What "Needs review" means
When Link My Books imports a WooCommerce settlement, we fetch every transaction included in it (sales, refunds, fees, disputes, reserves and so on) and check that everything adds up to the exact amount paid out to your bank account.
A settlement shows Needs review when every individual transaction we imported is correct on its own, but the total of all transactions doesn't quite match the amount actually paid out. The difference is usually small — a few pounds, dollars or euros at most.
Why this happens
WooCommerce and Stripe occasionally apply a charge or credit at the payout level that isn't itemised as a transaction we can import. The most common causes are:
Dispute or chargeback fees deducted directly from the payout
Stripe fees (for example billing corrections) applied to the payout as a whole
Adjustments made to correct an earlier payout
Reserve balance movements — money held back or released
Before showing you this status, Link My Books automatically re-checks the settlement against the payout data a second time to rule out missing data. "Needs review" means the difference is genuinely there in the payout data, not an import error.
How to resolve it
Open the settlement from your settlements list and click the Needs review status. The popup shows you:
the exact difference (for example −6.93 USD), and
which category of the settlement it relates to, based on the payout summary.
If the difference is small (up to 20 in your settlement currency), you can resolve it yourself in one click:
Choose the category that best describes the difference — Stripe Fee, WooCommerce Fee, Adjustment, or Reserve Balance. We pre-select the most likely one for you.
Click Create adjustment.
Link My Books adds a correctly-categorised adjustment line to the settlement so it balances to the penny, then generates and posts the settlement to Xero or QuickBooks as normal. Each category posts to its own account, so your books stay accurate and your accountant can see exactly what the adjustment was.
You can safely redo the adjustment with a different category if you picked the wrong one — it replaces the previous adjustment rather than adding a second line.
If the difference is larger than 20
For larger differences we don't offer the one-click fix, because a bigger gap usually means something that should be explained or corrected at source. In that case:
check the payout in your Stripe dashboard (Payments → All transactions) for any fee, dispute or adjustment shown there, and
contact Stripe support to clarify the deduction — or reach out to us via live chat and we'll investigate it with you.
Will it keep happening?
Payout-level differences are an occasional behaviour rather than something you can prevent. The good news: once you resolve a settlement, it stays resolved — the adjustment survives any re-import or re-processing of that settlement.
If you have any questions about this article or feedback on how we could make it better please reach out to the support team via the blue chat icon on the bottom right of the page or via email to [email protected].