Tracking Artist Payouts

Artist Payouts (Admin → Finance → Artist Payouts) is where you pay artists for artwork that has sold, either straight through Stripe or by recording a payment you made yourself. A second page, Payout Reports (Admin → Finance → Payout Reports), covers the other direction: the money Stripe deposits into your bank account, and which charges and refunds made up each deposit. This guide covers both.

Paying artists for sold work

The Pending Payouts tab lists every sold artwork that has not been paid out, grouped by artist. Three figures sit above the list: Total Pending, Artists with Payouts, and Stripe-Enabled Artists.

Each artist row shows Artist, Sales, Pending Amount and Stripe Status. Open the row to see the individual pieces behind that total, with Artwork, Exhibition, Sale Date, Sale Price, Commission and Artist Share. The artist share is the sale price less your commission, using the rate that applies to that sale: an artist-specific rate if one is set, otherwise the exhibition's override, otherwise your organization default. See Setting Commission Rates.

Every row shows Mark Paid. Tick the pieces you are paying for, then open the dialog. The button counts what you selected, for example Mark Paid (3 items, $1,240.00).

When the artist has connected Stripe, the row also shows Pay via Stripe, which transfers the artist share to their connected account and marks the sales paid. If your organization takes payments through its own Stripe account, or did before disconnecting it, the row shows Mark Paid only, because those sales were paid straight into your account. Failed Stripe payouts for such an organization cannot be retried; pay them with Mark Paid instead.

The Mark Payout as Paid dialog asks for a Payment Method (Check, Cash, PayPal or Venmo) and has a Send email notification option so the artist hears from you when the payment goes out. Use this whenever you pay by check, transfer or cash through your own accounting process: the amounts, dates and reports stay accurate even though the money moved outside Crafted Call.

When nothing is waiting, the tab reads All caught up.

Checking what you already paid

The Payout History tab lists completed payouts with Date Completed, Artist, Artwork, Exhibition, Sale Price, Artist Share, Amount, Method and Processed By. Payouts sent automatically through Stripe show System as the processor; ones you recorded show the team member who recorded them. This is the record to check when an artist asks what they were paid and when.

Reading a bank deposit

Payout Reports answers a different question: Stripe deposited an amount into your bank account, and you need to know what it was made of. Pick a date range and the page lists Payouts in range with Payout ID, Status, Amount and Arrival.

Expand any payout to see the charges, refunds and adjustments it carried, each tied back to the payment it came from: Date, Artist, Piece, Call, Type, Gross, Fees and Net. When an artist checked out several pieces in one cart, that single charge lists every submission with its own amount, so a multi-piece checkout is never a single unexplained line. The panel counts the transactions it found, notes any that could not be matched to a payment, and then says either Net matches the payout amount. or Net differs from the payout amount of $X. An Open in Stripe link takes you to the same payout in your Stripe dashboard.

Net to gallery is what you keep. It starts from the gross charge and deducts Crafted Call fees, Stripe fees, currency-conversion fees and any refunds against that payment. A refund issued after a deposit lands reduces the net on the payment it belongs to, not the deposit that already arrived.

Covered by artist

The stat strip above the table breaks the period down into Total Payouts, Crafted Call Fees, Stripe Fees, Conversion Fees, Covered by Artist, Refunds and Net to Gallery.

Covered by Artist is its own figure: the share of platform and processing fees that artists paid at checkout rather than your organization. It is already inside the gross amount, so it never gets added into net a second time. If you have turned on passing fees to artists on some calls and not others, this is the line that tells you how much that choice actually covered.

Every figure in the strip is reported per currency. An organization taking both US dollars and Australian dollars sees each currency on its own line, because adding them together would produce a number that means nothing.

Exporting the detail

Export CSV downloads one row per payment for the selected range, with these columns:

Payment ID, Created At, Completed At, Status, Payment Type, Artist, Artist Email, Submission, Call, Exhibition, Gross Amount, Refunded Amount, Platform Fee, Stripe Fee, Conversion Fee, Platform Tip, Artist Fee Coverage, Net Amount, Currency, Stripe Charge ID, Stripe Payout ID, Payout Date.

Artist fee coverage and currency are separate columns, so a bookkeeper can total fee coverage per currency without re-deriving it. Negative amounts export as plain numbers that a spreadsheet will sum.

When something looks wrong

If fees for the period are higher than the size of your charges would suggest, the page shows a dismissible alert at the top counting the anomalies it found, with the actual fee rate, the expected rate, the number of charges and their average size. The usual causes are international cards and higher-fee card brands. It is a prompt to look, not an error.

Before you pay

Confirm the sale has settled and no refund or dispute is pending. Reversing a buyer's charge after you have paid the artist means chasing the money back.
Check the artist's Stripe status. An artist showing Not Connected can still be paid, but only by recording the payment yourself.
Keep bank details out of notes and messages. Artists who want automatic payouts connect their own Stripe account; you never need to hold their account numbers.