Balance Transaction

A balance transaction is the ledger entry for each movement into or out of your Stripe balance. A charge or refund describes what happened. Its balance transaction records the money, meaning how much reached your balance and when.

What it records

• `amount` is the gross value.
• `fee` is the processing fee Stripe took.
• `net` is what reached your balance (amount minus fee).
• `type` is the cause, such as charge, refund, payout, adjustment, or dispute.
• `available_on` is when the net funds move from pending to available.

A $100.00 card payment at standard US pricing (2.9% + 30¢) has amount = $100.00, fee = $3.20, and net = $96.80.

Use it for accounting

The balance transaction has the fee and the net for every event, so use it, not the charge amount, for your books. The sum of net amounts over a period is your net volume. Grouping balance transactions by payout shows which payments make up each bank deposit.

Settlement timing

available_on is the date the money becomes usable, not the date the payment succeeded. It links each balance transaction to settlement and tells you when its funds can go out in a payout.