Deposit payouts: how kept deposits reach your bank

This article explains, at a high level, how a property's held deposits are protected from being paid out before you've decided what to do with them, and how kept amounts eventually reach your property's bank account. There's nothing for staff to configure, this happens automatically.

Why deposits need special handling

A deposit sits in the property's Stripe connected account balance as soon as it's charged, well before you've decided to keep it, return it, or split it. If that balance paid out to your bank automatically on the usual schedule, held deposit funds could leave the account before you've resolved them, which would be a problem if a resident is later owed a refund.

Deposit-taking properties are automatically held to manual payouts

As soon as a property has an amenity or facility item configured to collect a deposit, URBI automatically switches that property's Stripe payout schedule to manual. This means the connected account's balance is no longer paid out to your bank on Stripe's own automatic schedule, instead, URBI controls exactly when and how much goes out, so held deposits are never swept away before you're ready.

If a property was already collecting deposits before this behavior existed, it's brought onto manual payouts automatically as well, you don't need to do anything to opt in.

The nightly payout

Each night, URBI pays out the property's available balance, whatever has actually been earned and is safe to pay out, to the property's bank account, holding back exactly the amount still tied up in unresolved deposits. As deposits are resolved (kept, returned, or a mix), the amount held back adjusts accordingly on the next payout.

Properties that share a single Stripe account with other properties under the same company are handled together: the held amount across all of them is combined, and the payout for that shared account reflects the group's true available balance, not each property calculated in isolation.

Held deposits and payouts

When you start a payout by hand from Accounting > Payouts, URBI checks what your property is currently holding for unresolved deposits before it lets the money go out. A payout can never take your property's balance below that held amount. If you try to pay out more than that, the screen refuses the request and shows the numbers in dollars: how much is held, how much is available, and the most you can pay out right now. Because deposit-taking properties stay on manual payouts, this check applies every time.

Good to know

• You don't need to switch anything to manual yourself, and there's no setting to turn this on. It happens the moment a property starts collecting deposits.
• Resolving a deposit (keep, return, or a split) through the Manage deposit popup is what changes how much of the balance is held back, there's no separate step to "release" funds for payout.
• If you have questions about a property's payout schedule or timing, your account's payout history and schedule are visible in the standard Accounting > Payouts area for the property.
• If you do start a payout by hand from that area, or change a payout schedule, the screen now holds with a notice while the work is being done instead of confirming straight away. A payout that then failed used to leave you believing it had gone out. Refresh the payouts list afterwards to see where it landed.