How to Allocate Multiple Shopify Store Payouts to Different Bank Accounts

A commonly-requested feature in Shopify doesn’t exist unfortunately, and it affects larger businesses who sell across multiple Shopify POS locations, and who run their operations using a single Shopify Account.The issue is this: Shopify only allows one bank account per Shopify Account. This means that multi-location businesses or franchises utilizing Shopify POS cannot choose to have each store’s net revenue payout allocated to its own separate bank account. Instead, the payout for all their stores comes into one central bank account and it's up to the accounting team to manually calculate and move each store’s net payout revenue to the appropriate bank account. (The other way to do it is to create separate Shopify Accounts, one per store, but this is usually not chosen due to the extra complexity in managing products, discounts, and sales tax, etc).It can be time consuming to manually track the payouts per store, to say the least. Accounting teams will need to track per-location sales, sales tax, returns, gift cards and discounts, and then total that up each day. Then, when each payout arrives (typically covering several days of sales) it needs to be reconciled to each day’s sales per location, and then split manually so that a transfer can be made to each location’s bank account. A lot of spreadsheets will be needed.The Bookkeep team now has a feature that is tailor-made to solve this issue for multi-location, multi-channel Shopify Sellers and franchises!

Introducing Payout Splitting, now live for Shopify customers on one of our Advanced pricing packages.

Here’s how it works:

1. Bookkeep's secure software accesses each day’s payouts and allocates all the details to the appropriate locations in a neat and detailed GL entry, as part of our normal Shopify accounting automation software integration.
2. Then, when the payouts arrive, those are segregated by location and/or channel as well, giving the accounting team a neat summary of Daily Payouts by Store or Location.
3. From there, a manual transfer between the master bank account and the per-store bank accounts can be made easily that is net of fees, chargebacks and any other per location adjustment.
4. For franchisors, you'll be able to collect franchise fees directly from the deposit amount before you transfer funds to your franchisee banks.

Tax Implications to Consider:The IRS requires corporations (i.e. franchisor) to report the allocable transactions of the payees (i.e. franchisees) to whom the corporation distributes the payments. With Bookkeep's accounting platform, you will be able to report all transactions accurately by franchisee / payee. Here is a public resource from the IRS with more information. Please consult with your certified accountant for further guidance. "With Bookkeep, we finally found a reliable and efficient solution to connect Shopify and QuickBooks. Managing the accounting for our franchise network is now streamlined and secure. Today, we have the peace of mind that every transaction is perfectly reconciled and that every cent is properly distributed to our franchisees. Bookkeep has become an essential partner for Shop Santé, and we highly recommend their services to any business looking for accurate and efficient accounting automation."

Eric FortierFounder, Shop Santé INC

To learn more about Payout Splitting with Bookkeep, book a discovery call: