-7 business days for a new order to reach your bank (not counting weekends/holidays)
Viewing Your Payouts
You can view a list of all your payouts by navigating to the Payouts dashboard.
On the default payouts page, you'll see a "Ext Payout" field which will map to the ID of your payout in your payment provider. You can use this along with the Violet Payout ID ("Payout ID") to map all related distributions to your payout amount.
You can click into a payout and see a summary of order volume, payments, refunds, and distributions relevant to your payout. You'll also be able to see related distributions and export the payout with its related distributions in this view.
The Distributions dashboard is available in the tab next to Payouts.
By default, you'll be able to see the following:
The “Ext Order” is the ID of the Order in your e-commerce store. You can use this ID to easily map between the Distribution in Violet to the Order placed in your system. The “Amount” column is the total amount you receive for this specific Order.
Flipping on the “Channel” toggle, will let you see see the related Distributions made to Sales Channels for the same Order. This is usually their commission amount for the Order, minus any payment provider fees that the Channel pays. If the commission you give to a Channel does not cover the payment processor fees, you will see them on your Distribution record.
You can also download Distribution reports as CSV files that let you view more information and do reconciliation in a spreadsheet manager. To download a Distributions report, click on “Export” and follow the prompts.
To learn more about each column, you can click here.
Each Distribution that is associated to a Payout to your bank contains a Payout ID. From the example below, you can see all Distributions related to Payout ID 10280 , which correspond to a payout of $79.09 to your bank account, settled on 18th June 2024. As seen below, Refunds are also included when calculating the breakdown of a Payout.
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