Payouts: Incorrect Dates, Changing Dates + No Answers from Shopify

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
,

Topic summary

Merchants report unpredictable Shopify Payments disbursements: incorrect payout dates, multiple payouts per day, shifting order-level payout assignments, and a sudden change to expected “Tuesday” deposits for weekend sales. Tracking is time-consuming, reports feel unreliable, and Shopify Installments (BNPL) payouts are opaque until after deposits land.

A follow-up explains a likely cause: Shopify Payments now routes transactions across multiple processors (including PayPal). Deposits for PayPal-processed transactions occur on PayPal’s schedule (often daily), which Shopify cannot control; other transactions (e.g., via Stripe, noted as default by the commenter) follow the merchant’s selected payout schedule. Merchants cannot control which processor handles each transaction, causing mixed deposit timings and reconciliation headaches.

Impact: budgeting and payroll planning disrupted; concerns about report trustworthiness; significant operational strain (one agency cites 45+ clients affected).

Status and outcomes: Shopify support acknowledges the issue but offers no ETA or fix. Some merchants are considering switching to their own/alternative processors or leaving Shopify Payments.

Open questions: whether Shopify will provide routing control or clearer reporting; clarification on weekend (Tuesday) payout behavior; transparent scheduling for Shopify Installments payouts.

Summarized with AI on December 14. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Put this on another thread but thought I’d start up a new one as it seems this needs to have a spotlight shined on it for Shopify to fix the issues.

I’ve had multiple support chats this week alone over this. Total nightmare for trying to do your budget and cash flow projections. We’ve been using Shopify for 9 years and have never seen problems like this. It used to take 15 minutes max to update our budget/cash flow daily - I’m now spending up to an hour just trying to figure out how much more is really coming in and when, nevermind the slow and not very helpful support chats. Here are our issues, to which Shopify has said “they understand our frustrations and will report to their tech team”. Ugh.

  1. Incorrect payout dates. We are getting multiple payouts daily and it seems one payout arrives on the correct date and the other arrives the day after. The payout dates are all off. Weekend dates but no actual deposits. We’ve also tried finding a rhyme or reason to the batch payouts but cannot see any obvious trends.

  2. Payout dates on each order are changing over time. When the order is placed it will say, “this order will be added to your October X payout” and then the next day it changes to, “this order will be added to your October Y payout” which is typically the following day. Impossible to track unless you are going into each order individually to find this information.

  3. No more weekend payouts on Tuesday I fear. We have relied on Tuesday as our “big” day for bank deposits as it has consistently been the sales from Friday, Saturday and Sunday. All of a sudden, just this weekend, the payout dates for Friday all say they are being paid out on Wednesday instead. This is a big problem as our payroll is tied to the Tuesdays. Obviously can change moving forward, if need be, but having this as a surprise and no one admitting that there is any change happening other than new processors is SO frustrating. We will have bounced checks this week.

  4. Shopify Installments - this has become a complete guessing game. The only way to know that someone paid with it is to run a report and then its a guessing game as to how much the payout will be and when it will arrive. You can calculate the approximate payout amount if you want but the payout date remains a mystery until they post the transaction AFTER it has already been deposited in your account. The time it takes to track all of this isn’t worth it for us so we’re not even tracking them anymore which really stinks.

  5. In a nutshell, you can’t trust the reports anymore. I feel like we are being cheated somewhere which most likely we’re not but the feeling is there. This is our money we’re talking about. I don’t think many of us are sitting on a pile of money and don’t need to know exactly how much and when we will be paid. If we can’t trust your reports or support, we have nothing.

This is the first time we’ve ever even thought of leaving Shopify. Hopeful they hear us and get this fixed ASAP.

2 Likes
2

We had the same issue and were able to get answers.

Shopify Payments now runs transactions on multiple payment processors, including PayPal. This was in order to speed up the processing of transactions, they can distribute the transactions amongst whichever processor is best to handle it.

However, Shopify has absolutely zero control over when PayPal deposits.

Therefore, you will see daily deposits for any transactions handled by PayPal. Any transaction handled by Stripe (which I believe is Shopify’s default) will payout according the date you pick.

You and I have no control over which transactions are managed by Stripe and which are by PayPal (there may be others). This is why you are receiving daily deposits but also some funds are being held up for your selected deposit date.

It has been a catastrophe for us, who manage transactions for 45+ clients. So bad, that we are looking to install our own payment processor and move away from Shopify Payments altogether. Even if it costs us.

Shopify has no date on a fix, or if there even will be one. But they have confirmed they are aware this is causing an issue.

Hope this helps. Took a bit to get the answer for ourselves.