Payments and Payouts help you understand what happened after a donor gives online through CoolPay. Payments show individual transactions. Payouts show settled batches deposited into your organization's bank account.
A payment is a single card or ACH transaction processed through CoolPay. A payment may be successful, failed, refunded, or still in a processing-related state.
Use Payments to review:
• Payment date and amount.
• Status, such as succeeded, failed, or refunded.
• Donor and fund context.
• Payment method information your permissions allow you to see.
• Amount, processing fee, and net amount (amount minus fee), so you can see what actually settles before a payout.
• Whether the payment created a contribution.
• Errors or failed transaction details when available.
Processing Fee and Net are visible columns on the related contribution as well, so you can see them without opening the payment record.
CoolPay processing fees on successful payments:
• Card (credit or debit): 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
• ACH (bank draft / e-check): 2.0% + $0.30 per transaction
If the donor does not cover the fee, it is deducted from the gift and you see it in Processing Fee and Net. If the donation form lets the donor cover the fee and they choose that option, the donor pays the fee on top of the gift amount so the net can match the intended gift. Rates are the same for one-time and recurring CoolPay gifts.
The Payments list comes with a set of ready-made segments so you don't have to build filters from scratch:
• All Payments - every payment, regardless of status.
• Succeeded Payments
• Failed Payments
• Pending Payments
• Refunded Payments
Pick one from the segment picker above the list, or build your own filter and save it as a new segment - see Saving & Sharing Segments.
If CoolFocus can't get a fast, confirmed answer from the payment processor for a one-time gift, for example the processor is slow to respond or has a temporary error, the payment stays Pending instead of being marked failed. The donor sees a message asking them to check their email or contact your organization before giving again on the same form, rather than a card-decline message.
• Find these with the Pending Payments quick filter.
• CoolFocus holds the donor's original request so the same submission can't create a duplicate charge while the outcome is unclear.
• Once the processor confirms the outcome, the payment record updates to its final status (succeeded or failed).
This is separate from the recurring-gift review queue in the CoolPay Hub. See Fixing Failed & Missed Payments for recurring gifts.
A payout is a settled batch of payment activity transferred to your organization's bank account. It may include many successful payments minus processing fees, refunds, or adjustments.
Open CoolPay → Payouts to see the All Payouts list.
Use Payouts to review:
• Deposit date and amount.
• Payout status.
• Payment totals and fees.
• Which payments are included in the deposit.
• Destination bank details for each deposit (Bank Name and Account Last 4).
• Bank reconciliation context.
Each payout record shows where that settled deposit went:
• On the All Payouts list, use the Bank Name and Account Last 4 columns to see the destination bank for each payout.
• Tip: drag Bank Name into the row-group area at the top of the list to group historical payouts by bank. This is especially useful after your organization changes banks, so you can see which past deposits went to which institution.
• Open a payout to see Destination account on the overview (bank name and last 4).
These fields show where past payouts went. CoolFocus does not maintain a separate page of every bank "on file," and it does not show pending bank-change request status.
Settlement bank changes for future payouts are handled with Justifi (CoolPay's payment partner) and WayCool support. After a change is approved and active, the next settled payout's Bank Name and Account Last 4 confirm the new destination once that deposit lands.
If you need to confirm the currently configured settlement bank before the next payout, or you submitted a bank-change form and want status, contact WayCool support.
When you download or export a Payout report, the list of payments included in that payout shows a Processing Fee column and a Net column for each individual payment, not just a payout-level total. This lets you see exactly what was deducted and what settled for every payment in the batch. Both columns also show a total at the bottom of the export.
The export and the printable payout details document also include a Fund column and a CoolPay Account column for each contribution in the payout:
• Fund shows which fund the gift was given to.
• CoolPay Account shows the CoolPay sub-account the payment settled through. Today, most organizations only have a single "Admin" account active, so this column will typically show the same value for every row. As additional center or program accounts are set up in CoolPay, this column lets you see how much of a payout deposit belongs to each account without doing the math by hand.
When you print or export the payout details document for a payout, each included contribution now lists its Fund, CoolPay Account, Processing Fee, and Net amount alongside the gift amount, with a total for the fee and net columns.
1. Start with the bank deposit.
2. Find the matching payout by date and amount. Use Bank Name and Account Last 4 when helpful to confirm the deposit matches the expected destination bank.
3. Review the payments included in that payout.
4. Use the payout details document's Fund, CoolPay Account, Processing Fee, and Net columns and totals to confirm the deposit amount matches your bank statement, and to see how the deposit splits across funds or accounts.
5. Confirm the related contribution records are present for reporting and receipting.
6. Investigate failed or refunded payments separately from successful deposits.
To see failed payments across a date range instead of one at a time, run the Failed Payments report from Reports (category CoolPay). It shows failed payment counts and amounts, breaks failures down by error, and highlights how many were recurring gifts. See Reports by Area.
Payments and payouts are system-managed records. Staff usually review and reconcile them rather than creating them manually.
