Shopify Payout times = accounting nightmare

[Cindy3]

Is anyone else experiencing accounting difficulties based on the fact that Shopify reports show sales based on the date according to your time zone, but Shopify Pay determines payouts based on UTC time zone? I'm not talking about the days in between sales and deposit. I'm talking about the actual cutoff times.

For example, let's say that Shopify sales for a business day shows that $2000 total was sold on Day X.

Let's say $1500 was sold through Shopify Pay, and $500 was sold through Paypal.

My client's accountant wants to use the sales report to reconcile and match with actual deposits. However, Shopify Pay payouts are calculated based on UTC time and will not match the $1500 since that was based on EST time. The Shopify Pay deposit will capture orders from 7pm EST on Day X - 6:50pm EST on Day Y. Paypal on the other hand, allows you to set the payout times so they do match the sales report.

I've called Shopify and they say that the Shopify Pay times can not be changed from midnight to midnight UTC time.

How are others handling the accounting piece of this??

Thanks in advance.

[ClementG]

Hey Cindy.

I see how this would be a big problem.

Our app Better Reports may be able to help.

The payout data is not exposed to apps (there is no API), but we could generate a report that shows your sales based on UTC time so that it matches your payouts.

Feel free to reach out to me directly at clement@betterreports.co to discuss further.

Best,

Clement

[John__S]

Hi Cindy,

Shopify does not provide payout details because it involves sensitive information. You have couple of options:

1) Have you tried this option to download transaction detail behind each deposit - https://help.shopify.com/manual/payments/shopify-payments/getting-paid-with-shopify-payments#view-yo...

2) At Data Export, we try to reconcile the deposits to sales but it still a workaround. There are a couple of reasons why we are not able to reconcile to the Bank deposits:
a) The timing of the orders that make up the daily deposit is determined by Shopify. 
b) There are also adjustments. For example, any refund claim reversal, refund adjustment will be considered as adjustments. Shopify deposits are net of these adjustments. 

Let me know if you have any quetions.

Thanks!

[TAGSAngel]

I'd be damned if I pay 20.00 a month for each shopify store to get reports that should follow general accounting principals.   That's absurd.   Bad on Shopify.  A day is from 12 - 11:59  per time zone.  Period.  I am so angry

[Alex_P_]

I'm also struggling with this problem as relates to keeping my sales tax accounts payable updated. The sales tax report in Shopify is based on the local date (California, for me) while Shopify payments is based on what looks like UTC, so there's no way to see what amount of the payout should actually go to accounts payable for sales tax. 

While normalizing all time zone usage to local time would be ideal, I think an easier solution would be for Shopify payments to provide more detail than it currently does. If it could separate between sales / shipping paid / tax paid per tax authority — I'd be set. 

[John__S]

Hi Alex,

Data Export can provide the report that shows the tax collected for each Shopify Payout deposit. You can see the taxes by state, county and also product or shipping related taxes.

If you have any questions, you can contact me at john@dayspringlabs.com

Thanks!!

[jmartini]

The reason it is so highly rated is they are super helpful when you join and immediately request you to give them a rating (I also gave them 5 stars that I wish I could take back). But then you find out that the app is very cumbersome to use, reports often take a whole day to run, and their customer service is horrible. I wish I could revise my rating. You get what you pay for.

[Eitan1]

I have also been frustrated with the UTC payout time.  I'm also in California, so it cuts off our credit card payments at 4pm, while our business is open until 6pm most days.  Our daily sales reports don't match up with the daily deposits.  We've been seriously considering moving to a different merchant payment processor, despite the higher cost.  Has anyone been able to get Shopify to process your merchant account settlements at something other than midnight UTC?

[John__S]

Hi Eitan,

Many of Data Export users and their accountants are using our "Payout Bank reconciliation" report to match each Bank deposit to the order, transaction, products and fees. You can get any detail behind each Bank deposit.

Also, the Payout detail will capture all the orders in that deposit. You do not have to manually match the daily sales report with the time zones.

There is no need for manual reconciliation. We have worked hard to automate the Bank deposit reconciliation because this can be a nightmare, especially for larger stores or Shopify Plus stores.

We have a 15-day trial to test the reports. Our prices are merchant friendly and lowest among all reporting apps. Our support team can setup any type of custom reconciliation report unique to your store. Report setup is always free. You can reach me at john@dayspringlabs.com

Thanks!!

[Roshan_Richards]

The problem I am having is that Shopify cuts off the sales on a given day according to UTC time zone rather than letting us customize it according to the time zone where we are selling, THEN, the financial report shows the actual sales for our day according to our time zone rather than with the cut off UTC time - this makes a hairy discrepancy in numbers and takes hours to figure out. 

It would be helpful if Shopify would either let us choose the time zone according to store location OR make it so we can see both financials, the actual one for our time zone with all of the sales for the day (as is currently showing) AND the one for the cut off time that shows up in our bank accounts so we can actually reconcile.  It makes absolutely no sense the way that it is now and is useless for the shop owners.  PLEASE, Shopify, align this one way or the other so we can get our information.

[ericamb]

Hi Roshan,

I’m actively working on a few solutions to the quirks centered around Shopify. Sensing the frustration in your words, I’d love to converse with you to see how deep this problem goes and to potentially offer up a solution that may alleviate some of your accounting pains. Let me know if you’d like to connect and I’ll share my email and calendar.

Cheers,
Erica

[fishwater]

I'm having the same issues.  I'm wondering if switching to authorize.net would alleviate this problem.  Does anyone have experience using a different payment processor with Shopify? 

[TAGSAngel]

2 years later this is still an issue.  have you found a solution?   

[eCommAccountant]

For my Shopify bookkeeping clients I balance from the deposits made to the bank backwards to each transaction/order using the Shopify reports supplied.

[Greg33]

Digging up a month-old thread as we have the same issue. Being in California, our client's store is open until 5:00pm however Shopify pushes all orders after 4:00pm to the next day. This makes reconciling deposits a nightmare. After speaking with Shopify Retail Support today, they created a feedback ticket but there's no timetable on when something can be implemented to fix this. I hope they take a hint from almost every other gateway/processor and allow merchants to specify their 'end of day' times as this is a major business hassle.

[Parextech]

Hi All,

I do not know which accounting software you use for this but we have the app for syncing Shopify orders to QuickBooks online. It is called QuickBooks Bridge. (https://apps.shopify.com/quickbooks-bridge)

The normal version of the app syncs individual orders to Quickbooks and then when the payout comes, it creates a transfer JV from the holding account to a bank account.

But another modified version of the app, create individual orders only once a payout from Shopify has been received. In that app it considers the Shopify fees in each order and works pretty seamlessly.

Do let me know if you would like to know more about the possibility of automating the data entry for the Shopify orders to QuickBooks.

Thank you.

[goalstar]

I agree that this is very upsetting that you can not select a time and timezone for payouts. The fact that it is based on UTC is ridiculous! Really really hope they are working on a solution for this as we'd really like this option, as my client had when they were with First Data. Decided to try Shopify Payments to keep POS and Online sales in one place but this has definitely created an accounting nightmare for my client, and they are considering switching back to First Data. I'm certain Shopify is losing some big customers because of this! Please get us a timeline on this Shopify. 

[Miyamo]

I am also experiencing this accounting nightmare. It is taking me hours sometimes to record my daily sales because I am having to pull up all orders individually to match them with my payouts. PLEASE FIND A SOLUTION to be able to push the time out to Midnight based on where you live and NOT UTC

[thuydo]

Hi eCommAccountant,

Can you please tell me what reports are you using to reconcile with bank deposits? I am new to Shopify. I found the Payout report match with bank deposit but sI need a report with more detail like order number, fulfillment status, so I can book revenue as well.

Thanks

[eCommAccountant]

The reports I use are Orders and Payouts.

[thuydo]

Thank you so much. How do you connect Payouts report with Orders? Sorry to
ask so many questions but I don't have Shopify account, the customer
provided me the Payout reports which have only Payout
date/Status/Charges/Refunds/Adjustments/Reserved Funds/Fee/Total/Currency.

I thought there might be a Payout report that has more information to
connect with Orders Report, such as order number?

Thanks for your help.

[eCommAccountant]

Tell whoever is supplying the Payout report, they must use the "transactions" option which gives you your order number, not just the main payout report. 

[thuydo]

Thanks a lot! I hope this will solve my problem.

Have a great day!

[thuydo]

It worked! Thank you so much again.

[nwillaman]

Are you able to share which reports you use?

[backyardbirder]

Here is a sample month. Description of columns in excel are at the bottom.
Hope this helps!
Monique

[backyardbirder]

Yes, I am dealing with this as well. I was told to look into an App to help me. After trying a few, I have downloaded the Report Toaster App. They were able to create a report that separates the payouts to correspond to the Shopify payout times. ie all sales made after 8 pm, in my case, show on the next days payout report.

At least I am able to reconcile without having to downlaod the cvs files to reconcile. Hope this can help you.