Reconciling invoices against bulk online payouts – Sporty Online Support Centre

Using VostroPay and Xero? Let Sporty do this for you.
Sporty can reconcile your daily VostroPay payouts in Xero automatically, turning reconciliation into a one-click job. There's no extra cost. See Xero auto-reconciliation of VostroPay settlement payouts to turn it on.

The rest of this article is for organisations who reconcile their payouts manually.

When people pay online through your Sporty forms, the payment provider doesn't pay each payment into your bank separately. It pays one combined amount for a period, called a payout, with its fees already deducted:

VostroPay: daily payouts
POLi: same day as bank processing
Debitsuccess: weekly payouts

For example, ten registrations of $100 each create ten invoices in Xero totalling $1,000. If the fees are 5%, the payout that reaches your bank is $950.

This article explains how to reconcile that single payout against the individual invoices, and how to record the fees.

In this article:

What Sporty records in Xero for you

If you have set an account under Admin Settings > Connections > Set Account for Paid Transactions, Sporty does more than raise the invoice. When someone pays online, Sporty also adds the payment to the invoice in Xero, against the account you chose. The invoice appears in Xero already marked as Paid. See Xero Features for how to set this up.

You don't need to add these payments yourself.

IMPORTANT: Never remove a payment that Sporty added in Xero.
Sporty and Xero stay in sync. If you remove a payment from an invoice in Xero, Sporty removes it too, and that member will show a balance owing in Sporty even though they paid. If this has happened, see Manual Payments & Adjustments to correct the member's balance in Sporty.

Choose your setup

Which steps you follow depends on the account set under Set Account for Paid Transactions:

Set to a clearing account: follow Option A. This is the approach Xero recommends for bulk payouts.
Set to your bank account: follow Option B, or switch to Option A.
Not set: Sporty raises invoices as Awaiting Payment and doesn't add payments. Follow Option C.

Whichever option you use, finish with Recording the merchant fees.

Option A: Reconcile through a clearing account (recommended)

A clearing account is a holding account. Sporty records each online payment into it, and each payout from your provider moves the money out of it into your bank. Once the fees are recorded, the clearing account returns to zero.

One-off setup

In Xero, go to Accounting > Chart of accounts and add a new Current Asset account to use as the clearing account, for example "Online payments clearing".
Set its tax rate to No GST. GST has already been recorded on each invoice.
Tick Enable payments to this account and save.
In Sporty, go to Admin Settings > Connections, choose the new clearing account under Set Account for Paid Transactions, and click Save Account. A new account can take up to two hours to appear in this list.

From then on, Sporty records each online payment against the clearing account. This applies to new payments only. Payments recorded before you changed the setting stay against the old account.

Each time a payout arrives

In Xero, reconcile the payout line in your bank account and code it to the clearing account.
Record the fees for that payout. See Recording the merchant fees below.

The clearing account should now be back to zero, or close to it if some payments are still waiting to be paid out. If it isn't, use your provider's payout report to see which payments the payout covered.

Option B: Payments recorded straight to your bank account

Sporty records each online payment against your bank account in Xero. Your bank feed shows one payout line, while Xero holds a separate payment for each registration. Those payments won't match the payout line one-to-one, because the payout is a combined total with the fees already taken out.

These payments are not duplicates. Don't delete them. Match them to the payout instead.

In Xero, open the bank account and find the payout line on the Reconcile tab.
Click Find & Match.
Tick each Sporty payment included in that payout. Use your provider's payout report to see which ones they are.
The difference between the payments you ticked and the payout is the fees. Add it as an adjustment, coded to your merchant fees account.
Click Reconcile.

If you'd rather not match individual payments each time, switch to Option A.

Option C: Invoices left awaiting payment

If Set Account for Paid Transactions isn't set, Sporty raises invoices but doesn't add payments, so they sit in Xero as Awaiting Payment. Create a clearing account as in Option A's one-off setup steps 1 to 3, then:

When the payout arrives, reconcile the payout line in your bank account and code it to the clearing account.
Open each invoice included in the payout and click Add payment. If an invoice is still a draft, approve it first.
Set Date paid to the date the payout was received, and Account to the clearing account. Click Add.
Record the fees. See Recording the merchant fees below.

Once an invoice is marked as paid in Xero, Sporty updates the member's balance to show they've paid.

To save these manual steps in future, set Set Account for Paid Transactions to your clearing account and follow Option A.

Recording the merchant fees

For Options A and C, record the fees with a manual journal. You don't need to do this for every payout, but do it regularly so your accounts stay accurate.

Create a new Expense account for the fees, for example "Merchant fees (GST)", set to 15% GST on Expenses. This is similar to your bank fees account, which is most likely set to No GST.
Find the total fees for the payout from your provider's payout report.
Create a manual journal that credits the clearing account and debits the merchant fees account by that amount.

Using the earlier example of $1,000 in payments with a $50 fee, the journal credits the clearing account $50 and debits Merchant fees (GST) $50.

If you need help accounting for online revenue or merchant fees, please talk to your accountant or contact Xero.