Recording a payout

Recording a payout is the second half of paying a creator. The first half happens at your bank.

The order is: look at the queue, go and send the money yourself, then come back and record what you sent. Ignition never moves money — pressing Record Payout writes a record, it does not make a payment.

Press Record a Payout on a row of the To Pay queue to open the form. It opens for one creator, in one currency.

What this payout covers

Before the form, the screen tells you exactly what you are about to settle:

Line	What it is
Recipient	The creator, with their email address. A payout always goes to the creator.
Campaign	The campaign behind the money and how it is funded — flexible funding, all-or-nothing funding, goal reached, or all-or-nothing funding, goal not reached. When several campaigns are involved it reads “N campaigns”.
Held payments	How many payments, and how long the oldest has been waiting.
Refunds since the last payout	Only shown when there is one: a refund that arrived after you last paid this creator, shown as a negative amount that has been taken off the suggestion.
Suggested amount	What Ignition works out you owe.

Show the N payments this covers expands into the full list, oldest first: the pledge, the backer, the date the money moved, the amount you are holding for it, and a Figure Check column marking any payment whose figures are known to be incomplete. Every payment in that list is settled by this payout — there is no way to pay part of a batch.

The table’s own footer totals the payments listed. The Suggested amount can be lower than that total, because it also subtracts refunds that arrived after an earlier payout.

The form

Field	Required	Notes
Amount Sent	Yes	Pre-filled with the suggested amount, and editable. The money moved at your bank, so your figure is the one that goes on the record.
Payment Method	Yes	Check, Bank transfer, Cash, or Other. Nothing is preselected.
Reference	No	The check number or transfer reference. The creator sees this, on their payouts page and in the email about this payout. Up to 191 characters.
Private Note	No	Anything you want to remember. Only staff see it — never the creator, never in an email. Up to 191 characters.
Date Sent	Yes	The day the money left your account. Defaults to today, and today is the latest date you can enter — you cannot record a payment you have not made yet.

Then Record Payout, or Cancel to go back without recording anything.

Changing the amount

You are meant to. The suggestion is Ignition’s arithmetic; the amount you type is what your bank actually sent, and when they disagree the bank is right.

Change the figure and a line appears under the field:

$40.00 more than the $4,182.55 Ignition computed. Both figures are stored on the payout record, and all 33 payments are still settled.

Two things follow from that sentence. Both numbers are kept — the record shows what you sent and what was suggested, so a discrepancy stays visible instead of disappearing. And changing the amount does not change what is settled: the whole batch is marked paid either way.

When the suggested figure is marked unreliable

Some payments carry figures Ignition knows are incomplete. Where that is true, a yellow warning appears above the form, and the affected payments are marked in the Figure Check column of the expanded list.

“This suggested amount may be too high.” — one or more payments have no processing fee recorded, so the suggestion still includes whatever the payment provider kept. Ignition cannot recover those fees; a fee that was never reported is never filled in later. Check your provider’s statement for the payments marked No fee recorded, subtract what it kept, and enter the amount you actually sent.

“This suggested amount may be too low.” — one or more payments carry a partial refund of a charge that included a backer’s tip. A partial refund cannot be split across the pledge and the tip, so the whole tip is deducted rather than the refunded share, and the suggestion is lower than what you owe. Check the refund and enter the amount you actually sent.

“This suggested amount may be wrong.” — both causes are present, pulling in opposite directions.

None of these block you. They exist so the correction happens on this screen, while the number is still just a number.

When a campaign has not reached its goal

If any campaign behind this money uses all-or-nothing funding and has not reached its goal, a warning sits above the form naming the campaign, what it has raised against its goal, and the fact that its backers may still be entitled to their money back. It ends:

Ignition is not stopping you. Whether to send this money is your decision.

What the screen refuses

Three situations replace the form entirely rather than letting you submit:

These payments have already been paid out. Someone recorded a payout covering this batch — probably in another tab, or another member of staff a minute ago. The screen names the payout and offers to show it. Nothing is ever recorded twice. If that earlier payout is wrong, reverse it and record a fresh one.

There is nothing to pay this creator. You are not holding any money for them right now.

This payout would cover N currencies. A payout is one creator in one currency. The screen lists how many payments sit in each and offers a button per currency: Record the Euro payout — €312.00.

There is also a mid-air check. If what this payout covers changes while you have the form open — a refund lands, or someone else records a payout — submitting shows a yellow warning saying what it now covers and what the suggestion is now, keeps everything you typed, and asks you to check the amount before recording.

What gets rejected

Everything you typed is kept, and each problem is named on the field it belongs to:

Problem	What you are told
An amount of zero, blank, or not a number	Enter an amount greater than $0.00. A payout records money that has already left your account.
More decimal places than the currency has	Enter an amount in whole cents — for example 4182.55.
Decimals in a currency that has none, such as Japanese Yen	Enter a whole number — Japanese Yen does not use decimal places.
No payment method chosen	Choose how you sent the money.
A missing date, or one in the future	Enter today’s date or earlier. A payout records a payment you have already made.

An over-precise amount is refused, never quietly rounded.

After you record it

You land back on the To Pay queue — the creator’s row now gone or reduced — with a green notice:

Payout #14 recorded. $4,182.55 to Ada Kettle by bank transfer on 14 July 2026. 33 payments are now settled.

If your amount differed from the suggestion, the notice says so and by how much, and confirms both figures are on the record. A View the payout link opens the full payout record.

Did the creator get the email?

When the payout-recorded email actually went out, the notice ends with a bold sentence naming the creator: “Ada Kettle has been emailed.”

If that sentence is missing, no email was sent. That happens when the Payout Recorded email is switched off, when the creator has unsubscribed from payout notices, or when their account no longer exists. The notice does not explain which — its absence is the signal. See what creators see.

There is no edit and no delete

A payout is a financial record. Once recorded it is never edited and never deleted. If one is wrong, you reverse it — which leaves the original in place, marked, with a reversing entry beside it, and puts its payments back in the queue.

The To Pay queue — where every payout starts.
Payout history — the ledger, and reversing a payout.
What creators see — their page, and the email.