Finance

Finance is where the money side of your tribe lives. It is not just a list of sales. It is the whole picture: what came in, what went back out as refunds and fees, what you spent, what you are holding for the tax authority, and what is actually left.

Open Finance in your dashboard and you land on the Overview. Everything else in the section hangs off that page.

What is in this section

Where the money comes from

Anything a fan or client pays for lands in Finance automatically. You never have to enter a sale by hand.

• Store orders: merch, music, digital downloads and services.
• Memberships: first payments and every renewal after that.
• Events: ticket sales.
• Courses: course purchases.
• Coaching: paid sessions and bookings.
• Invoices you raise and clients pay.
• Donations given through a donate button on your site.
• Payment links: one-off charges you email to somebody.

Money going the other way shows up too: refunds you issue, the fees your payment provider takes, payouts to your bank, and the expenses you record yourself.

The one idea worth understanding

Most tools show you revenue and stop. Finance shows you net profit, which is a different number and usually a smaller one.

It walks down like this:

1. Gross charges: everything people paid you, not counting tax you collected on behalf of a tax authority.
2. Take off refunds. What is left is your revenue.
3. Take off processor fees, the cut your payment provider keeps.
4. Take off expenses, the costs you record yourself.
5. What remains is net profit.

Tax you collected sits outside that walk entirely. It was never yours: you are holding it until you hand it over. Payouts to your bank sit outside it too, because moving money you have already earned from one place to another does not earn you anything.

A currency rule that keeps the numbers honest

Reports here are shown in your main currency, the one set on your account. When a sale comes in with a different currency it is converted at the rate on the day it was recorded and stored that way, so old numbers never shift when exchange rates move later.

Very occasionally a transaction is recorded without a rate. Rather than guess one, TribeNest leaves that transaction out of the converted totals and shows a notice listing what was left out, in the currency it was taken in. If you see that notice, the totals on screen are real but incomplete, and the notice tells you by how much.

Where to start

• Just want to know how you are doing? Open overview.
• Somebody owes you money? Raise an invoice.
• A customer wants their money back? See payouts and refunds.
• Your bank deposit does not match your sales? That is exactly what the payouts page is for.
• Filing your taxes? Go straight to year-end.

Common questions

Do I have to record sales myself? No. Every sale from every part of TribeNest arrives on its own. The only things you enter by hand are expenses, and refunds you settled outside TribeNest.

Why is my revenue lower than my sales total? Because refunds come off it. Go one step further and net profit has fees and expenses taken off as well. Both steps are laid out on the overview.

Can I fix a number that looks wrong? Not directly. Finance reflects what actually happened. To change the picture you act on the thing behind it: issue or record a refund, add a missing expense, or correct the sale in the section it came from.

Who on my team can see this? Finance is permission controlled, so you can give somebody access to the store without handing them your profit and loss. See team.

Where to go next

• The numbers themselves → overview
• Getting paid by a client → invoices
• Chasing sales that never completed → abandoned checkouts
• Making sure payouts reach your bank → payment setup