When you sell online, the customer pays by card almost instantly. The money, however, does not necessarily go straight to the business's bank account. It is first received by the payment gateway, which then bundles several payments into a payout, settles its own fees and sends the net amount to the bank account.
That is exactly why a payment gateway cannot be booked from the bank statement alone.
Consider two payments:
| Payment | Paid by customer | Gateway fee | Net amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer A | €100.00 | €3.00 | €97.00 |
| Customer B | €60.00 | €2.00 | €58.00 |
| Total | €160.00 | €5.00 | €155.00 |
The payment gateway then combines both payments and sends a single payout of €155 to the business's bank account.
If we booked €155 as revenue based on the bank statement, the accounting records would not reflect what actually happened. The customers paid €160 in total. The €5 difference is not a reduction in sales but a separate payment gateway fee.
In single-entry bookkeeping (jednoduché účtovníctvo), we therefore need to capture the whole flow: the customer's payment, the receivable from the payment gateway, the fee and the subsequent payout to the bank account.
Legal position as of 24 August 2026.
The customer's payment and the payout are not the same event
In a typical online sale, only a few seconds may pass between the receivable from the customer arising and it being paid. The customer places an order or receives an invoice and pays by card immediately.
From an accounting point of view, however, two things still happen. The receivable from the customer is extinguished because the customer has paid. At the same time, a receivable arises from the company that operates the payment gateway, which must subsequently settle the money it received with the business.
In single-entry bookkeeping, the same transaction appears in several books. The receivables ledger (kniha pohľadávok) shows who owes the business money, while the cash book (peňažný denník) records the card revenue through a clearing item.
These two entries do not exclude each other. Each tracks a different part of the same operation.
Two payments through Stripe
Customer A pays €100 and customer B pays €60. In both cases, the card payment takes place practically at the same time as the sale.
In the receivables ledger, we can therefore record the receivables from customers being extinguished and receivables from Stripe arising as follows:
Receivables ledger
| Date | Document | Debtor | Description | Receivable | Payment / settlement | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug 2026 | FA | Customer A | Sale of service, paid by card | €100.00 | €100.00 | €0.00 |
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Stripe | Customer A payment received via gateway | €100.00 | — | €100.00 |
| 2 Aug 2026 | FA | Customer B | Sale of service, paid by card | €60.00 | €60.00 | €0.00 |
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Stripe | Customer B payment received via gateway | €60.00 | — | €160.00 |
After both payments, the customers no longer owe anything. What remains open is a receivable from Stripe of €160.
Economically, then, the receivable has not disappeared. Only the debtor has changed.
How a card payment gets into the cash book
The Slovak procedures for single-entry bookkeeping use clearing items (priebežné položky) for card collections.1 When card revenue is received, the income is recorded in the relevant category together with a clearing item on the income side. When the amount is later settled to the bank account, the clearing item is cleared on the expense side.
For our two payments, the cash book might look like this:
Cash book – card payments received
| Date | Document | Text | Bank account receipt | PP – income | PP – expense | PZD – sale of goods and services | VOZD – fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Customer A payment via Stripe | — | €100.00 | — | €100.00 | — |
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Customer B payment via Stripe | — | €60.00 | — | €60.00 | — |
| Total | — | €160.00 | — | €160.00 | — |
At this point we already have €160 of sales income, even though nothing has reached the bank account yet.
The clearing item therefore does not mean that the €160 is a second asset alongside the receivable from Stripe. It is a cash book mechanism that links the card collection with its later settlement.
What supporting document do we have for a Stripe payment?
With a traditional bank, we have a bank statement. A payment gateway, however, keeps its own detailed record of payments before any payout is created.
For individual Stripe payments, the most practical supporting document is the Payments CSV export. It shows individual transactions, their date, the gross amount and, depending on the export settings, also fees and other identifiers. Stripe describes exporting fees and payment data in its documentation.2
It is precisely from such a document that we can prove customer A paid €100 and customer B paid €60, even though only one combined payout later appears on the bank statement.
Based on the export, an internal document (interný doklad, ID) can be prepared, from which the card revenue is entered in the cash book and the receivables records are updated at the same time.
With hundreds of payments, there is no need to produce hundreds of manual internal documents. You can work with a summary entry for a clearly defined period, provided the link to the detailed export is preserved and individual transactions can be traced back.
What matters is that every accounting entry has a supporting document and that it is possible to explain afterwards what happened, when and for what amount.
Payment gateway fees
Stripe charges €3 on the first payment and €2 on the second. That is €5 in total.
Here it is important to distinguish a transaction report from a document for the payment gateway's services. The Payments CSV may show the fee on a specific payment, but the liability for Stripe's services itself must be supported by an appropriate accounting document.
If Stripe bills fees of €5, a liability arises:
Payables ledger
| Date | Document | Creditor | Description | Liability | Payment / settlement | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Aug 2026 | FA | Stripe | Payment service fees | €5.00 | — | €5.00 |
The fee cannot simply be calculated as the difference between gross payments and the payout.
In our example:
€160 − €155 = €5
and the difference really does consist of fees. In a real Stripe account, however, the same difference may also include refunds, disputes, currency conversion, reserves or other adjustments.
The accounting records should therefore not create an expense as a "balancing figure". It must be possible to explain what a particular difference represents.
In this model example, the cash book uses the generic label VOZD – fee. The specific expense category must be determined according to the nature of the service and the cash book categories in use.
One payout for two customer payments
Stripe then combines both payments into one payout.
We record a receivable from Stripe of:
€160
and at the same time a liability for its services of:
€5.
Stripe therefore sends to the bank account:
€160 − €5 = €155
The bank statement will show only one line:
Stripe payout +€155
And this is where it is easiest to see why a payout is not revenue. Behind one bank movement of €155 there are two separate customer payments with a gross value of €160 and a separate fee of €5.
Cash book after the payout
| Date | Document | Text | Bank account receipt | PP – income | PP – expense | PZD – sale of goods and services | VOZD – fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Customer A payment via Stripe | — | €100.00 | — | €100.00 | — |
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Customer B payment via Stripe | — | €60.00 | — | €60.00 | — |
| 5 Aug 2026 | VBU | Stripe payout and fee settlement | €155.00 | — | €160.00 | — | €5.00 |
| Total | €155.00 | €160.00 | €160.00 | €160.00 | €5.00 |
After the payout, the clearing item balances out:
€160 on the income side − €160 on the expense side = €0.
The accounting records also show the correct result:
- sales income of €160,
- payment gateway fee of €5,
- increase in the bank account of €155.
How the receivable from Stripe is closed
On payout, the receivable from Stripe is not reduced by €155 only.
Stripe had to settle the full €160 with the business. It did so in two ways: it sent €155 to the bank account and used €5 to settle its fee.
Receivables ledger – Stripe
| Date | Document | Debtor | Description | Receivable | Payment / settlement | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Stripe | Customer A payment | €100.00 | — | €100.00 |
| 2 Aug 2026 | ID | Stripe | Customer B payment | €60.00 | — | €160.00 |
| 5 Aug 2026 | VBU / advice | Stripe | Payout and fee settlement | — | €160.00 | €0.00 |
The liability for Stripe's services is closed in the same way:
Payables ledger – Stripe
| Date | Document | Creditor | Description | Liability | Payment / settlement | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Aug 2026 | FA | Stripe | Payment service fees | €5.00 | — | €5.00 |
| 5 Aug 2026 | ID | Stripe | Fee settlement from Stripe balance | — | €5.00 | €0.00 |
After full settlement, all the records tell the same story:
Position after settlement
| Position after settlement | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross customer payments | €160.00 |
| Sales income | €160.00 |
| Payment gateway fees | €5.00 |
| Payout to bank account | €155.00 |
| Clearing items | €0.00 |
| Receivables from customers | €0.00 |
| Receivable from Stripe | €0.00 |
| Liability to Stripe | €0.00 |
The Payments CSV, monthly Summary and VAT Invoice serve different purposes
With Stripe, no single document explains the whole month. Different documents prove different parts of the flow.
The Payments CSV is practical for the customer payments themselves. It shows individual transactions and lets us determine the gross amounts received.
The monthly Summary is used mainly for reconciliation. It helps verify how payments received, fees, refunds, other movements, payouts and the closing Stripe balance tie together. Stripe also designs its reports for checking and reconciling balance movements.3
The Stripe VAT Invoice is a separate accounting and tax document for Stripe's services. It supports the liability to Stripe and the correct VAT treatment. Stripe describes the monthly tax invoice and its contents in its support pages.4
These amounts are not necessarily the same.
For example, if the Payments CSV shows €78.60 of payment fees for the month while the Stripe VAT Invoice is for €81.41, the €2.81 difference should not simply be added to processing fees. You first need to find out what Stripe billed with that amount. The invoice may also include other services or fees that are not directly linked to one specific customer payment.
Likewise, total fees cannot be calculated simply as the difference between gross payments and bank payouts.
The bank statement confirms the payout, not the original revenue
Stripe's dashboard may show that a payout has been created or sent. The movement on the bank account, however, is booked based on the bank statement (výpis z bankového účtu, VBU).1
The Stripe report and the bank statement therefore prove two different things.
Stripe explains what the payout is made up of. The bank statement confirms how much actually arrived in the account and when.
If the bank statement shows a single payout of €155, the bank itself will not tell us that it consists of two payments of €100 and €60 and fees of €5. We only get that information from the payment gateway's records.
That is why, with a payment gateway, it is not enough to book bank movements alone.
What if Stripe has not yet paid out all the money?
Customer payments and payouts do not have to fall on the same day or even in the same month.
If customers paid €1,000 in total by the end of the month but Stripe paid out only part of that amount to the bank, it does not mean the business's income is only the payout received.
The customers have already paid. The unsettled part remains open against the payment gateway until the next payout or another form of settlement.
It can therefore be perfectly normal for an open receivable from Stripe and a balance on clearing items to remain at the end of the month. What matters is that this position can be explained using the platform's detailed records and then reconciled with subsequent payouts.
Not every platform is a payment gateway
This approach cannot be automatically applied to every platform that receives money from end customers.
With a classic payment gateway, the customer buys from the business and the platform handles payment processing and settlement.
A marketplace, a commission-agent model, the App Store or a Merchant of Record, however, may work differently. The platform may itself be the seller to the end customer, or an entirely different legal relationship may exist between the parties.
Before applying the same accounting approach, you first need to know what role the platform actually plays in the specific business model.
Conclusion
With a payment gateway, a bank payout must not be mistaken for revenue.
If customer A pays €100 and customer B pays €60, the business has received gross card revenue of €160, even though Stripe sends only one payout of €155 to the bank account after settling its fees.
In the cash book, card collections are recorded as income and through clearing items. In the receivables ledger, the claim against the payment gateway is tracked once customers have paid. Fees create a separate liability, and on payout the bank receipt, the clearing item, the receivable and the liability are all settled.
With Stripe, we therefore need to track the whole flow:
sale → customer payment → receivable from Stripe → fee → payout → bank account.
The Payments CSV shows individual customer payments, the monthly Summary helps reconcile the whole Stripe account, the VAT Invoice documents Stripe's services and the bank statement confirms the payout itself.
And it is with multiple payments that this distinction matters most: a single bank payout can be the result of dozens or hundreds of separate sales.
