Cashflow

The Cashflow report provides a comprehensive view of all the money flowing through your subscription business. Unlike MRR which tracks recognized recurring revenue, the Cashflow report shows actual cash movements: subscription and one-time payments, refunds, and what it cost to collect them. Taxes you collect aren't part of it: they pass through to the tax authorities.

This report is essential for CFOs and finance teams who need to understand the real financial position of the business, beyond just the recurring revenue metrics.

Overview

The Cashflow report includes a timeline chart of your cash over time, and a breakdown table with every cash component.

Timeline chart

The chart stacks each period's revenue lines above zero, and refunds and the costs of collecting (processing fees, currency conversion) below it. Each bar has the colour of its dot in the table below, so a line with a dot is a bar in the chart.

Hover over any bar to see the breakdown for that period.

Projection for the current period: The dimmed, striped portion of the final bar is a projection –  an estimate of where cashflow will land by the end of the current, in-progress period if money keeps flowing in and out at the pace seen so far. Each cash component (recurring revenue, one-time payments, refunds, fees) is projected individually. It's a simple linear extrapolation, shown only once enough of the period has elapsed, so you can tell mid-month whether you're pacing ahead of or behind expectations. See Projections for exactly how it's calculated and when it appears.

Breakdown table

The breakdown table shows all cash movement categories:

How discounts are handled: the revenue lines show what customers actually paid. Discounts are already subtracted, because the undiscounted price is never money that reaches your bank account. The Discounts given line at the bottom is informational: it tells you how much you're giving away, but it is not deducted again, and it isn't a bar in the chart. Clicking into a revenue cell lists the underlying charges together with the discounts applied to them, so the detail always sums to the cell.

How the totals are calculated: Gross cashflow is all the revenue that landed (subscriptions, metered and one-time payments, and platform income), after discounts. Net cashflow is gross cashflow minus refunds: the revenue you kept. Processing fees and currency conversion follow below the totals. They're what it cost to collect the money, a cost of running the business, so they're shown on their own instead of being taken off Net cashflow.

Why taxes aren't in the report: the VAT and sales tax you collect isn't your money. It passes through to the tax authorities, so it's left out of every line and both totals. You'll still find taxes on each customer's transactions, and the Payouts report has what actually reached your bank, for reconciling.

Click any row to see the individual transactions that make up that category.

Platform income

Platform income is the money you earn as a platform on Stripe Connect: the fee you take from payments on your connected accounts (Stripe calls these application fees). It's cash coming in, so it counts in Gross and Net cashflow, but it isn't subscription revenue and never part of your MRR. The line only appears if your Stripe account earns it, and only without customer filters, since it doesn't belong to one of your customers. The current period is projected like the other lines.

The number next to each amount is how many of your connected accounts paid you a fee in the period. Click an amount to see every application fee behind it: when it was paid, the connected account it came from and the amount. Stripe doesn't share your connected accounts' names with apps, so each account shows by its Stripe id. Click the id to open the account in your Stripe dashboard.

Which Stripe fees count as processing fees: the fee on each payment, plus the processing fees Stripe charges apart from the payments. On interchange-plus pricing that's most of your card costs: network costs (interchange and card scheme fees) and Stripe's card processing. Fees for other payment methods, network tokens, Terminal and disputes count too. That way an account on standard pricing, where one fee per payment covers everything, and one on interchange-plus show the same thing. Stripe's products (Stripe Billing, Stripe Tax, Radar, Sigma and the like) and payout fees aren't costs of collecting a payment, so they're not in the Cashflow report. They're in the Fees tab of the Payouts report, with every other Stripe fee and your effective fee rate. Stripe's separate fee lines belong to no customer, so with a customer filter on, Processing fees has only the fee on each payment.

Grouping cash

A group-by selector in the chart toolbar changes how each period's cash is split:

• No grouping – a single bar per period showing net cashflow (gross cashflow minus refunds). The cleanest view when you just want to know what you kept. The table below is the same as in the Category view.
• Category – the default stacked view: the revenue lines above zero, refunds, processing fees and currency conversion below it (the lines with a dot in the breakdown table above).
• New vs recurring – splits incoming cash into New (a customer's first-ever payment), Recurring (renewals from your existing base) and One-time charges. This is the view for seeing how much of a period's cash is genuinely new business versus your existing base renewing –  the cash-basis counterpart to new vs. expansion MRR.

You can also group by any standard dimension (plan, market, payment method, and so on) –  see Breakdowns. The current in-progress period is projected on the grouped views too, not just on the net total.

On every grouped view, the group rows carry revenue after discounts, without taxes (refunds, fees and currency conversion are not spread across groups), so the groups always sum to Gross cashflow. The exception is when the Category filter picks Processing fees or Refunds: then those are split across the groups too, so you can see, for example, your fees by payment method. Beneath the group rows, the table shows the same summary rows as the Category view (Gross cashflow, Refunds, Net cashflow, Processing fees, Currency conversion and Discounts given), so the totals match no matter how you slice the cash.

Filters

The Cashflow report supports comprehensive filtering:

• Date range - Select custom ranges or preset periods
• Interval - View by day, week, month, quarter, or year
• Currency - Choose your reporting currency. Amounts in other currencies are converted using daily exchange rates.
• Category - Show only some kinds of cash, for example One-time payments, Refunds, Processing fees or Platform income (when you earn it). Pick Processing fees and group by payment method to see what each payment method costs you.
• Additional filters - Filter by plan, region, customer segment, etc. (see all filters)

Exporting the data

Export the cashflow data as CSV for use in accounting software or financial models by clicking the "Export" icon.

Practical tips

• Reconciliation: Use the Cashflow report to reconcile your subscription revenue with your bank statements and accounting records.
• Currency conversion: If you take payments in several currencies, watch the Currency conversion line to see what converting them costs you.
• Fee Analysis: Monitor Processing Fees as a percentage of revenue. If fees are growing faster than revenue, it may be time to negotiate better rates with your payment processor. On Stripe, the Payouts report shows every fee and your effective fee rate, by fee type or by currency.