Stripe Dashboard · Payouts and balance
Sentinel reads the balance transactions already attached to a payout and rebuilds the gross-to-net waterfall inside the Dashboard. A payout is reconciled only when the variance is exactly zero.
Install on StripeTurn every lump-sum bank deposit into an auditable, zero-variance journal entry in seconds.
Copy Reconciled Ledger Note pastes this waterfall into the general-ledger memo on the deposit.
Payout: po_example Gross Volume: + $1,000.00 Network & Processing Fees: - $32.50 Customer Refunds: - $150.00 Dispute Holds: - $50.00 Reserve Allocations: - $10.00 Net Bank Settlement: = $757.50 Lost Fee Burn: $1.20 Variance: $0.00
Same lines as the card above. Plaintext only. The Dashboard does not post the entry to QuickBooks, NetSuite, or Xero.
When Stripe deposits $757.50, the bank feed shows one lump sum. This waterfall names the sales, fees, and customer returns inside that transfer, so the close does not start with a CSV export and a pivot table.
Variance: $0.00 ✓ is the only reconciled state. A dispute hold, an unexpected reserve, or a delayed refund that leaves the bank transfer off the ledger is flagged before the entry is posted to QuickBooks, NetSuite, or Xero.
Stripe keeps the original processing fee when a customer is refunded. A return is not a $0 event. The insight on this deposit states the amount the business absorbs: $1.20 unrecovered Stripe fee retained on refund.
Dispute holds (− $50.00) and reserve allocations (− $10.00) are their own buckets. Platform collateral and fraud holds are not read as lost sales or a higher processing fee.
Where the close stalls
Stripe already has the rows. The work is proving which ones became the amount that hit the bank.
A refund can return the charge and leave the Stripe fee behind. That burn sits inside the payout, shrinks margin, and rarely shows up as its own line in the close. Sentinel reports it from the refund rows, including a fixed fee kept on a partial refund.
Dispute holds, reserve moves, and a bank currency that differs from the ledger currency make a payout look short. Sentinel ties to the ledger debit, not the converted bank amount, and puts posted conversion and cross-border fees in their own bucket. It does not invent a markup from the exchange rate.
Gross charges, fees, refunds, disputes, and reserves are separate balance transactions. Tying them to one deposit means exports, tabs, and a number someone has to trust. Sentinel does that tie-out on the payout you already have open.
What you get in the Dashboard
Open a payout, or pick one of the latest five from the Balance page. The waterfall is the same either way.
Gross volume (+), network and processing fees (−), customer refunds (−), dispute holds (−), reserve allocations (+/−), net bank settlement (=). The math runs in integer minor units, so a float cannot round a gap into a match. Yen stays in yen, with no fake decimals. The badge says reconciled only when the variance is exactly zero. Any other delta is shown with its sign.
The score starts at 100. It comes down for refund fee burn over the last 30 days, manual payouts that never matched unassigned balance movements, and won disputes whose funds are still held after 48 business hours. A win inside the current settlement cycle is listed as waiting, not flagged as trapped collateral. FX drag is the posted conversion and cross-border fees, shown beside the score.
The Dashboard button copies the $757.50 example as plaintext: gross + $1,000.00, fees − $32.50, refunds − $150.00, dispute holds − $50.00, reserves − $10.00, net = $757.50, lost fee burn $1.20, and Variance: $0.00. Paste that note into the general-ledger memo on the bank deposit. If the Dashboard blocks the clipboard, the same note stays on the screen. It does not create the journal entry in your ledger.
Before it touches a live account
Sentinel is a Stripe App. It runs in Stripe’s sandboxed app runtime and asks only for the reads required to rebuild a payout.
The install requests balance, payout, charge, and dispute reads. It cannot create a refund, pay out funds, or edit a charge.
There is no Sentinel database. Payouts and balance transactions are read for the view in front of you and are not copied to a server we operate.
You do not paste a secret key into another site. The Balance page and the app drawer are where the audit runs, on the Stripe account you already control.
Pricing
Starter is the install. Pro is the weekly close for one brand. Scale is the audit file for a finance team that settles in more than one currency.
Small merchants
The owner or bookkeeper who wants the last deposit to tie before they install anything else.
$0 / month
$0 billed annually
Install freeGrowing DTC and SaaS
The finance manager closing one entity each week, with refunds and disputes that move the deposit.
$49 / month
$490 billed annually · two months free
Start ProFinance teams
The controller reconciling multi-currency settlements and dropping the entry into an ERP.
$199 / month
$1,990 billed annually · two months free
Start Scale audit| Capability | Starter | Pro | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payout history | 30 days | 90 days | Every payout Stripe still returns |
| Payout waterfall with a zero-variance check | Included | Included | Included |
| Lost refund fee burn | The payout you open | 30-day health score | 30-day score in each settlement currency |
| FX spread and cross-border fees | Not included | Posted conversion and cross-border fees | Same fees, isolated by currency |
| Dispute replenishment, 48 business hours | Not included | Included | Included |
| Ledger note | Plaintext | Plaintext and CSV | Plaintext, CSV, and an ERP journal entry |
| Payouts over 10,000 balance transactions | Marked incomplete | Pages up to 10,000 lines | Keeps paging past 10,000 lines |
The Dashboard install today is the Starter tie-out, and it also shows the 30-day fee score, posted FX fees, and the 48 business-hour dispute tracker because those views are not gated yet. CSV, an ERP journal file, and paging past 10,000 lines are not in this build. Pro and Scale are the prices above. This page does not charge a card.
FAQ
Four read permissions: balance, payouts, charges, and disputes. That is enough to list balance transactions on a payout, score recent fee burn, and follow dispute holds. It has no write permission, so it cannot move money or change a record.
Install it from the Stripe Dashboard. It is a UI extension, so it opens on the Balance overview and in the app drawer. Stripe passes the payout you are looking at. When no payout is open, you pick from the five most recent. The connection is the install you approve. There is no separate API key to hand over.
Stripe stores each balance transaction and the payout total. It does not assemble those rows into a signed gross-to-net waterfall, isolate fees that refunds failed to return, or withhold the reconciled badge until the variance is exactly zero. That close view is what Sentinel adds on top of the objects already in the account.
Starter is free. Pro is $49 a month, or $490 a year. Scale is $199 a month, or $1,990 a year. Annual billing is two months free. The current install is free and does not run a checkout. CSV, an ERP journal file, and paging past 10,000 balance transactions are priced on Pro and Scale and are not in this build yet.
Install