Payouts Add-on
Understand what the Payouts add-on adds to SettleWise and where to learn the daily workflows
The Payouts add-on extends SettleWise beyond receivables so your team can also track outgoing money. It combines expense entry, vendor management, OCR-assisted invoice capture, and weekly accountability exports in one workflow.
Best For
- Businesses that want income and expense operations in the same system
- Teams that work with recurring vendors, contractor invoices, or weekly payout review
- Organizations that want OCR-assisted expense entry and tighter register visibility
What You Unlock
| Capability | What it helps with | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Payout tracking | Record outgoing payments with status and register impact | Payouts |
| Vendor management | Keep vendor records, defaults, and categories organized | Payouts |
| Invoice OCR | Extract vendor and amount data from uploaded invoices or receipts | Create a Payout |
| Weekly exports | Group payouts into accountability periods with export options | Payouts |
| Budget alignment | Use payout activity as the operational spend layer that budget tracking can compare against | Budgets |
| Accounting links | Book completed payouts to expense accounts and the payout register's backing account | Accounting Add-on |
How Access Works
- An admin enables the add-on for the organization
- Users need the right permissions to create, complete, cancel, or review payouts
- Completed payouts reduce register balances, so the add-on directly affects financial operations
- Completed payouts can create account-based entries that feed the Income Statement, account activity, and budget actuals
- QuickBooks and Google Drive behaviors depend on the integrations your organization has configured
Use this page to understand the add-on. Use the Features and How To pages when you are ready to perform a payout workflow step by step.
Before the First Payout
- Create the registers that money will leave from and confirm their opening balances.
- If Accounting is active, link each register to the correct chart account.
- Create recurring vendors with default category, payment method, and terms.
- Review expense categories and QuickBooks mappings.
- Decide who may create, complete, cancel, void, and review payouts.
- If your team uses weekly exports, connect Google Drive and agree on the period owner.
Understand the Status Lifecycle
| Status | Use it when | Operational effect |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | The expense needs review or payment has not been confirmed | No register or accounting impact |
| Completed | Money has left the organization | Reduces the selected register and can create accounting/QB activity |
| Cancelled | The payout should no longer proceed | Restores financial impact if it had been completed |
| Voided | A completed transaction must be formally reversed | Restores the register and voids linked QuickBooks activity when available |
Completing a payout is the consequential step. Verify amount, currency, register, vendor, expense account, and line items before changing the status.
Recommended Operating Routine
| Frequency | Review |
|---|---|
| Daily | New bills, OCR confidence, duplicates, due items, and payouts awaiting completion |
| Weekly | Completed payouts, register impact, unexported records, and accountability period |
| Period close | Expense account mapping, missing vendors/references, QuickBooks sync exceptions, and budget variance |
Common Setup Problems
- Register balance did not change: only completed payouts affect the register.
- Accounting actual is missing: check completion status, the payout or line expense account, and the register's backing account.
- OCR is incomplete: treat extracted values as a draft and correct low-confidence fields before saving.
- QuickBooks did not receive the payout: local creation is non-blocking; inspect the sync state and retry the integration flow.
- A purchase did not reach Inventory: confirm Inventory is active, the line is marked Add to inventory, the item is linked, and a target inventory is selected.
Go Deeper
Payouts
See the full feature set, statuses, vendors, and payout exports
Create a Payout
Follow the payout creation flow with OCR support
Budgets
See how payout activity connects to budget-vs-actual tracking
Accounting Add-on
See how payout accounts, registers, and expense lines connect to Accounting
Billing & Subscription
Manage plan and add-on billing details