01
What Stripe Connect is
Stripe Connect is the version of Stripe built for platforms that host many businesses. Each club gets its own Stripe account, connected to the booking software. Card payments from players go into the club’s account, not the software vendor’s, and Stripe pays the club directly.
The practical difference matters for two reasons. Money never sits with the software vendor, so a vendor problem is not a cash problem. And the club has its own Stripe dashboard, so it can see every charge, refund, and payout without asking anyone.
02
Two fees, two invoices
There are two separate costs when a player pays by card, and clubs regularly confuse them. The card-processing fee is charged by Stripe on each transaction and deducted before the payout. The software fee is what the club pays its booking vendor, and it is a separate invoice.
With Lobby, the software fee is a flat monthly amount and Lobby takes 0 percent of booking revenue. Stripe charges its own processing fee, published on Stripe’s own pricing page, and that fee appears on the Stripe side only. If a vendor’s invoice has both a monthly line and a per-booking line, the per-booking line is a commission, not a card fee.
- Card-processing fee: charged by Stripe, per transaction, deducted from the payout
- Software fee: charged by the vendor, monthly, invoiced separately
- Booking commission: a per-booking cut some vendors add on top of both
- Where to see each: the Stripe dashboard for the first, the vendor invoice for the other two
03
When the money arrives
Stripe collects the day’s successful charges into a balance and pays it out on a schedule. New accounts usually start with a longer delay and move to a shorter one once the account has a history. The schedule is visible and adjustable in the Stripe dashboard under payouts.
For cash planning, the useful number is the payout delay in business days. A booking paid on Friday evening does not reach the bank on Saturday. If the club pays coaches weekly, align the coach payment day with the day payouts usually land.
04
What a payout report contains
Every payout has a report. It lists the charges included, the refunds deducted, the fees taken, and any adjustments such as dispute holds. The total of those lines equals the amount that hit the bank. Download it as a file, not a screenshot, so the bookkeeper can match it.
- Payout date and the bank account it went to
- Gross charges included, with a reference for each
- Refunds issued in the period, deducted from gross
- Stripe fees on each charge, shown as a separate column
- Net amount paid, which should match the bank statement exactly
05
Reconciling payouts against bookings
Reconciliation means matching every booking in the software to a line in the payout. The booking report should carry the Stripe charge reference so the two can be joined. Run it monthly: export bookings with a paid status, export the payout reports, and match on the reference. Anything unmatched is either a refund, a failed payment, or a booking entered by hand at the desk and paid in cash.
The unmatched list is the interesting part. It is where cash bookings hide, and where a staff member marked something paid that never was.
06
Refunds and disputes in the payout
A refund reverses a charge and is deducted from the next payout, not from the original one. A dispute, when a player asks their bank to reverse a charge, freezes the amount until the bank decides. Both appear on the payout report as negative lines with their own references, which is why the net can be lower than the day’s bookings suggest.