Balances: pending, available, paid

Every member has four numbers, not one. Knowing which is which answers most of the questions members will ask you.

	What it is
Pending	Cashback recorded, but the network has not confirmed it yet. Cannot be requested.
Available	Confirmed and past any holding period. This is the money the member can ask for.
Requested	A payout has been asked for and you have not paid it yet.
Paid	Already sent. History.

How money moves between them

   order reported          network approves         member requests      you pay
        ↓                        ↓                        ↓                ↓
     PENDING  ──────────────► AVAILABLE ──────────────► REQUESTED ─────► PAID
                                  │
                          network declines
                                  ↓
                               removed

Money only ever moves forward, and only one number holds it at a time. When a member requests a payout, their available balance drops immediately — that is deliberate, and it is what stops the same money being requested twice while you are getting round to paying it.

Why they never add up to one number

There is no single "balance", and inventing one causes arguments.

Adding pending to available would promise a member money the network has not confirmed and may still take away. Adding paid would count money twice — it has already left.

On your site, show available as the headline. It is the only number that means anything to a member: it is what they can ask for today. Show pending next to it, clearly labelled as still on its way, so they can see the cashback they are waiting on.

Where each number appears

For members — the account page shows all of them, with the history behind each. See What members see.

To put a balance elsewhere on your site, use the balance shortcode or block — see [cashback-balance].

For you — Cashback Tracker → Members lists every member with all four columns, largest available balance first. Open any member to see the entries those numbers are built from, and to correct one.

A negative balance

Occasionally a member's available balance goes below zero. It is not a bug — it means money was taken back after it became available, usually because a network declined an order late, or because you corrected something.

The member simply cannot request a payout until it climbs back above zero. If that is unfair in a particular case, credit them by hand: see Adjusting a member's balance.

Currency

All balances are in one currency — your site currency, chosen when you first set the plugin up.

Networks report in whatever currency they use, and cashback is converted into yours as each order arrives, at the rate in force at that moment. The order keeps a record of what it was originally, so you can always see where a figure came from.

The site currency cannot be meaningfully changed once real cashback is recorded. Every stored balance is already in it, and changing it would not re-convert history. If you picked the wrong one on a site with real members, ask support before touching anything.

There is more to this — where the rates come from, when to set your own, and the two networks with a currency setting of their own. See Currency and exchange rates.

Related

• Currency and exchange rates

• The cashback ledger — where these numbers are actually calculated from

• Order statuses and the holding period

• Payout methods and the minimum