Free tool
What your books should show for a Shopify payout
Most payout calculators tell you what you take home. This one tells you what the ledger should say - revenue, tax liability, and fee expense as three separate figures - because booking the deposit as one lump is the single most common way Shopify books go wrong.
What your ledger should show
- Revenue (income account)
- Gross sales less refunds. Tax is never revenue.
- Sales tax liability
- Money you collected on someone else's behalf.
- Processing fees (expense)
- An expense in its own right - not a discount on revenue.
- Bank deposit
- What actually lands. This is the number that won't match revenue.
Why the deposit never equals revenue
Shopify deposits $10,208.05 but your revenue for the same period is $9,750.00 - a gap of -$458.05, made up of $800.00 in tax you owe and $341.95 in fees. Booking the deposit as revenue understates income, hides the fee expense, and leaves the tax liability off the books entirely.
Rates are yours to enter - check your current ones on Shopify’s pricing page, since they vary by plan and country. Runs entirely in your browser. Not tax advice.
Common questions
- Why doesn't my Shopify payout match my revenue in QuickBooks?
- A payout is net of processing fees and includes sales tax you collected on someone else's behalf. Revenue is gross sales less refunds, with tax booked as a liability and fees booked as an expense. The two figures are supposed to differ; the gap is fees plus tax.
- Should I record the payout as income?
- No. Booking the deposit as income understates revenue by the fee amount, hides the processing expense entirely, and leaves the sales-tax liability off the balance sheet. Split the payout into revenue, tax liability, and fee expense.
- What is the clearing account for?
- Orders are placed before the money arrives. A clearing (or undeposited funds) account holds the sale between the order date and the payout date, so a settlement in transit at period end doesn't look like a missing order.
Check what your books actually say
This shows what should be there. The free scan shows what is - diffing every Shopify order against your QuickBooks ledger, with a settlement grace window so in-transit payouts never read as missing money.