Ledger, settlements and withdrawals

The Money section is the platform’s books. Everything here is derived from the ledger, and the ledger is the authority — when a page disagrees with it, the page is wrong.

The ledger

Money → Ledger is double-entry. Every movement posts a journal, and a journal balances or the write fails. There is no path in the system that records half a movement.

That property is what makes the rest of this section meaningful. A balance here is not a counter somebody increments; it is derived from the postings. If a balance looks wrong, the answer is in the journals that produced it, not in the balance.

Amounts are minor units and a currency, everywhere, in the database and in the API. If you ever see a decimal amount in a system that should be reading the ledger, that is a bug worth reporting rather than a formatting preference.

Periods

Money → Periods is accounting periods, and closing one is the point.

A closed period cannot be posted into. That is the whole purpose: it means the figures you reported for last month are the figures that will still be there next month, rather than drifting as late corrections arrive.

Close deliberately and on a schedule. Reopening a closed period is a serious operation — if something needs correcting after a close, the usual and correct answer is an adjusting entry in the current period, not a reopened one.

Settlements

Money → Settlements is the batching step: successful transactions are grouped, fees netted off, and the batch approved for payout.

A batch makes a merchant’s balance payable. A batch’s lines are the individual transactions inside it, and that view is what a reconciliation actually needs — when a merchant disputes their settlement total, the answer is in the lines, and no amount of staring at the aggregate will produce it.

Approving a batch is money becoming payable. Treat it accordingly.

Withdrawals

Money → Withdrawals sits directly under settlements because the two are the same money at two stages: a batch makes a balance payable, a withdrawal takes it out. An operator reconciling one almost always wants the other.

A withdrawal that failed usually failed at the destination — a closed account, wrong details, a bank rejection. The money has not gone anywhere, but the merchant believes it has, so a failed withdrawal is a conversation as well as a retry.

Commissions

Money → Commissions is beside withdrawals rather than under pricing, because it is the same kind of event: money leaving the platform. The difference is who to.

A withdrawal pays a merchant who can see their own balance and will notice a mistake. A commission payout pays a referrer who can see nothing at all and will not. The second one needs more care precisely because nobody on the other end is checking your work.

The order to investigate a money question in

1. The ledger. What was actually posted? It balances, so it is the truth.
2. The settlement batch and its lines. Which transactions were included, and at what net?
3. The withdrawal. Did it leave, and did it arrive?
4. The merchant’s own records, last. They are the question, not the answer.

Working the other way round — starting from what the merchant believes — is how a reconciliation turns into an argument instead of a finding.