I have an app through which my sellers sell their items to Users who then go and collect them. So, for example, if one of them sells a Widget worth £10, it’ll cost £11 because that includes my fee (£1). This all works fine but I’ve got one last step which is to set up a single payment to each seller at the end of each month so that they get the total amount for the items sold through my app. That total amount = total of what they sold - my cut (which gets left behind).
My question is, is this done in Bubble via API Workflows or is it set up in Stripe? I had a few difficulties doing this in Bubble API because I didn’t know about Stripe.js which contains more flexible options for doing it but I didn’t discover this until I’d contacted Stripe support and they said I’d need a developer which I can’t afford and, having created my Bubble app from scratch, I don’t want to get someone involved with one last hurdle because that feels wrong even if I could afford it.
So I guess what I need to do if I’m to do this in a way I understand is to take my payments, subtotal them by seller and send a payment each month using “Schedule an API Workflow on a List”. Or is this not the right way to go about it?
I’d really appreciate some guidance with this and then, just maybe, I might be done with this app. For now. Until the next time. So any intellgence would be very welcome.
Are you talking about making transfers to connected accounts?
Or just paying out the balance of what’s already in the connected accounts?
It’ll be making transfers to connected accounts. That said, I’m suddenly unaware of what exactly a connected account is. In my understanding, I have a Stripe account and each time someone registers on my app as a seller, that creates a Connected Account for them. When a user comes along and buys something, that money goes from their card into MY Stripe account and at the end of the month, my app pays a single payment to the Seller’s Connected Account for the total value of that month’s sales of their products through my app.
Not sure if that makes sense.
So, just to be clear, you’re not splitting the payment at the point of sale, but keeping the full amount in your own Stripe account, then you want to transfer a portion of that to the connected account at a later point?
When a user comes along and buys something, that money goes from their card into MY Stripe account and at the end of the month, my app pays a single payment to the Seller’s Connected Account
So you’re using Separate Charges & Transfers for this, is that correct? Have you got that integration set up and working at this point?
Yes. I’m basically summing all purchases made in a month at one of my sellers and paying that out to the seller in one go because the “per charge” fees from Stripe would be too much otherwise.
So I’ve managed to create a checkout where a user comes to my site, chooses the products they want and pays for them using a credit/debit card at the end. I’ve only used test data so far but this seems to work successfully and I have a Webhook that records each order after payment is successful.
I’m guessing that all the money that comes in from this sale sits in My app/platform’s Stripe account and I just want to pay out each vendor’s share to them at the end of the month. That’s the bit I’m having trouble with because I don’t know if I need to arrange that in Stripe or in Bubble.
I really do appreciate your help. I’m really on the edge of my comfort zone with this stuff.
All the best
Is there a specific reason you want/need to use this method, rather than using using Direct or Destination charges, and doing the transfer to the seller accounts at the point of sale?
You can set up the connected account’s payout schedule to be once per month on any given date (using the monthly_anchor parameter), so they only get paid out on that date, which is much simpler that trying to do what you’re describing with separate charges and transfers.
But ff you really do need to use this method, then it’s perfectly possible, as long as the connected accounts are in the same geographical region as the platform account, using the Transfer API (I think the Bubble plugin even has this action.
But, in any case, you’ll need to get to grips with the Stripe Connect, and API docs (even if you’re using a plugin) so you know how to approach best it.
There is a financial benefit to my app doing it this way (I can’t really go into detail about it in a publicly visible space but it’s all above board, promise!) rather than transferring each amount to the seller at the point of sale.
Your suggestion to " set up the connected account’s payout schedule to be once per month on any given date (using the monthly_anchor parameter), so they only get paid out on that date" sounds exactly like what I need to do. I’ve already got my app to calculate how much is going to each venue on each “payment run” - I just need to pay that amount to the venue on the date of the payment run which is what I’m stuck doing. Hopefully this is achievable.
My suggestion to set up the payout schedule to be once per month still involves transferring the funds to the connected account at the time of sale (just paying out monthly).
The alternative, which is what you’re suggesting, is to only transfer the funds to the connected account once per month.
You’ll need to use the Transfer API for that, and just create your workflows to make the transfers as and when you need them to be made.
Creating separate charges and transfers | Stripe Documentation
This is fantastic. Thank you ever so much. I’m working my way through it and I think I can push on with this now. My problem was from my faulty thinking about what Stripe actually is. I gainde the impression that it was an actual online bank and that an account was a bank account which led me to quite a lot of misunderstanding in my own mind. I think you’ve corrected this now.
I do appreciate your help, as ever.
All the best
Joe