Preventing negative balances

Having a negative balance on your WooPayments account is undesirable, since it may delay customer refunds. In order to prevent negative account balances, you may wish to proactively add funds to your future refunds or disputes (FROD) balance.

The future refunds or disputes (FROD) balance is a special bucket of funds inside your WooPayments account. It’s purpose is to help prevent a negative account balance.

To do that, we use the FROD balance first when processing a refund, or if a customer disputes a payment. If no funds remain, we process refunds and disputes from your regular account balance.

Money can only be added to the FROD balance manually. In other words, unless you purposefully add funds to it, the FROD balance will remain at zero and never be used.

Adding funds to your FROD balance may be helpful in certain scenarios, for example:

• You expect a large number of upcoming refunds or disputes.
• You want to prevent delays in refunding customers.
• You’re trying to recover from a negative account balance.

You can add funds to the FROD balance like so:

1. First, log into your WooPayments Stripe Express account.
2. Click the Add to balance button.

3. In the popup that appears, enter the amount you’d like to add to your FROD balance.
   • Because FROD balance top-ups are reconciled manually by our payments partner, it may be a good idea to slightly adjust the amount in order to make it unique. For example, adding $1001.53 instead of $1000.00 will decrease the chances of a reconciliation error.

4. Click Next.
5. Select the payment method you want to use. The available methods vary by country.
6. Save or write down the details from the Stripe bank information section. You will need these to send the funds.
   • If the Stripe bank information section displays the “Reason, memo, or reference” field, copy that unique ID number and include it in your payment details when you send the funds.

7. Send the funds via the method you indicated in Step 4.
   • If you’re a U.S. merchant sending funds via ACH, you may need to specify that Stripe’s bank account is of the type Business Checking.
8. If the Attach your receipt section is shown, upload a screenshot or PDF of your proof of transfer after you have sent the funds. This helps verify your funds transfer.
9. Check the Confirm Transfer box if it is shown.
10. Click Done.
    • This will create a record with our payments partner so that they know to expect your top-up funds in the coming days.

Unlike your regular account balance, FROD funds will not be paid out automatically. They will remain in your FROD balance until they are used to fund incoming refunds or disputes in the future.

If you wish to pay out a FROD balance manually, you can do so like this:

1. First, log into your WooPayments Stripe Express account.
2. Click the Pay out button.

3. In the popup that appears, select the account you wish to pay the funds out to, specify how much money to pay out, add an optional description, and adjust the statement descriptor you want to use.

4. Click Pay out to initiate the payout.

When you’ve finished the process, the FROD balance will be added to your regular account balance and paid out according to your payout schedule.

If you incur a negative account balance but do not have funds in your FROD balance to cover it, we may debit your payout method.

No, you can only add funds to your FROD balance.

No, you can only issue a payout from your FROD balance.