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What do the different payout statuses mean in Payout History?
What do the different payout statuses mean in Payout History?
Here's an explanation of each of the transaction statuses shown in the Payout History page
Shelby Baldwin avatar
Written by Shelby Baldwin
Updated over a week ago

If you use our PayPal Payouts integration, you can track the status of your ambassadors' payouts in the Payout History page in Buzzbassador.

Successful Payouts

When submitted payouts are marked as "successful" in the Payout History page, this simply means that PayPal was able to successfully issue the payouts to your ambassador. You can view your submitted payouts' total amount ($) in the 'Amount' column and the total amount of successful transactions in the 'Successful Transactions' for each submitted payout batch.

However, you may occasionally notice that some transactions within a batch have a status other than successful. If a payout is unsuccessful, PayPal will retry it up to 4 times before it is officially counted as failed.

  • If there are any transactions currently retrying, the total amount ($) of retrying transactions will be shown in the 'Retrying Transactions' column.

  • Once transactions officially fail, the total amount ($) of failed transactions will be shown in the 'Failed Transactions' column.

The different statuses of unsuccessful payouts

Shown within each payout batch (by clicking the "View" button in the 'Actions' column), other transaction statuses could be pending, skipped, failed, denied, unclaimed, or returned.

PENDING

Once you have submitted your ambassadors' payouts for payment, the payout batch is sent over to PayPal for further processing. In this processing phase, it will show up as Pending until PayPal accepts and finalizes the payments, which can take up to 5 business days, but typically only takes 24-48 hours. Typically if the payments are pending in your Payout History for longer than 48 hours, it means there's possibly something wrong with the way PayPal is set up for your account. One or more of the following is true:

  1. Your PayPal account is not approved to use PayPal's Payouts Feature

    To check if you have been approved, head over to PayPal's Developer portal and click "Log Into Dashboard" button. Once you are on the Developer Dashboard, go to "My Account" on the left side menu (under the "Dashboard" section). From there, you will see a column called "Permission Name", and at the bottom of that column, you'll see the row labeled "Payouts".

    If you have been approved, you'll notice a green check mark on the far-right of that "Payouts" row.

    If there is not a green check mark, you will need to click the "Enable" link. This will send a request to PayPal to enable Payouts for your account.

  2. You pasted your Sandbox PayPal credentials into Buzzbassador instead of the Live PayPal credentials.

    To troubleshoot, you will need to re-walk through the steps of properly setting up and linking the Live PayPal credentials into Buzzbassador. Here is an article that can provide a further explanation on to do so.

  3. Your PayPal balance is not enough to cover the full amount of the due payouts

    The PayPal Payouts feature is only authorized to pull from your balance. It can not pull from any linked bank account or card. At the time that you initiated the payout batch, your PayPal balance did not contain enough funds to cover all of the payouts, so these ambassadors' payouts did not get completed. You will need to reload your balance, then wait 24 hours for the payments to automatically re-submit.

    To begin troubleshooting these potential issues: we recommended checking your PayPal balance first. If you find that it is sufficient, then the other two statements may be true. If the payouts seem to be still stuck at pending after resolving those three things, you may need to reach out to our support team for further assistance.

SKIPPED

PayPal will attempt each payout up to 3 times. If a payout is unable to be paid on the first two attempts, either due to insufficient balance or an issue with that particular recipient's PayPal account, the attempt will be Skipped and tried again later. So, those first attempts will be marked as "skipped".

FAILED

A Failed transaction status means that PayPal has attempted three or more times to submit the payment and it has failed all three times (meaning it will not be retried). Transactions can fail either due insufficient balance, an issue with the recipient's PayPal account, etc. At that point, there is nothing more you can do in Buzzbassador to regenerate the transaction -- you will have to do it manually from PayPal. To get to the bottom of the reason for the failure, you will need to contact PayPal support.

DENIED

Normally, this status will appear when a payment has been Pending for an extended period of time (usually 30 days), expired in PayPal's queue and will no longer be retried. Similar to the "Pending" status, a transaction can be Denied when one or more of the following is true:

  1. Your PayPal account is not approved to use PayPal's Payouts Feature

  2. You pasted your Sandbox PayPal credentials into Buzzbassador instead of the Live PayPal credentials

  3. Your PayPal balance is not enough to cover the full amount of the due payouts (the PayPal Payouts feature is only authorized to pull from your balance; it can not pull from any linked bank account or card)

  4. The ambassador has not connected their PayPal to their ambassador account or is experiencing internal account issues with PayPal

  5. The ambassador has not accepted the payment from their end

UNCLAIMED

Typically, an Unclaimed transaction status means that the ambassador's PayPal email that they entered on their account is unconfirmed. A possible reason for this could be that the ambassador has yet to finalize the setup of their PayPal account, but entered the email address for it anyway. Or, the ambassador could have entered the wrong email address in the PayPal field, and it does not actually belong to a PayPal account. Any payment made to a PayPal account that is unconfirmed will appear as Unclaimed until the ambassador's account is confirmed. The ambassador should receive an email from PayPal when funds are sent to this email address, notifying them of the next steps for account confirmation and claiming the funds. The ambassador must confirm their account and claim the funds within 30 days, or the funds will be returned to your PayPal business account.

RETURNED

After 30 days of Unclaimed status, the payment will be returned to your PayPal's account balance and marked as Returned. At that point, there is nothing more you can do in Buzzbassador to regenerate the transaction -- you will have to do it manually from PayPal.

Need further assistance with payouts? Send us a chat at the bottom right corner of your app window, or email us at [email protected].

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