Key Concepts
- 1Reconciliation is matching what the agent sold to what actually settled in the merchant's bank — orders, payments, fees, refunds, and payouts must all tie out
- 2Settlement is not instant: authorization, capture, and payout happen on different timelines, so the money the merchant sees lags the sale and arrives net of fees
- 3Fees are deducted along the way (interchange, processor, BNPL, FX); the agent-driven sale's true economics are only visible after reconciliation, not at checkout
- 4Discrepancies are inevitable — a captured payment with no matching order, a refund not reflected, a mismatched amount — and need systematic detection, not manual spot-checks
- 5For agents, clean order IDs and idempotency are what make reconciliation tractable; sloppy identifiers create orphaned records that are painful to resolve
- 6Multi-party settlement (marketplaces, split payouts to multiple merchants) multiplies complexity and requires precise attribution of each dollar
- 7Reconciliation feeds financial reporting and trust with merchants; SMBs especially need to see accurate, timely payouts to trust the platform
Why It Matters for PMs
Financial trust with merchants: SMB merchants trust a platform only if payouts reconcile accurately and on time. Reconciliation is foundational to merchant retention.
True economics visibility: Fees and timing mean checkout numbers aren't the real P&L. PMs need reconciliation to report accurate contribution margin on agent-driven sales.
Discrepancy risk: Unreconciled mismatches hide lost money and errors. Systematic detection protects both the merchant and the platform from silent leakage.
Test Your Understanding
Question 1 (Multiple Choice)
Why does the money a merchant receives lag and differ from the checkout total?
Question 2 (Multiple Choice)
What makes reconciliation tractable for agent-driven sales?
Question 3 (Multiple Choice)
Why can't discrepancy detection rely on manual spot-checks?
Question 4 (Short Answer)
Why is the checkout total not the same as the merchant's true economics on a sale?
Think about your answer before revealing the explanation.
Question 5 (Short Answer)
How do clean identifiers and idempotency make reconciliation easier, and what breaks without them?
Think about your answer before revealing the explanation.