Stripe collects your money, keeps its fees and pays out the rest, so your bank sees one deposit while your books need everything behind it. Payouts books every Stripe sale, fee, refund, dispute and payout into QuickBooks. The Stripe account in your books then equals your Stripe balance, and each bank deposit lines up with its payout.
Payouts is part of Autopilot: every company on Autopilot gets a Stripe card on the Payouts page. Connecting Stripe and confirming need Write on the company (see Team), and since Payouts writes to QuickBooks, the company needs full access (see Access and confirmations). Stripe is the first platform; Square, Shopify, PayPal, Amazon, eBay and Etsy are listed as coming soon.
Connect Stripe
- Open Payouts and click Connect Stripe on the card of the company it serves.
- Stripe opens its own page, where you approve Caribooks' app. You never paste an API key, and Caribooks never sees your Stripe password. Stripe gives Caribooks read-only access.
- Back on the page, the card shows the setup prompt.
Set it up with your assistant
Under Set it up in your assistant, click Copy and paste the prompt into Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot. Your assistant reads what Caribooks prepared (what Stripe sold in the last 90 days and what your books already hold) and proposes the whole setup in one answer:
- the account that holds your Stripe balance in QuickBooks (a Bank account), the account payouts land in, and the expense account and vendor for Stripe's fees;
- a QuickBooks item for each Stripe product and a tax code for each tax Stripe charges;
- the customers Stripe knows under another name;
- how sales are booked: one by one, as an invoice or sales receipt on each customer (suits a few returning customers), or as one summary per payout (suits many one-time buyers), shown with your own numbers and a recommendation;
- the first day to book. If PayTraQer, Synder or another tool booked Stripe before, the setup reads the Stripe ids in its notes and starts after the last payout it covered, so nothing is booked twice.
It asks only what needs your decision, all at once, and creates nothing in QuickBooks before your yes. A missing tax code is the exception: you add it yourself in QuickBooks, under its sales tax settings. Then the assistant saves the setup.
Confirm the setup
Confirm the setup lists what your assistant saved, in plain words. Nothing is booked until you click Confirm. To change something, click Change it in your assistant and ask it there.
One last look
You see this once. One last look shows the QuickBooks records for everything since the first day: sales, fees, refunds and payouts, grouped. Under them, two checks compare the books with Stripe: your Stripe account in QuickBooks the day before the first day against Stripe then, and the same account afterwards against Stripe now.
- Your answers first lists the sales Caribooks cannot book without you, such as a product with no QuickBooks item or a customer it cannot match. You can book the rest without them; they wait on the card until answered.
- When your books and Stripe disagree on the day before, a box offers to book the difference to Opening Balance Equity. Unticked, the difference stays: your books miss activity from before the first day, or the first day should move.
Click Looks right, book it and keep going. From then on Caribooks books new Stripe activity every hour on its own, with nothing to approve.
Once it runs
The card then shows what Stripe holds next to what QuickBooks shows, with In step or Off by and the cause when Caribooks knows it: movements still waiting, or records in the account that Caribooks did not write. It also shows the last payout and the one on its way. Check now reads Stripe at once, and See what was booked (30 days) opens each record in QuickBooks.
- Each record notes its Stripe id. Foreign charges are booked at Stripe's own conversion rate, so amounts match what landed. Refunds become refund receipts or credit memos, disputes and Stripe's adjustments go to the fee account, and no new QuickBooks account is created.
- Needs you lists anything Caribooks could not book, with its reason and a way to answer on the card: pick the item or customer, say a payment pays open invoices, or that you recorded it yourself. Once a line is fixed elsewhere, click Try again. Fix these with your assistant gives a prompt that explains each line and proposes a fix.
- Turn off automatic booking stops the hourly booking. New activity then waits on the card until you click Book them.
- Settings changes apply to new Stripe activity; records already in QuickBooks stay as they are. The first day locks once anything is booked.
- Disconnect Stripe stops Caribooks reading Stripe and removes its app from your Stripe account, unless another Caribooks connection still uses that account. What was booked stays in QuickBooks.
A company whose setup is not finished is counted on Payouts in the sidebar and in the email summary until you book its last look.
Ask your assistant
- "Why is Stripe off by $12.40 this week?"
- "Which Stripe sales are waiting on Payouts, and what do they need?"
- "Show me what Caribooks booked for yesterday's Stripe payout."