Docs : Stripe reconciliations

FreeAgent vs DoubleAgent

If you receive payments via Stripe, you'll need to explain them in FreeAgent.

FreeAgent offers Stripe reconciliations, as does DoubleAgent. Here are the differences.

You can't use both – you have to choose one or the other. Fortunately it's easy to choose:

Do the vast majority of your Stripe payments come from a Stripe payment link on your FreeAgent invoices?

Yes: use FreeAgent's Stripe reconciliations.
No: use DoubleAgent's.

How to set up DoubleAgent's Stripe reconciliations

You'll need to remove your Stripe bank account in FreeAgent if you have one - here's how to do that. You will still be able to use Stripe payment links on your invoices if you want to.

You'll also need to opt out of FreeAgent's Guess for your Stripe payouts. You can either switch off Guess entirely or exclude transactions containing the term Stripe, as explained here.

Now you:

connect your Stripe account(s);
tell DoubleAgent how you want your payouts explained.

That's it! All payments (and refunds) from your customers in Stripe will be explained in FreeAgent and all fees will be explained correctly too.

How are the payouts explained in FreeAgent?

DoubleAgent can explain Stripe payouts in three different ways – choose whichever suits you best:

Method	Use this when...
One invoice per Stripe charge	If you need to keep track in FreeAgent of who paid you.
One sales transaction per Stripe charge	If you don't need to keep track of who's who, but you do need to see the individual charges in FreeAgent.
One sales transaction for all Stripe charges (see below for details)	If you just need the overall amounts.

How does it work in detail?

Every time you receive a payout, DoubleAgent gets a breakdown from Stripe of everything making up that payout: customer payments, refunds, fees charged by Stripe, etc (more details). DoubleAgent goes through the items as follows:

When explaining with one sales transaction per charge

After processing a charge, DoubleAgent create a sales transaction for it, a Stripe fee payment, and a Stripe application fee payment if needed.

When explaining with one invoice per charge

After processing a charge, DoubleAgent finds the relevant contact in FreeAgent. If the contact doesn't yet exist, because it's a new customer, DoubleAgent creates it in FreeAgent using the information from Stripe. Once it has the FreeAgent contact, DoubleAgent looks for an invoice corresponding to the payment. If no such invoice exists, DoubleAgent creates it, again using the information from Stripe. Then DoubleAgent settles the invoice with funds from the payout. Finally DoubleAgent creates a Stripe fee payment, and a Stripe application fee payment if needed.

When explaining with a "rolled-up" (aggregated) sales transaction

DoubleAgent accumulates each charge in one of two buckets – UK or everywhere else – and accumulates the fees.
After processing all the items in a payout, DoubleAgent creates one sales transaction for each bucket (with the correct VAT and EC status); one Stripe fee payment; and one Stripe application fee payment if needed.

Logs

DoubleAgent lists on the Logs page every change it makes to your FreeAgent account. All changes made when reconciling Stripe payouts – adding a contact, raising an invoice, explaining invoice receipts, explaining fees – refer to the Stripe payout reference. This makes it easy to see exactly what DoubleAgent is doing for you.

Undoing changes

Naturally you can undo any change DoubleAgent makes to your FreeAgent account. On your Stripe integration page, click the delete icon next to the explanation you want to undo.

Stripe Reconciliations