Most merchants can tell you what they sold last month and not what they were paid. The gap between those two numbers is normal, fees come out, refunds net against sales, and money lands on a delay, but not being able to explain it is what makes payment processing feel opaque. It is not opaque. It is a pipeline with three stages, and once you can read them, every deposit reconciles.
The three stages
Collected is gross: everything you charged in the period, before anything is taken out. It is a sales number, not a cash number, and it is the one most owners quote.
Incoming is settled but not yet deposited: transactions that have batched and been sent for settlement, net of fees and refunds, on their way to your bank. This is money that exists and has not arrived.
Deposited is cash in your account, net, with a date and an amount your bookkeeper can match to a bank line.
Read in order, those three answer the question owners actually have: what did I sell, what is coming, and what landed.
Batches are the unit that matters
Card transactions do not settle individually. They accumulate during the day and settle as a batch at a cutoff time. That batch is the thing that becomes a deposit, and it is the level at which reconciliation works.
Two practical consequences. Transactions taken after the cutoff belong to the next day’s batch, which is why a Friday-evening job can look like it arrived on Monday. And a single bank deposit usually corresponds to one batch, so if you cannot match a deposit, open the batch behind it rather than scanning individual sales.
What “next business day” does and does not mean
Next-business-day funding means that a batch closed today is deposited on the next banking day. Weekends and bank holidays are not banking days, so a Saturday batch typically lands Tuesday. That is not a delay anyone is imposing on you; it is the calendar the banking system runs on.
It is also why the honest language is “next business day for most batches” rather than a guarantee. Occasional exceptions exist: a first deposit on a new account, an unusually large transaction that triggers a review, or a bank-side issue. A processor that promises guaranteed same-day funding without qualification is describing a product with conditions they have not mentioned.
Where Paydigo sits in the flow
Worth stating plainly, because it changes how you should think about risk: Paydigo never holds your funds. Money moves from the processor to your bank account on the funding schedule; there is no Paydigo-held balance you request a withdrawal from. The app shows you the pipeline; the bank holds the cash.
That is also why the reconciliation line in the app matters, collected minus fees minus refunds equals net deposited, and why every activity row taps through to the batch behind it.
Reading a deposit end to end
Once a month, take a single bank deposit and walk it backwards. Open the deposit, see the batch. Open the batch, see gross sales, fees, refunds and net. Open a transaction, see the customer, the method and the fee applied.
Ten minutes of that teaches you more about your processing costs than any rate conversation, and it means that when a number looks wrong you know exactly where to look rather than calling support with “my deposit is short.”
Refunds, chargebacks and negative days
Refunds net against the same day’s sales. On a slow day with a large refund the net can be negative, which produces a debit from your account rather than a deposit. That surprises people once and never again.
Chargebacks work differently: the amount is pulled back when the chargeback is filed, along with the $20 fee, and returned if you win. This is one of the practical reasons to resolve disputes as refunds through alerts where you can, a refund is a clean line in a batch, and a chargeback is a debit, a fee and a reversal spread across weeks.
Bank payments run on a different clock
ACH is not next-business-day. Bank payments clear on their own timeline, typically a few business days, and they can be returned after the fact if the account has insufficient funds, which carries a $15 return fee. That is the trade for 1% capped at $10, and on large invoices it is usually worth it. Just do not plan Friday payroll around an ACH initiated on Thursday.
What to take away
Learn the three stages, collected, incoming, deposited, and reconcile at the batch, not the transaction. Expect next business day for most batches, with weekends and holidays doing what they always do. Remember that refunds net and chargebacks debit, that ACH runs slower in exchange for the $10 cap, and that the money moves processor to bank without Paydigo holding it. A pipeline you can read is a pipeline you can plan against.
Michelle Hope
Payments Editor, Paydigo
Michelle Hope writes about payment economics for the businesses that live on them, trade contractors, route-based service companies, and the agents who sell to them. Her work focuses on the unglamorous mechanics: effective rates, recurring-billing recovery, dispute ratios, and the difference between a rate sheet and a statement.