In the world of payments, nothing can be said to be certain except death, taxes and merchant processing fees. We're excited to tell you about a new feature available in two phases starting April 1: Stripe Fees. Stripe Fees transfer will be available for QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Xero.

Stripe Fees, Net Income

Stripe takes a certain amount out of every sale in the form of credit card processing fees. Their advertised rate is 2.9% and 30¢ per transaction. For example, at that rate if you sell something for $20, you’ll receive $19.12 after Stripe takes out fees.

Prior to April 1, every Stripe charge for a given day is transferred as-is, with each appearing on its own invoice line by identifier. Commerce Sync does not account for processing fees. Starting April 1, all fees applicable to all charges that day are entered as an additional negative line on the invoice. Here is an example of what it will look like in QuickBooks Online:

Stripe Fees are applied to the same sales income account (Stripe Sales by default) as charges. Since fees are negative, the effect is that the Income account tracks charges minus fees. Additionally, the Stripe Fees are netted out of the payment applied to the invoice, reflecting the actual money you see from processing Stripe transactions.

This works the same way regardless of your fee structure, whether it is the default 2.9% / 30¢ per transaction or something else. Additionally, whereas Stripe Fees are subtracted for charges, they are added back for refunds. So any fees credited back for refunds are counted positively for all fees for a given day.

Stripe Fees, Expense Account

Subtracting Stripe fees from your sales income provides a more accurate representation of your books, but you may want greater control. With that in mind, we are extending the feature to support tracking Stripe Fees in an Expense account. On the surface, this appears the same subtracting fees from income, except the fees are applied to a separate account. Here is a sample similar to the one provided above, depicted in Xero:

In this case, charges are tracked in Stripe Sales, but Stripe Fees are tracked in their own expense account:

This allows accurate, double-entry representation of your sales, fees, and the actual money you’ve collected all at once. In Commerce Sync Dashboard, you will have the option of choosing between tracking Stripe Fees net income or in an Expense account. Selecting the latter allows you to choose which expense account:

The ability to transfer Stripe Fees into an expense account will follow the net income capability sometime before the end of April. After this point, all new Stripe users will be set to transfer fees into an Expense account called Stripe Fees by default. However, you are free to change the way Stripe Fees are transferred in your Commerce Sync Dashboard at any time.

There you have it. Given the certainty of merchant processing fees, we hope this gives even more time back to all Commerce Sync Stripe customers - and customers to be!