Stripe Connect helps businesses manage and route payments and payouts between the business itself and customers, sellers, service providers, or other parties, depending on the type of company it is. Arguably the most familiar use case for Stripe Connect is for a marketplace, such as the ticketing platform SeatGeek. Another example is a software platform like Webflow where the business needs to manage payouts to sellers and/or customers that they are collecting payments on behalf of.
Stripe Connect makes executing these payments seamless, and SaaS platform companies and marketplace businesses like it because it offers fast deployment, global payouts, and scalability. But for finance teams, Stripe Connect is an accounting black hole.
If your team has ever spent hours untangling a single transaction across multiple accounts, struggling with fee splits, or dealing with Stripe’s fragmented reporting, you’re not alone.
Stripe Connect was designed for payments, not accounting. And that’s exactly why reconciliation becomes a nightmare.
A single payment can generate:
Using the examples from above, imagine running a marketplace like SeatGeek or a SaaS platform like Webflow. A customer makes a payment, but before that money reaches the final destination, it’s been:
Every step creates a new transaction event, and those add up fast.
The more Stripe Connect accounts you have, the harder it is to track money.
Without clear visibility, Finance teams end up playing detective just to locate missing revenue.
Businesses using Stripe Connect often take a cut from every transaction, but there’s no single way to do this. Some options include:
Each method impacts how revenue flows through your accounts, making journal entries inconsistent.
Even experienced Accounting teams struggle to close the books on time when using Stripe Connect. This isn’t a new issue, but it’s a persistent one.
Manually downloading Stripe reports and mapping transactions is unsustainable. Automation eliminates spreadsheet headaches. Not to mention, transaction data isn’t always where you expect it to be in Stripe, and it’s not as complete as Finance and Accounting teams need. Read more about these issues in this blog post: 3 Reasons Stripe Data Isn’t Good Enough for Accountants.
Work with engineering teams to map out fund flows so accounting knows exactly where transactions are happening.
The key to untangling and optimizing Stripe Connect data is linking all the different transaction events and details across all accounts. The Connected Accounting Map is a major differentiator for Leapfin, and the primary reason customers are able to successfully and consistently automate reconciliations and provide real-time financial visibility to their organizations.
Bottom line: Stripe Connect is built for payments – not accounting. Without automation, finance teams will always be playing catch-up.
Recently, we sat down with Kemen Paneboeuf, Revenue Manager for Rocket Lawyer, to learn about their challenges with Stripe Connect, and how they are overcoming them. Watch the full conversation in this recorded webinar. Here’s a brief summary:
Rocket Lawyer is a global legal tech company. They use Stripe Connect to manage payments between its platform and customers. But as transaction volumes grew, their Finance team hit a wall.
“Before automation, a single charge could turn into dozens of accounting events – each with different fees, foreign exchange adjustments, and payout timing.”
-Kemen Paneboeuf, Revenue Manager, Rocket Lawyer
Manually handling all of this in Excel wasn’t sustainable. They needed an automated solution.
Every charge, fee, and payout has become fully traceable across accounts.
“With Leapfin, seeing every single event and transaction, and the links to them, is incredibly powerful. When I show my CFO the visualization Leapfin gives us for the flow of funds for any transaction, he’s like, ‘oh, this makes sense. I understand how this is getting from our platform account to the different final Connect accounts.’”
-Kemen Paneboeuf, Revenue Manager, Rocket Lawyer
No more downloading CSVs and manually matching transactions.
Instead of waiting for month-end reports, Rocket Lawyer can track Stripe Connect fund flows as they happen.
For more Stripe problem-solving tips, including how to reconcile credits, billing, and payments in Stripe, check out our Cracking the Code webinar series. To learn more about how Leapfin’s seamless integration with Stripe helps companies automate their most tedious and painful data processes, visit our Stripe Integration page.