Reconcile payments

Here we explain how to track a payment in your balance platform using the two most relevant reports, scheduled on a daily cadence.

Payment flow and reporting

• When a customer makes a payment it is processed on your Adyen merchant account. The payment passes through these states:

  • Received: Adyen received the payment request.
  • Authorized: the payment details of the customer are verified with the issuer, and the funds are reserved.
  • SentForSettle: the funds are captured and then booked to balance accounts according to the splits provided in the payment request or the capture request.

• The booking date indicates the moment when the payment is booked to the balance accounts.

• The value date indicates the moment when the payment funds are available. This is usually a later date than the booking date.

In the example on this page, we follow a EUR 100 payment. The following diagram summarizes the flow of payment funds according to the payment splits and the reports where you can find the related funds bookings:

Track a payment

In this example we focus on data in the most relevant reports for reconciling payment funds:

• Payment accounting report
• Balance Platform Accounting Report

The example EUR 100 payment has PSP reference F2FTV3THPB9Z2C33, and Merchant Reference UUID1. These are two of the unique identifiers in report data that you can use for tracking, reconciling, and combining data across different reports. These identifiers are exchanged in API requests and responses, and also included in webhooks.

Payment accounting report

The Payment accounting report shows the progress of this payment through the payment lifecycle events. The Booking Date with timestamp confirms when these events were booked.

Note the SentForSettle date and time: 2023‑01‑18 at 15:22:24. This is when the funds are distributed to the balance accounts as defined in the split instructions. At this point we can pick up the payment bookings in the Balance Platform Accounting Report.

Balance Platform Accounting Report

After the EUR 100 payment with PSP reference F2FTV3THPB9Z2C33 reaches the processing status SentForSettle, the Balance Platform Accounting Report reflects the booking of related payment funds to balance platform Balance Accounts.

The Status, Type, and Value Date columns in this report are important to understand when funds from this payment contribute balance as credited or debited in the Balance (BC) column.
For balance platform payments, amounts are reported in the Balance (BC) column when Status is Captured.

The Value Date for the splits from this example payment shows that funds from this payment became available balance on the second day after the funds were captured. In other words, the payout timing is T+2.

The BalanceAccount and Balance Account Description columns provide confirmation of how the funds and fee cost components for this payment are automatically allocated to different balance accounts based on the split instructions.
In our example, as shown in the Balance (BC) column, EUR 97.00 is credited to the balance platform user's balance account, and the balance platform's commission of EUR 3.00 is credited to the liable balance account. EUR -2.57 in fees is debited from a fees balance account of the balance platform. See Reconcile fees for a more detailed description of payment fee bookings.

Recommendations

Above we have shown how you can track a payment listed in the Payment accounting report to the corresponding balance platform account bookings listed in the Balance Platform Accounting Report, to illustrate the lifecycle of a payment and the flow of funds.

We recommend that you use API responses and webhooks to track individual payment transactions, and update your ledgers accordingly. That gives you the most up-to-date status of each payment transaction. You can then reconcile funds from all payments on a daily basis using only the Balance Platform Accounting Report.

See also