title: “Artist payouts — a guide for the financial controller”

Artist payouts — a guide for the financial controller

This guide explains how your gallery pays consignment artists using CartonCrew payout runs. The artist is paid through QuickBooks (bank transfer or check), by a check you write yourself, or — for galleries that still use it — through Square Bill Pay. It is written for the person who runs the money — no technical background needed.

The one rule to hold onto: CartonCrew keeps the books on what you owe and to whom; QuickBooks, your bank or Square moves the money. Neither you nor CartonCrew ever handles an artist’s bank details.

What is automated, and what is not

Read this before anything else, because a guide that implies the money moves when you press a button will be believed.

No button in CartonCrew sends money. Pay Commission checks the numbers and opens QuickBooks; the payment itself is the click you make in QuickBooks Bill Pay. The “bank transfer” (ACH) path is QuickBooks Bill Pay, done by you. Section 8 explains why none of this can be automated further.

Where this lives: Financial

Everything in this guide happens under Financial in the sidebar. Its tabs, in order, are Payouts, Payout runs, Refund checks, Refunds, Commission report, Unmatched payments and Sales report. Payouts opens first. Refund checks, Refunds, Unmatched payments and Sales report show only when your gallery has the Square connector on.

Who can see Financial: the Owner, Admin and Treasurer roles only. The Treasurer has full use of every tab: run payouts, mark them paid, push a paid run to QuickBooks, work the unmatched payments, mark refund checks, decide refunds and read the Sales and Commission reports. Every other role (Editor, Viewer, Curator, Show manager, Front desk, Calendar Manager) does not see Financial, even with the Artwork Catalog or Square tick boxes, and the server refuses them too. Older bookmarks that pointed at these tabs inside the Artwork Catalog forward to the matching Financial tab.

1. The payout cycle

1. Sales accrue. Every consignment sale (in the gallery or online) creates an owed payout: the artist’s share, fixed at the moment of sale by their commission rate. A later rate change never alters an existing payout.

2. You create a run. In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Payout runs tab, and start a run from everything owed, from a cut-off date, or from hand-picked payouts. Each run gets a reference like PR-2026-08-001 — that reference follows the money everywhere (worksheet, bank statement memo, artist’s email, exports). While QuickBooks is connected, a new run is a QuickBooks (bank transfer) run, and the screen walks you through Pay Commission. Without a connection a run is a Square Bill Pay run, as before. The run header shows which. Either kind of run can be paid by check with Record check…, so a gallery that pays its artists by check does not need QuickBooks or Square Bill Pay at all.

3. You review the worksheet. The run shows one block per artist: their total, and a table of every piece behind it with the columns Piece, SKU, List price, Sale price and Artist commission. Figures line up on the right so you can read a column straight down, and the column adds up to the artist’s total at the foot of the table.

   • List price is the price the piece was listed at when it sold, as the register recorded it. Repricing a piece afterwards does not change it. A sale that did not go through the register (an online sale, or one recorded by hand) has no list price on record and shows a dash (—), never $0.00.
   • A sale price below the list price is marked Discounted, so a discount is visible without doing the arithmetic.
   • A refund carried forward appears as its own negative line in the artist’s table, and the total is what the artist is paid after it.
   • If an artist’s total ever disagreed with the sum of their column, the block says so in red: do not pay that artist until the run is checked.
   • In a narrow window the table scrolls sideways inside the artist’s block.

   If your gallery has a minimum payout amount, artists under the floor are held back for a future run — the run tells you who was held and why.

4. Lock for payment. When the run is right, lock it (awaiting payment). Membership is frozen; nobody can add, remove, or individually mark payouts while you are paying.

5. Pay each artist. Each artist’s row on the locked run carries two buttons, Pay Commission and Record check…:

   • Pay Commission gets the artist ready to be paid through QuickBooks. It does not pay them. CartonCrew first reads that artist’s commission Bills from QuickBooks and checks that their open balances add up to exactly what the run owes. If they do, QuickBooks opens in a new tab at the Bill (or at your Bills list, when there is more than one) and CartonCrew says Opened QuickBooks for the artist. Confirm the payment there. If your browser blocks the new tab, the artist’s block shows Your browser blocked the new tab. with an Open QuickBooks link: click it to go to the same place.
   • The one click that happens inside QuickBooks. You pay the Bill in QuickBooks Bill Pay as usual. This is the moment money moves, and it is yours: Intuit gives no other program a way to make it. The row now reads Awaiting confirmation in QuickBooks, with an Open in QuickBooks link, and the artist’s payouts stay owed until QuickBooks shows the Bill paid — see step 6. Closing the tab without paying changes nothing: the payouts simply stay owed.
   • Record check… is for a check you write yourself; see Paying by check below. The artist’s payouts are paid the moment you record it. That is a manual confirmation on purpose: a check is paid when you write it, and no system anywhere tells CartonCrew that you have.

   CartonCrew refuses rather than guessing when the numbers do not agree, and names the problem: a payout with no QuickBooks Bill (the sale was never pushed to QuickBooks), a Bill QuickBooks no longer returns, or open balances that come to a different figure from what the run owes — including a Bill somebody has already paid. Each needs a person to look before any money moves. Pressing Pay Commission a second time for the same artist on the same run is refused too.

6. CartonCrew closes the payout itself. Once an hour, CartonCrew asks QuickBooks about every payment still awaiting confirmation. When every Bill behind it has a zero balance, that artist’s payouts flip to paid, with the QuickBooks payment id as the reference, and the row reads Paid. A Bill that is only partly paid waits for the rest. When every artist in the run is paid, the run itself becomes Paid. There is nothing for you to mark.

   Still paying in Square Bill Pay? Pay each artist their total in Square Bill Pay with the run reference in the payment memo, then come back and press Mark run paid…, optionally recording each artist’s confirmation number. Every payout in the run flips to paid in one stroke. Use this button only for a run you really did pay outside QuickBooks. This stays a manual step for good, not for now: a Square Bill Pay payment cannot be seen through any Square API, so CartonCrew has nothing to check it against (section 8).

7. Artists get a statement. Each artist automatically receives one email covering all their pieces in the run — sale price, their rate, their share, the total, and the run reference so they can match it to the deposit. An artist with no email on file is simply skipped; a failed email never un-pays anything and is logged for you to see.

You can also download the run as a CSV or an Excel (.xlsx) file (the Export button on the run) — one row per artist with pieces, sale total, commission, amount due, run reference, and payment date. It opens in Excel or Google Sheets and can be handed straight to your bookkeeper.

The Commission To Pay Report

In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Commission report tab. It is the treasurer’s pay sheet: what the gallery owes each artist for the sales dated in a pay period, with enough detail beside each figure to answer “why that number?” without opening anything else. Owners, admins and the Treasurer see the tab. Nobody else does, and the server refuses anyone else who asks for the report or its files, an Editor included.

1. Pick the period. From and To are the period, and it can be any range up to 366 days, across months if you need it (for example 11/20 to 12/05 when you pay every few weeks in November and December). The report covers the sales dated on those days, both ends included. A sale’s date is the day it happened in your gallery’s time zone (in the sidebar, open Studio Site, then the Featured tab, Your gallery’s timezone), so a sale at 8 pm is on that day’s report, not the next day’s, and a payout run made up to that day includes it. If no time zone is set, UTC is used. A date you type when you record a sale by hand is kept as you typed it. The Period list and the Month box only fill From and To in for you:
   • A month (or picking a Month) fills the month’s first and last day.
   • This month and Last month do the same for those months.
   • Since last payout starts the day after the last sale your most recent paid payout run covered, and runs to today. With no paid run yet, it starts at your earliest sale still owed.
   • Through year end runs from the start you chose to 12/31 of this year, so all of the year’s business lands in the year.
   • Change either date and the period becomes your own custom range. A start after the end is refused, naming both dates.
2. Each artist is a block of its own, in last-name order and then first-name order (an artist with no last name on file is sorted by their full name as written): the artist’s name in bold under a ruled line, their sales, and a bold Total for artist row. A grand total closes the report. Each total is the sum of that artist’s own lines.
3. Within an artist, the pieces rung up on one Square receipt sit together, the receipts run in date order, and a blank row separates one receipt from the next. A sale with no receipt stands on its own. When one customer bought two artists’ pieces on the same receipt, the receipt appears under each artist with that artist’s pieces only.
4. The columns, in order: Date, Square Receipt, Category, Class, SKU, Title, Qty, List Price, Sales Price, Paid Amount, Commission %, Amount Paid to Artist, Date Paid, ACH / Check #.
   • Square Receipt is the receipt number Square prints. It is recorded for sales that come in from Square once this report is available. Older Square sales get it once the gallery’s receipt backfill has been run, which asks Square for each one. Where Square gave no receipt number, the Square order number is shown instead, and it groups the order’s pieces the same way. A sale recorded by hand without a Square payment shows a blank cell rather than a guess.
   • Category is the kind of thing that sold: Artwork, Print or Card. Set it on the artwork with Item type. The kind is recorded with the sale, so changing it later never changes a past report. Title is the artwork title.
   • List Price is the piece’s price at the moment it sold, recorded with the sale, so re-pricing a piece in October never rewrites September. Sales from before this report carry it only when they went through the register; otherwise the cell is blank, never today’s price.
   • Paid Amount is what the customer actually paid for the piece, before sales tax. It is below the Sales Price when Square applied a discount to the sale. A layaway becomes a sale only once it is paid in full, so its Paid Amount is the piece’s price. For a sale from before this report that did not go through the register, it shows the Sales Price.
   • Commission % is the artist’s share the sale was actually split at, recorded with the sale (for example 75 or 87). Re-rating a class later never changes it. It is blank on a sale recorded before rates were kept with the sale.
   • Amount Paid to Artist is the artist’s commission on the line.
   • Date Paid and ACH / Check # are blank while the commission is owed. Once the line is paid through a payout run they show the day it was paid and the check number or payment reference entered (or, with none entered, how the run paid: ACH, Check or Square Bill Pay).
   • Qty is 1 for every sale line: each payout is one piece.
   • A discount taken at the register shows as its own line, directly under the piece it discounts and inside the same receipt group: Category Discount, the piece’s Class and SKU, and a Title that says how much was taken off (as a percentage when it was entered as one). The piece’s own line then reads at its price before the discount, with its commission on that price; the discount line carries the discount as a negative Sales Price and Paid Amount, and the artist’s share of the discount as a negative commission at the same rate. Every discount comes off the artist’s commission this way: commission is on the price the customer paid, so the gallery always keeps its cut. The two lines together are exactly what the artist is owed.
   • A sale recorded below its List Price is a discount too, wherever it was given (on the Square Register, for example), and shows the same way: a Discount line under the piece whose Title gives the amount, the List Price less the Sales Price (for example Discount $25.00 on a $375.00 piece sold for $350.00).
5. Only commission still owed is on the report. A sale whose commission is paid does not appear, and an artist with nothing owed in the period does not appear at all. A sale that was refunded is not owed and is not listed. A refund carried forward (section 6) is commission still owed, but negative: it appears as its own line under the artist it belongs to, labeled Refund carried forward, with only the Amount Paid to Artist filled in, and it reduces that artist’s total and no one else’s.
6. Narrow the report with Artist, Class and Sort. Show switches between Commission owed (the default) and Commission paid. The two are never mixed in one report.
7. Export to Excel downloads a formatted spreadsheet (.xlsx): a title row with the exact dates of the period, then the column headings, both kept in view as you scroll; each artist under a ruled bold heading, a blank row between receipts, a bold total row, the money formatted as dollars and the columns sized to fit. It prints landscape with the period at the top of every page. Print opens the same report as a landscape PDF in type no smaller than 10 point, headed with the exact dates of the period. Both carry exactly what is on the screen: the same period, filters and order.

No card number, expiry date, security code, bank account or routing number is on the report or in either file. CartonCrew does not store them.

Adjusting a line’s commission before you pay it

The default rates cover most sales. When one does not (a one-off agreement with an artist, a correction), change that line on the report instead of fixing it on paper. Owners, admins and the Treasurer can do this. Nobody else sees the button, and the server refuses anyone else.

1. In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Commission report tab. Keep Show on Commission owed.
2. Find the line and press Adjust, beside its Title.
3. Change Commission % (artist’s share), Amount the commission is paid on ($), or both. The form shows what the artist and the gallery will get.
4. Type the Reason. It is required.
5. Press Save adjustment. The artist’s amount is worked out again from the amount and the % (to the cent, with the gallery keeping the rest), and the report reloads.

The gallery always keeps a share of every sale, so the form and the server refuse:

• a commission % of 100 or more,
• an amount above what the customer actually paid for the piece (the Paid Amount), and
• any change that would leave the gallery nothing.

Adjust is offered only on a line still owed that is not in a payout run already sent for payment. A paid line, a line in a run awaiting payment, a refund carried forward and a discount line cannot be adjusted. A line in a draft run can be, and the run’s total follows it.

An adjusted line reads at its new % and amount, with an Adjusted marker beside its Title. Point at the marker to read what changed and why. The PDF prints the same words under the Title, and the spreadsheet adds them to the Title cell. Every adjustment is kept with who made it, when, the figures before and after, and the reason. Nobody can edit or delete it afterward. To undo an adjustment, adjust the line again. The artist’s My Sales in the member portal shows the line at the same new % and amount.

If the sale has already been sent to QuickBooks, its bill still shows the old amount. CartonCrew does not change QuickBooks. Change the bill in QuickBooks to match before you pay the artist, or a QuickBooks bank transfer for that artist is refused because the bill and the amount owed disagree.

A sale below the list price: commission on the sale price

Whenever a sale’s amount is below its list price, a discount was given, and both the artist’s commission and the gallery’s share are worked out on the sale amount (the lower of the list price and the sale price), so the discount comes off both in proportion. For example, a piece listed at $375.00 sold for $350.00 at 75% pays the artist $262.50 (75% of $350.00) and leaves the gallery $87.50, not $281.25 on the list price.

New sales are recorded this way. A line recorded earlier on the list price is marked On list price beside its Title, and a note above the table says how many owed lines are like that. To correct them:

1. In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Commission report tab. Keep Show on Commission owed.
2. In the note above the table, press Work out on the sale price.

Each corrected line is kept as an adjustment (an Adjusted marker, with the figures before and after, who pressed it and when), exactly like Adjust. Only lines still owed and not in a payout run sent for payment change; a paid line or a line in a run awaiting payment is never touched. A line you already put right by hand (Adjust, with the amount set to the sale price) is skipped, so a discount is never taken twice, and pressing it again changes nothing. A line already sent to QuickBooks needs its bill changed in QuickBooks, as with Adjust.

Updating a Square sale from Square

Until October 2026 a sale rung on the Square Register (not the CartonCrew Register) with a discount was recorded at the price before the discount, and its commission was split on that price. New sales record the price after the discount, before tax. To correct a sale recorded the old way:

1. In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Commission report tab. Keep Show on Commission owed.
2. Find the line and press Update from Square, beside Adjust on its Title. It is offered on a line recorded from Square.
3. Press Update from Square in the box that opens.

CartonCrew reads that sale on Square, through your gallery’s own Square connection. If Square took a discount, the sale is changed to the price paid before tax, the commission is worked out again at the line’s %, and the change is kept as an adjustment with the reason Square discount. If the sale already matches Square, nothing changes. Owners, admins and the Treasurer can do this. It is refused, with nothing changed, for a paid line, a line in a run sent for payment, a refunded sale and a sale that was not recorded from Square (use Adjust for those that are still owed).

The Sales report (Financial, then the Sales report tab) shows the price paid as soon as you press it. Adjust alone is not enough for a sale like this: it changes the artist’s and the gallery’s amounts but leaves the sale, and the Sales report, at the price before the discount. A line you already Adjusted can still be put right with Update from Square; an amount you set lower than the price paid is kept.

Sending the artist an updated sold email

When a sale’s split is corrected after the artist was told about it (for example, a commissioned piece that sold before it was classified as Commission work, so the “Your piece sold” email gave the artist’s standard share), send the artist an updated email with the corrected figures. Correct the line first with Adjust; what you correct on the report is what the payout run, the remittance statement and the payout export pay.

1. In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Commission report tab. Choose the period the sale falls in. Keep Show on Commission owed, or choose Commission paid for a sale already paid.
2. Find the line and press Send updated sold email to artist on its Title.
3. Check the box that opens: it shows who the email goes to, what the piece sold for, the artist’s share and %, and the gallery’s share. These are the figures the payout run pays.
4. Press Send updated email.

The artist receives “Updated: Your piece sold: title”, which says it replaces the earlier email and gives the new share (“Updated: your share is now …”), the sale price and the gallery’s share. When the gallery knows who bought the piece, the email also gives the buyer’s name and email, in the same Buyer line as the original “Your piece sold” email, so the artist can get in touch with the patron; when the buyer is not known, there is no Buyer line. The line then shows Updated email sent, and the send is recorded in the activity history with who sent it, when and the amounts.

Owners, admins and the Treasurer can do this; nobody else sees the button, and the server refuses anyone else. Pressing it twice, or from two tabs, sends one email: the same figures are not sent again within ten minutes. If you correct the line again, the new figures can be sent. If the artist has no email address on file, the box says so and nothing is sent: add the address on the artist’s record, or tell them another way. For an artist In Memoriam the email goes to their payee, as the original sold email did.

Marking a commission paid outside CartonCrew

Sometimes you pay an artist by hand: a check written at the desk, or an artist leaving the gallery paid in advance. Record it on the report, or the report keeps showing that money as owed and invites paying it twice. Owners, admins and the Treasurer can do this. Nobody else sees the controls, and the server refuses anyone else.

1. In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Commission report tab. Keep Show on Commission owed.
2. Tick the box beside the Title of each line you already paid.
3. Press Mark paid outside CartonCrew at the top of the report.
4. Enter the Date paid and the Check number or note (for example “CHK 5758” or “paid in cash at the desk”). Both are required. The date cannot be after today.
5. Press Mark paid.

The lines leave the owed report. Switch Show to Commission paid to see them with that Date Paid and the reference in ACH / Check #, marked Paid outside CartonCrew (the PDF and the spreadsheet add “(paid outside CartonCrew)” after the reference). Who did it, when, which lines and the reference are recorded.

Marking a line this way makes no payout run, sends nothing to QuickBooks and emails the artist no remittance. If the sale was already sent to QuickBooks, record the payment against its bill in QuickBooks yourself.

A line already paid, a line in a payout run (draft or awaiting payment) and a refund carried forward cannot be marked this way. Remove the line from the run first, or pay it through the run. If you marked a line by mistake, open Financial → Payouts and press Reopen… on it, giving a reason. It goes back to owed.

2. Paying a new artist for the first time

Each artist chooses how they are paid, on their own profile in the member portal, under How you get paid: Check or Bank transfer.

For an artist who chose Bank transfer:

• The artist has a vendor record in QuickBooks. CartonCrew creates it the first time a sale of their work is pushed to QuickBooks — using their name and email, nothing more.
• On Artists, their row reads Chose bank transfer — not invited yet and offers Invite to ACH (admins only). Press it: QuickBooks opens on that vendor in a new tab. Press Ask for payment info there. QuickBooks emails the artist, and they enter their own bank details on the QuickBooks secure page. The row then reads Invited to ACH on the date. If your browser blocks the new tab, the row shows Your browser blocked the new tab. with an Open QuickBooks link beside the button: click it to open the vendor.
• If the artist has no vendor record yet, Invite to ACH says so and opens nothing. Try again after their first sale has been pushed to QuickBooks.
• What the artist sees: an email from QuickBooks asking for their payment information, and a QuickBooks page where they type their own bank details. Their How you get paid card in the member portal says the gallery has invited them. Intuit’s own wording is that the two of you won’t see each other’s bank account info.
• Until they finish, QuickBooks pays them by paper check instead, so nothing is held up. QuickBooks switches to a bank transfer by itself if they finish before the payment date.

Why the row says Invited, never Enrolled. Neither QuickBooks nor Square tells any other program whether an artist has finished entering their bank details — there is no “ready for bank transfer” setting to read on either one. So CartonCrew records only what it saw happen: that you pressed Invite to ACH on a date. The row keeps reading Invited to ACH on that date after the artist finishes, until you say otherwise.

Marking a bank transfer as set up. Once you have looked at the vendor in QuickBooks and seen that their bank details are on file, press Mark bank transfer set up on the artist’s row on Artists. The row then reads Bank transfer set up, and the artist’s How you get paid card says Bank transfer is set up. CartonCrew records who pressed it and when. The Treasurer, an Owner or an Admin can press it; nobody else can, and an artist can never mark their own. Pressed by mistake, or the details turned out to be wrong? Press Undo bank transfer set up on the same row: the card goes back to saying the gallery has invited them, and the undo is recorded too. Nothing sets this automatically — it is your confirmation, not a reading from QuickBooks.

Still paying through Square Bill Pay? It works differently, and it cannot be done in advance. Square has no separate invitation: it emails the artist an “Accept payment” invitation only when you schedule a real payment to them in Square Bill Pay, and they enter their bank details on Square’s page. If they never do, Square falls back to a check. Add the artist as a vendor in Square with only their name and email.

Say it plainly and often: the gallery never types an artist’s bank details, and CartonCrew never stores them. There is no field for them anywhere in CartonCrew — the schema simply has no place to put a bank account, which is the strongest protection there is.

3. What decides an artist’s share

Every sale is split at one number: the artist’s share, as a percentage. CartonCrew works that number out at the moment of sale, from the first of these that has an answer:

1. A rate set on the piece itself. If somebody typed a rate onto this particular artwork, that is the rate. Nothing overrides it.
2. The sale classification. What kind of sale this was — In-house, Commission work, Jewelry (guest artist), and so on. This is usually what decides it.
3. The artist’s own rate, if their record carries one.
4. The rate for their category (member, show or guest), from Artwork → Commission rates.
5. 60%, if nothing above had an answer.

That order is what lets one artist hold a 75% piece, an 87% commissioned piece and a credit in the same month without anybody doing sums by hand.

The classifications, and editing them

Your gallery’s list lives in Artwork → Sale classifications. Every gallery starts with the same eleven and can change any of them:

A classification with no rate is not a classification paying 0%. A layaway is paid at the rate of the piece underneath it, and a credit is a negative line rather than a share, so those three simply hand the decision to the next step in the list above.

Only an administrator can add a classification, rename one, change a rate or retire one. Anyone else in the gallery can see the list — the person at the till has to be able to pick from it — but cannot change what anybody is paid.

Four things worth knowing before you re-rate anything

• Re-rating never touches a sale that has already happened. Each sale records the rate it was actually split at. Change In-house from 75% to 70% today and last month’s payouts are exactly what they were; only sales made from now on use the new number.
• Re-classifying a sold piece does re-work its unpaid commission. If a piece turns out to be a different kind of sale after it was sold (say it was really Commission work), in the sidebar open Artwork Catalog, click Edit on the piece’s row, change Sale classification (or the Commission rate override) and click Save changes. While the artist has not been paid for that sale, CartonCrew works the commission out again at the new rate: the artist’s amount and the gallery’s share change on the Commission To Pay Report and the Sales report, the sale shows its new classification, and the line on the report carries an “Adjusted” note saying what changed and who changed it. A message after you save says what happened. A sale that has already been paid, or is in a payout run sent for payment, is left exactly as it was, and the message says so. Only an Owner, Admin or Treasurer can make this change on a sold piece whose commission is still owed; an Editor is told who to ask. Saving the piece without touching its classification or override never changes the commission. A piece sold at the gallery desk and taken home by the buyer cannot be edited at all; to correct its commission, use Adjust on its line in Financial → Commission report.
• A classification is retired, not deleted. Retiring it takes it off the list the till offers while leaving every past sale readable. There is no delete, on purpose: deleting one would leave old sales unable to say what kind of sale they were.
• A piece can be sold under a different classification than it carries. A work moves off the wall and into a show between being tagged and being sold, and the sale records what actually happened rather than what was expected. Both places you can sell from say so: the till, and Record a sale in the artwork module, which offers the same picker with the piece’s own classification already chosen. Leaving it alone records the sale under the classification the piece carries, which is what it has always done. The split shown before you confirm follows whatever you pick, so the number on screen is the number the artist is owed.

Paying by check: number, issued, cleared

When you pay an artist by check, record the check on the run rather than in a note. On the locked run, in that artist’s block, click Record check…, enter the Check number and the Issued date (today by default), and click Record check. The artist’s payouts are paid at once, and the check number becomes their payment reference.

A line under the artist’s name then reads Check 1042 · Issued Sep 20, 2026 · Not cleared. When the check shows on your bank statement, click Mark cleared today (or Edit check to enter a different cleared date). Two rules hold, and CartonCrew refuses anything that breaks them:

• A check clears only after it is issued. You cannot enter a cleared date without an issued date, or a cleared date earlier than the issued one.
• One check number, one check, per gallery. If you type a number already recorded on another artist’s payout, or on a refund check (see below), CartonCrew says so and names that check. Another gallery’s check book is unrelated and may reuse any number.

Typed the wrong number? Click Edit check, correct it, and Save. The change is recorded in Settings → Recent Activity, naming who made it; the old number and the new one are kept in the audit log (and your data export).

The artist sees the check number against every sale it paid, in the member portal under My Sales, with whether it has been sent and whether it has cleared.

Refund checks: writing the check for a return

Under the standard returns policy, a cash or check sale is refunded by a check the gallery writes. The register records the refund, but the customer has nothing until that check exists, so CartonCrew lists it as owed, not as refunded. A card sale goes back to the card through Square and never appears here.

In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Refund checks tab (it shows when Square is connected). It opens on Owed. Each row shows the amount, the day the refund was taken at the register, how the sale was paid, the receipt number, the pieces, and Pay to, the name taken at the desk. For a check sale, Pay to is the name on the customer’s check. Click change (or add name) to correct it.

Record the check the same way as a commission check. Click Add check number, enter the Check number and the Issued date, and click Save. The row then reads Issued, and the refund is complete. When the check shows on the bank statement, click Mark cleared today. The same rules apply: a check clears only after it is issued, and a check number is used once. The gallery has one check book: a number already on a commission check cannot go on a refund check, or the other way round, and CartonCrew names the check that already has it. Another gallery may reuse any number. Use Issued, not cleared, Cleared and All to see the rest.

A Treasurer can do all of this. An administrator, or someone with the Artwork Manager permission, can too. Nobody at the register can, and no card or bank detail is ever asked for or stored.

4. Reconciliation

Each paid run should match your bank activity:

• The happy path: the bill payments in QuickBooks (and any checks and Square Bill Pay debits) for the run add up to the run total in CartonCrew and the CSV export’s total — they are the same figure.
• What an automatically closed payout looks like. When the hourly check sees every Bill behind an artist’s payment reach a zero balance, the artist’s row on the run reads Paid · followed by the id of the QuickBooks bill payment that paid it, and each of their payouts carries that same id as its payment reference, so each one can be matched on both sides. A payout closed this way has no person against it in the audit trail: CartonCrew closed it.
• Still awaiting confirmation after a day or two? CartonCrew is still waiting for the Bill to reach zero. Open it with Open in QuickBooks: a Bill that was never paid, or only partly paid, is the usual answer. A Bill that was deleted in QuickBooks is not treated as paid; the payment waits until a person looks.
• A payment failed or was returned after it showed as paid (bad bank details, a closed account, a voided bill payment). CartonCrew does not notice this. Once a payout is closed, the hourly check stops looking at it, so a payment that bounces afterwards leaves CartonCrew saying paid. When your bank or QuickBooks tells you a payment came back:
  1. Find the artist’s payouts by the run reference or the QuickBooks payment id.
  2. On Financial → Payouts, press Reopen… on each one. Reopening a paid payout needs a written reason (for example QuickBooks payment returned — account closed), and the reason, who and when are recorded.
  3. The payouts are owed again and go into your next run, where you pay them with Pay Commission or Record check… as usual. If the artist’s bank details need fixing, that happens in QuickBooks: press Undo bank transfer set up and then Invite to ACH on their row so QuickBooks asks them again.
• You paid an artist outside a run (cash advance, manual check): mark those payouts paid individually before creating the next run, so the run only ever contains what you actually intend to pay.
• Partial payment: avoid it. Pay the artist’s run total exactly. If you must vary, cancel the run (a draft or locked run can be cancelled; its payouts return to owed) and build a corrected one.

Square took money we could not match to a work

Sometimes Square records a payment that CartonCrew cannot attribute to any piece. The usual cause is a work that was never pushed to your Square catalog: it goes to the buyer’s payment page as a plain line item with a name and a price and nothing to match on, so the sale arrives with no piece attached. A payment taken at the register for something that is not a work lands the same way.

CartonCrew does not guess which piece it was. A sale recorded against the wrong work pays the wrong artist, and that is much harder to unwind than a gap. Instead the payment waits for you, in Financial → Unmatched payments (there is a red count on the tab, the gallery dashboard names it, and admins are emailed when one appears).

Each one shows what Square recorded — the amount, the date, the line items, and a link to the receipt in Square — plus any works the same order was holding, offered as candidates rather than as an answer. You have two endings, and both are yours to choose:

• Link it to a work. You pick the piece and confirm the amount. The amount offered is what Square took for the line after any discount and before tax. That records a real sale: the artist’s payout is calculated at their rate, the piece is marked sold, and the artist is emailed exactly as any other sale would do. The sale carries the real Square payment and order ids, so it reconciles against your Square activity like the rest.
• Dismiss it. Use this when it was not a sale of a work — a payment at the register, a deposit, something you have already recorded another way. No sale and no payout are created, and you can note what it was.

Either ending releases the works the order was holding: the piece you linked becomes sold, and anything else from that order goes back to available. Nothing is left stranded on hold.

Prevention: the Square settings card tells you how many available works are not in your Square catalog, and the Push catalog to Square button fixes it. A work needs a Label ID (SKU) before it can be pushed.

A push that does not happen says so. Pushing the catalog reports each work’s outcome, not one verdict for the run: works that went, works that were already up to date, and — named individually, with the reason — any work that did not reach Square. Square’s own error text is shown as it came back, because that is what tells you whether the problem is a token, a location or a rate limit. The same is true of the Retry button beside a failed work: it either tells you the piece is in Square, or it tells you it is not and why.

Take the failures seriously even when most of the run succeeded. A work that is missing from the Square catalog still sells at the register — as an anonymous line item that no artist, consignment or payout can be attached to. It is not a lost sale; it is a sale that never reaches your books.

5. Segregation of duties

• Only members of your organization with editor or admin access, or the Treasurer role, can see or touch payouts at all; viewers cannot even list them. A Treasurer works payouts and payout runs without being able to edit the catalog, and nobody below Admin can delete one.
• Every state change is audited — who created the run, who locked it, who pressed Pay Commission or recorded a check, who marked it paid, who reopened a payout and why, each with actor and timestamp. A payout closed by the hourly QuickBooks check has no person against it: CartonCrew closed it. The audit trail is your evidence for the accountant.
• CartonCrew does not force the creator and the payer to be different people — that separation is a policy for your gallery to set. The recommended practice: one person builds and reviews the run, a second person approves the payments in QuickBooks (or writes the checks). The audit log shows whether the practice is being followed.

6. Refunds after an artist has been paid

A paid commission is never reversed automatically. The artist has been paid, so the money is out of the gallery’s hands, and the payout stays Paid. What happens to it is a decision an owner or admin makes, in Financial → Refunds (the card is titled Refunds to review):

• Absorb it. The gallery keeps the loss. Nothing changes for the artist, and the refund is recorded with who decided and when.
• Carry it forward. The amount comes off the artist’s next payout. It shows in the payouts list as a negative amount owed, labelled Refund carried forward, and the artist sees it on their sales page as a pending refund adjustment.

You are asked this when you choose Return to sale on a refund whose commission was already paid, and on its own for a refund made at the register (the register refunds the customer and puts the piece back, then leaves the commission for you to decide). A commission that was owed (not yet paid) is simply cancelled when the piece is returned to sale; nothing is left to recover. You can decide once: after you absorb or carry forward, the choice is final.

How a carried-forward amount is taken off. You do not pick it. When you make a payout run with any of that artist’s payouts in it, the amount is added to the run automatically and the artist is paid the net. It is taken off exactly once: after that run is paid it is settled and does not come back. The worksheet, the CSV export and the artist’s payment email all show it as a Refund carried forward line with a minus amount. It cannot be marked paid on its own from the payouts list.

When the artist is owed less than the amount. If the net for an artist would be $0.00 or less, that artist is held back from the run, with the balance shown (“after a refund carried forward — the balance stays owed”). Nothing is written off. The amount stays owed and is taken off a later run, once the artist has sold enough to cover it.

Pay that artist by check. A payout run paid by QuickBooks bank transfer cannot take a deduction yet, so a run or an ACH settlement for an artist with a carried-forward amount is refused, naming the artist: pay this artist by check, or absorb the refund.

A payout whose check has cleared counts as paid here even if the payout itself was later reopened: the money has left your bank, so it is not reversed either, and it gets the same absorb or carry forward question.

Reversing a sale recorded in error

A sale typed in by mistake (the piece did not sell, or the buyer is paying for it on a layaway) is not a refund: no money came back. Owners, Admins and Treasurers reverse it from the sale itself:

1. In the sidebar, open Artwork Catalog, then the Artworks tab.
2. Find the Sold piece and click Buyer (or Sale, if your gallery does not use the Patrons module).
3. In Who bought it (or Sale), click Reverse sale, type the Reason (required), and click Reverse sale.

The sale is kept and marked Reversed (recorded in error), on the Sales report, the artist’s sales page and statement, and the Sales list. It never reads Refunded, and it nets to nothing in the totals. An owed payout for it is canceled. A paid payout is never touched: if the artist has been paid (or the check has cleared), or the payout is in a run awaiting payment or paid, the reversal is refused with the reason and nothing changes. Sort the payment out with the artist first. The piece goes back to Available (and back on Square), or stays Sold - layaway when a layaway is open. Every reversal is logged with who, when, the reason, the sale and the payout.

7. A note on taxes (a question for your accountant, not advice)

Consignment proceeds are generally treated as payment for merchandise rather than for services, and galleries typically do not issue a 1099-NEC for them. But whether that holds for your gallery depends on facts we cannot see — how your consignment agreements are written, your state, and your accountant’s judgment. Take this to your own accountant as a question (“do we need to issue 1099s to our consignment artists?”); do not treat this paragraph as tax advice, because it is not.

8. What this system is not

CartonCrew does not move money, hold funds, or store financial credentials. It is the ledger of what you owe and the record of what you paid; QuickBooks (or your bank, or Square) is the system of record for the payment itself. Pay Commission opens QuickBooks at the right Bill — the payment is still approved by a person, in QuickBooks.

This section exists so nobody has to research it twice. It records what was checked, when, and against what — and says so where something was not verified, rather than filling the gap with a guess.

Square — researched July 2026, re-checked September 2026

Verified against Square’s developer documentation (API version 2026-09-16 at the re-check) and Square staff answers on its developer forum:

• Square cannot pay a third party through its API. The Payouts API is three read-only calls. It reports the money Square has already sent to the gallery’s own bank account; there is no call that sends money to anybody else. Square staff confirmed the ability isn’t currently available.
• Square Bill Pay has no API at all. It does pay vendors by bank transfer, but only from the Square Dashboard or app, by a person. It appears nowhere in the Square API reference, and Square staff said in November 2025 that there is no roadmap for one.
• A Square Bill Pay payment is invisible to CartonCrew, before and after. That is why a Square Bill Pay run is closed by a person with Mark run paid…, and always will be.
• Square cannot invite an artist in advance. Its Accept payment email goes out only when a real payment is scheduled. The gallery is debited on the scheduled date either way, and a payment nobody accepts is cancelled and refunded after seven days.
• The Square Vendors API is for purchase orders and suppliers. It moves no money and cannot set up a Bill Pay payee.
• Square Payroll is the wrong tool for consignment proceeds: they are payment for merchandise, not for services (see section 7).

QuickBooks — researched September 2026

Verified against Intuit’s developer documentation for the QuickBooks Online Accounting API:

• QuickBooks cannot start a bank transfer to a vendor through its API either. A bill payment’s pay type can only be Check or Credit card; there is no bank-transfer value to ask for. A bill payment written through the API records a payment made somewhere else.
• QuickBooks Bill Pay has no public API. The bank transfer CartonCrew calls “ACH” is QuickBooks Bill Pay, done by the treasurer, in QuickBooks. That is the click Pay Commission takes you to.
• Intuit’s Payments API collects money; it does not pay it out. Its bank-transfer feature takes money from a customer and cannot be turned round to pay a vendor.
• The invitation has no API. Ask for payment info is a button in the vendor drawer in QuickBooks, which is why Invite to ACH opens that drawer and records that you were sent there, rather than sending anything itself.
• What QuickBooks does expose, and Square does not, is whether a Bill has been paid. A Bill’s balance is readable. That single fact is why QuickBooks is the main path: CartonCrew can check the Bills against what is owed before anybody pays, and notice afterwards, by itself, that they were paid.
• CartonCrew never writes bank details into QuickBooks. The vendor record has a bank-detail field meant for Australian and New Zealand batch payments. Filling it enrolls nobody in US Bill Pay, and it would put bank details where other apps on the same company file can read them back. CartonCrew does not write it, and a test proves that.

True of both

• Neither provider tells any other program whether an artist has finished entering their bank details. That is why CartonCrew says invited and never enrolled, and why set up is something the Treasurer marks after looking in QuickBooks (section 2).
• Not verified, and so not promised here: how many business days a QuickBooks bank transfer takes (Intuit’s own help page would not load; other sources say three to five), Square Bill Pay’s limits by plan, and whether Square Bill Pay can be paid from an outside bank account (Square’s own pages contradicted each other).

Either way, the gallery never touches an artist’s bank details, and CartonCrew never moves the money.