Ignition Payouts
When your platform collects pledge money on behalf of your creators, sooner or later you have to pay it out. Ignition Payouts is the record of that: one screen showing every creator you are holding money for and how much, a form to record each payment you sent, a history to audit it against, and — on the creator’s side — a page and an email telling them what arrived.
It is a premium add-on for platforms running Platform Mode.
It records payments, it does not send them
Section titled “It records payments, it does not send them”Ignition Payouts moves no money. Every payout you record here describes a payment you already made yourself — a bank transfer, a check, cash, or anything else — at your own bank, outside WordPress entirely. The add-on works out what each creator is owed, and then keeps the record of what you actually sent.
That order matters, and it is deliberate: the suggested figure is on screen before anything leaves your account, so a wrong suggestion is something you notice rather than something you have to claw back.
Sending money through a payment provider is not in this release.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”| Requirement | Why |
|---|---|
| Ignition Crowdfunding 0.23.0 or later | The record of whether you are holding a given payment’s money is kept by core, at the moment the payment arrives. Earlier versions cannot answer the question. |
| Ignition Platform Mode 0.4.0 or later, active | Holding money for someone else only happens on a platform. A site running on core alone is its own creator, so there is nobody to pay. |
| WordPress 6.9 or later | |
| PHP 8.2 or later |
Both version floors are hard, and Platform Mode being missing counts as being below the floor. If either is unmet the add-on does nothing at all, and shows an error notice in wp-admin naming the one at fault — “Ignition Payouts requires Ignition Platform Mode 0.4.0 or newer, but 0.3.0 is installed”, for example. Update the plugin it names.
There is no payment gateway requirement. Recording a payment you made at your own bank needs no gateway at all.
Where the money you are holding comes from
Section titled “Where the money you are holding comes from”Two setups put your platform in the position of holding a creator’s money:
- Offline pledges collected centrally — backers pay you directly, in cash or by transfer, and you record the pledge.
- Online pledges taken through your own merchant account — the payment provider pays you rather than splitting to the creator.
Where a payment provider pays the creator directly and takes your commission in the same transaction, nothing is being held, so there is no payout to make. Those payments never appear in the queue.
Where to find it
Section titled “Where to find it”Ignition → Payouts in wp-admin, on two tabs:
- To Pay — every creator you are holding money for, one row each, with a Record a Payout button.
- History — every payout you have recorded, newest first, with totals.
Only staff — administrators and operators — can reach these screens.
Creators never see them. They get their own read-only Payouts page on the frontend dashboard.
Live and Test view
Section titled “Live and Test view”Every Payouts screen in wp-admin follows the Live / Test switch, exactly like the Pledges list. Test money is never counted in a live queue or a live total, and a payout that covers test payments appears only in Test view. See View mode.
The one exception is deliberate: a creator’s own Payouts page on the frontend lists both, with a Test badge on the test ones, so a creator rehearsing a campaign can see the rehearsal payout they were told about.
Currencies
Section titled “Currencies”A payout covers one creator in one currency. If you hold money for the same creator in two currencies, they appear twice in the queue — once per currency — and are paid separately. Amounts in different currencies are never added together anywhere in this add-on.
What this add-on does not do
Section titled “What this add-on does not do”- It does not send money.
- It does not stop you. When money is being held back because a fixed-goal campaign fell short, the queue says so plainly and then lets you record a payout anyway. A sponsor covering a shortfall, or a campaign being wound up, is your judgement call.
- It does not track what a creator owes you. Only what you owe them.
- It does not produce accounting exports, tax forms, or a reconciliation against your bank statement.
- It has no settings screen. There is nothing to configure.
Whether holding other people’s money carries licensing or tax obligations where you operate depends on your own arrangements, not on this plugin. Ignition Payouts records what you did; it does not advise you on whether you may do it.
Uninstalling
Section titled “Uninstalling”Your payout records are financial records, so they are only ever removed deliberately:
- Deactivating Ignition Payouts leaves everything in place. Reactivate it and your history is back.
- Deleting Ignition Payouts from the Plugins screen removes every payout record permanently. There is no undo.
- Uninstalling Ignition Crowdfunding removes this add-on’s records along with core’s own.
Related
Section titled “Related”- The To Pay queue — who you owe, and how much.
- Recording a payout — the form, and what it settles.
- Payout history — the ledger, filtering, and reversing a payout recorded in error.
- What creators see — the dashboard page and the email.
- Ignition Platform Mode — required.