I’ve read all of the guides and most of the posts but I’m still not quite getting this.
I have acticated a stripe account through the quickfile integration page and this has automatically created the “Virtual” Stripe Holding Account (Merchant Account).
My understanding is that this is just an account that reflects the transactions on my stripe account, shows the ins and outs and balance but does not link to quickfile enough to automatically transfer funds to my actual bank account when stripe makes the transfer. I need to tag this through normal bank tagging.
In the (?) help bubble to the right of the account selection it says "We recommend creating a seperate bank account…:
QuickFile has already created a virtual account so does this mean create an actual bank account to keep things separate??
We do not add any fee for card/stripe transactions and they will all be paid against invoice either over the phone or via invoice link. When the payment is received we will receive from stripe the invoice total less the fee. How do I clear the invoice fully and reflect the transaction fee as an additional cost?
That’s correct. In terms of handling these, this comes as part of the answer in your second question.
A Stripe transaction (or for any merchant account for that matter) can be seen as 3 parts. Let’s use a transaction of £100.00 as an example, with a fee of 2% (£2), for simplicity.
You would have the following that makes up a single payment:
IN £100.00 (taken from the client for an invoice)
OUT £2.00 (taken by Stripe out of the £100 to cover their fees)
OUT £98.00 (the remainder paid to you)
Your virtual bank account on QuickFile would reflect this, and you would tag it as follows:
£100.00 - tagged to the invoice
£2.00 - tagged to a purchase invoice to the ‘bank charges’ category
£98.00 - tagged as a transfer to your current account.
And that’s it!
I hope that helps, but there’s a more detailed article here in our knowledge base
Thanks for these answers. Just to clarify…
where you say
you have actually already created that and do not recommend creating an actual bank account?
and
I can see from the first transaction that it has been automatically tagged to fully pay the invoice but do I have to create a new supplier such as “Stripe Charges” to invoice against and set that against bank charges? Will I see two new transactions in the Stripe account when they make the transfer to my bank of £98 and £2?
I would recommend having the virtual bank account. Not all users link Stripe to their QuickFile account, but in your case we have created that for you when you linked them. You only need one in most cases
You won’t see two new transactions as QuickFile isn’t told by Stripe when the transfer has taken place. Normally, you would wait for the money to appear in your bank account and you can tag that as a transfer from the Stripe holding account. You would then be left with the fee (plus anything else pending). You can simply enter the fee as a new transaction and tag it.
It’s usually best to have a supplier of ‘Stripe’ and create a purchase invoice for the fees. You may even wish to wait until the end of the month before tagging fees. You can let them accumulate and tag them as one lump sum at month end. Plus, Stripe does actually issue an invoice (usually a week or two into the month), so you can use that as part of the invoice. If you’re VAT registered, the invoice will also breakdown the VAT element.
It is more complicated than it looks when following the guides, once you have a payment come in it makes more sense and is not too difficult to follow.
For the fees I would set up a new nominal for Merchant/Payment Handling Fees to lump all payment providers fees under (Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal etc).
