Allow reconciliation of bank statements & daily deposits - e.g. show deposit `Payout trace ID` in Woo admin dashboard, or other unique ID to link

[nicdwilson]

Description

In 5789782-zen a new merchant with a fairly busy site has asked if there is any way to provide additional information to allow easy reconciliation of bank statements to deposits.

The bank statement contains the Payout trace ID.

The Payout trace ID is not available in reporting on the site, nor is it available via the payout.paid event. But would be quite helpful for merchants' accounts departments trying to match up daily deposits with their bank statements, especially considering that pending periods sometimes make matching by date alone tricky.

[jessy-p]

@Automattic/helix

[haszari]

If we can get this ID from the API, seems like a great idea to include in the UI somewhere. Or any other value that would help clearly identify WCPay deposits (in general, or specific deposit instances).

I couldn't find mention of it in the Stripe docs, except Transfer/payout ID in Balance report.

FYI Sourav – let's consider this in upcoming deposits project(s).

[souravdebnath1986]

This falls in the reporting enhancements bucket for this year.

[haszari]

Thanks @souravdebnath1986 !

This falls in the reporting L2 bucket. Provide basic reporting capabilities for merchants to support discovery, settlement reconciliation and delivery preferences

Since we're planning feature projects in this area later in the year, perhaps we can close this issue.

[haszari]

Removing from maintenance board & adding projects label based on @souravdebnath1986 comment above.

There's a possibility that adding this payout ID in the UI will help make the deposits UI & flow easier to merchants to understand (i.e. inspire trust). If so we could consider this for upcoming deposits UI refresh project.

[brucealdridge]

@Automattic/fusion This issue mentions deposits but falls under the future reporting project. Can you consider it as part of your roadmap?

[anu-rock]

@brucealdridge Thanks for the ping. Are we talking about the deposits CSV report here?

[brucealdridge]

Are we talking about the deposits CSV report here?

@anu-rock The issue specifically mentions the UI. I'd imagine it could also appear in the deposits CSV report.

[anu-rock]

@brucealdridge Thanks for confirming. Added it to Fusion's backlog.

[haszari]

Removed deposits label since this will be handled by Fusion as part of reporting.

[jtobiesen]

Another request in 7340232-zd-a8c. This merchant specifically requested to have information about the order numbers included in each associated deposit, somehow reflected in the payout.

[nicdwilson]

7311071-zd-a8c

[csmcneill]

If we can get this ID from the API, seems like a great idea to include in the UI somewhere.

Stripe has indicated that they will be surfacing the trace ID via the API in 1H2024. They'll include us in the beta.

[souravdebnath1986]

We are picking this up as part of p7fD6U-b70-p2 to include a deposit_id in the Transaction Report. We will also do a fast follow to update this id as part of the Deposit Report to aid reconciliation of Deposit to cash as seen in the bank statement. cc: @anu-rock

[haszari]

The ideal solution to this would include a deposit ID of some kind (e.g. payout trace ID) in both the Woo admin dashboard AND the merchant's bank statement.

@mordeth @anu-rock Could you investigate that as part of your effort on this issue? If it's challenging or you hit a blocker, feel free to reach out to myself or @souravdebnath1986 , we can add a follow up issue if necessary.

[SiR-DanieL]

Merchant here from A8C, I also have this issue with the Trade ID missing from WC Pay and it makes my life a nightmare. An extensive discussion about the issue is in Slack: p1702963566265379-slack-C3NCP7ZJ6

[wpniall]

Another report in 7481087-zen

[haszari]

Removing priority: high as this is an enhancement and no work planned in next 2 weeks.

[haszari]

FYI @souravdebnath1986 I've reset this to low since it is an enhancement. It is a valuable enhancement for sure but unlikely to be prioritised over bugs.

[lynnjat7]

Another report of this causing accounting issues for EU customers: 8779859-zen

[carlcarvesstone]

Good Folks,

Small businesses, or non-profits, who do not have an accounting team (our non-profit supports stone sculptors), often pay for an actual accountant or bookkeeper outside the organization to do the bank reconciliations, for reasons of accuracy, trust, and transparency (and more likely the lack of accounting skills within the non-profit).

The lack of a deposit ID/REF causes some additional amount of outside fees to be paid as a work around to not having this feature. I see it as a hidden cost of using your product. For the small non-profit, for which I volunteer, our accountant/bookkeeper estimated, given our range of transaction activity, $300-$800 per year to do the deposit reconciliation work for our organization. This is an additional cost to our non-profit due to the lack of this feature.

If the deposit ID feature were implemented the level of effort for reconciliation is close to zero. Please see this as closing the loop on customer satisfaction and removing your customer's need to report to their board/treasurer why the Woo package is causing additional expense, and making it expensive to have a clean audit. I felt pretty embarrassed about explaining my choice of Woo and the additional costs, and of course gives me pause in recommending Woo for small organizations.

I have no idea the number of small organizations like ours that use Woo, so I have no way to judge benefit and multiplier effect of getting this done (our previous web site software ID/refs were provided).

Looking forward to a solution. Thanks