Payments and Payout Reconciliation for a Coaching Platform
Posted
Built the payments and payouts process for a coaching platform, including coach payouts and a reconciliation check that confirms the fees charged to clients match the fees the payment provider actually deducted.
Project details
Built the payments and payouts process for a coaching platform, covering client card payments through to coaches receiving their money.
Kept all payment-provider logic in one place rather than letting it spread through the app, so payments stay testable and the provider could be swapped later without rewriting features.
Recorded the tax breakdown and the provider's fee against each payment at the time it happened, so historical records stay correct even if fee schedules change later.
Added a reconciliation check comparing the fee expected when a client is charged against the fee the provider actually deducted on settlement, writing any difference into an accounting record instead of letting it quietly reduce someone's margin — which matters on a free tier that advertises no platform fee.
Built coach payout disbursement with support for multiple payout methods, a self-serve earnings view, and guards blocking refunds on non-refundable purchases.
This is the same reconciliation discipline used for institutional financial data at FUTA — compare source against target, surface the difference, make the check repeatable — applied to payments instead of academic records.
Work Context: Delivered as IT Application/Production Support Analyst for Anchor Coaching (Remote, North York, ON, September 2025 – September 2026).
Live reference: Live surface: Anchor Suite pricing — https://www.theanchorcoach.com/suite/pricing
Impact
Case study
Project Summary
Built the payments and payouts process for a coaching platform: Stripe card payments, coach payouts, and a reconciliation check confirming the fees charged to clients match the fees the payment provider actually deducted — so any difference is recorded rather than quietly absorbed.
Work Context
Delivered as IT Application/Production Support Analyst for Anchor Coaching (Remote, North York, ON, September 2025 – September 2026). The public plan structure this work supports — including the free tier and the "zero platform fee on your sales" commitment — is visible at https://www.theanchorcoach.com/suite/pricing.
The Problem
A coaching platform that takes money on behalf of coaches has two numbers that must agree and usually don't: the fee estimated when a client is charged, and the fee the payment gateway actually deducts on settlement. If nothing reconciles the two, the difference quietly comes out of somebody's margin — and on a free tier that advertises no platform fee, that somebody is the platform.
Approach
- Kept all payment-provider logic in one place rather than letting it spread through the app, so payments stay testable and the provider could be changed later.
- Recorded the tax breakdown and the provider's fee against each payment at the time it happened, so historical records stay correct even if fee schedules change later.
- Wrote both the expected and actual figures into an accounting record, so any difference shows up as an auditable entry instead of a surprise found months later.
- Built payout disbursement covering the path from a completed coaching session through to a coach receiving funds, including multi-rail payout support and a self-serve earnings view.
Results and Impact
- Reconciliation: estimated vs. actual gateway fees compared per payment and recorded
- Provider logic consolidated behind one adapter boundary
- Payout rails supported: multiple, with auto-disbursement and a pay-record view for coaches
- Free-tier economics made verifiable rather than assumed
Deliverables
- Payment provider adapter isolating Stripe integration behind a stable interface
- Persisted VAT breakdown and gateway-fee capture on payment records
- Accounting journal service recording fee variance as auditable entries
- Coach payout auto-disbursement with multi-rail support and pay-record navigation
- Self-serve earnings view for independent coaches
- Refund guards blocking refunds on non-refundable bundle purchases
Technical Notes
- This is the same reconciliation discipline applied to institutional financial data at FUTA — compare source against target, surface the variance, and make the check repeatable — expressed in a payments domain instead of an academic-records one.
- Recording the fee at payment time rather than deriving it later means historical records stay correct even when fee schedules change.
- Refund and payout paths were treated as part of the payment surface, not as afterthoughts — the failure modes there are the expensive ones.