Shopify Payments / New feature

Shopify Payments activity report
Now you can see "why the balance moved" on a single page

Consolidates the opening balance, total transaction amount, fees, payouts, and closing balance for a chosen period into one report. Start your monthly close or a "the balance doesn't add up" investigation without stitching payout exports together. PDF export supported.

On this page
  1. What's new (in 30 seconds)
  2. Illustrated: follow how the balance moved as a single flow
  3. The five numbers in the report
  4. Activity report vs. the Payouts page
  5. Where to open it (two paths)
  6. How to use it (3 steps)
  7. Five points developers should know
  8. Three use cases you can put to work
  9. One-line summary for proposals

1What's new

Shopify Payments now has a report that shows how your balance moved over a specified period , called the activity report .
The opening balance, total transaction amount, fees, payouts, and closing balance are consolidated in one place , and the report can be exported as a PDF.

Before: exporting payout by payout

You had to export from the Payouts page one payout at a time and stitch the period back together to reconstruct how the balance moved.

Now: the whole period on one page

Pick a date range and generate the report, and the balance's ins and outs are laid out on a single page by component. Export it as a PDF to feed your record-keeping and accounting workflow.

This is an addition — another way to look at things, not a replacement. The activity report is built around balance activity and transaction dates , giving you a view of the movement across the entire period. Checking individual deposits is still handled by the Payouts page , as the original announcement explicitly states.

2Diagram: See how the balance moved as one continuous flow

Starting balance Starting balance At the start of the period Gross transaction amount + Gross activity What came into the balance Fees − Fees What was deducted Payouts − To the bank account Payouts What went out of the balance Ending balance Ending balance At the end of the period Grouped as one unit by the selected date range

* Bar heights in the diagram illustrate composition only; the actual ratios differ by store. The original announcement gives no specific figures.

3The five numbers in the report

Starting balance
starting balance
Gross transaction amount
gross activity
Fees
fees
Payouts
payouts
Ending balance
ending balance
Which other items are included beyond these (the level of breakdown for refunds, chargebacks, reserves, and the like) is not documented. The quickest way to find out is to generate the actual report for one period and look at it.

4Activity report vs. the Payouts page

ItemActivity reportPayouts page (existing)
Unit of view Period Balance movement over the selected date range A single payout Each individual payout / deposit
Axis Balance activity + Transaction date Payout-by-payout export
Questions it answers best "Why did my balance move the way it did this month?" "What's inside this payout?"
Output PDF Exportable Per-payout export
Role Reviewing balance movement across a date range Still Where to check individual payouts
the division of labor is now officially defined— that's the key point. Write the split into your ops runbook as "balance for a period = activity report" and "a single payout = Payouts page," and your accounting team stops second-guessing which one to open.

5Where to open it (2 entry points)

Finance > Documents > Shopify Payments activity report Payouts page Straight from the payouts list screen Generate the report Select a date range PDF export Into your records and accounting flow

6How to use it (3 steps)

1

Open the report

Finance > Documents > Shopify Payments activity report, or from the Payouts page.

2

Pick a date range and generate

Specify a period and everything from the opening balance to the closing balance is consolidated into a single report.

3
PDF

Export as PDF

PDF export is available for record-keeping or for handing off to accounting workflows.

75 things developers should know

1. It's organized by transaction date

The report is built from balance activity and transaction dates . That's a different aggregation axis from payout exports, which are based on payout date, so design your reconciliation on the assumption that the two sets of numbers won't line up one-to-one.

Period Payout

2. The Payouts page isn't going away

Individual payouts are still checked on the Payouts page. Existing payout export workflows, and the internal tools built on top of them, keep working as-is. No migration needed.

PDF

3. PDF is the only output format mentioned

The only export format mentioned in the original announcement is PDF only. Whether CSV or other formats exist is not stated. If you want to feed this into BI automatically, confirm that in the admin before you start designing.

API ?

4. No mention of API / Webhook support

Whether this report can be fetched via the Admin GraphQL API, or its generation triggered there, is not stated. Set up a verification task before giving any estimate that assumes automation.

5. Scope is limited to the Shopify Payments balance

It covers money movement that went through Shopify Payments. Sales through external payment providers, and any money in or out that doesn't go through Shopify Payments, are naturally read as outside the scope of this report. For stores that mix multiple payment methods, tell stakeholders up front that this one report alone won't close the month. Supported countries, supported plans, and rollout timing are not stated.

8Three ways to put this to work

USE CASE 1

Free the monthly close from stitching payout statements together

Problem
Every monthly close means exporting payouts one at a time from the Payouts page and joining the period's records in a spreadsheet to reconstruct how the balance moved. The more transactions in a month, the more time it takes and the more mistakes slip in.
Approach
Generate an activity report for the month you're closing by specifying the date range, and read the opening balance, gross transactions, fees, payouts, and closing balance directly from it. Attach the PDF to your accounting workflow as supporting documentation.
Impact
The manual joining step disappears, cutting both the lead time for the monthly close and the transcription errors that come with it. What you hand to auditors or your accountant becomes a proper PDF instead of a screenshot.
Technical note
Because the figures are aggregated by transaction date, they can diverge at rounding and boundary dates from existing in-house reports built on payout date. Run both in parallel for the first month and see how the differences show up before retiring the old process.
USE CASE 2

Speed up first-pass triage of "the balance isn't what I expected" inquiries

Problem
Every time a client asks why this month's payout is smaller than expected, the agency side traces payouts one by one to find the cause — fees, a change in transaction volume, or payout timing.
Approach
Generate an activity report for the period in question and first pinpoint which block — gross transactions, fees, or payouts — is off from expectations. Drill down to individual payouts on the Payouts page only once you need to go deeper.
Impact
First-pass triage becomes "look at one report," shortening the start of every investigation. The resulting PDF can be attached to your client report as is.
Technical note
Writing Shopify's own division of labor (period → activity report / individual payout → Payouts page) straight into your support runbook as a branch point keeps operations stable.
USE CASE 3

Build a routine for reviewing payouts before the money lands

Problem
Amount anomalies only get noticed after funds hit the bank account, so the cause is always chased after the fact — and the hand-off to whoever manages cash flow is always late too.
Approach
Following the use case the original post calls out — checking activity before a payout reaches your bank — make report generation a recurring task. Review how the balance moved over the recent period before the money arrives.
Impact
Anomalies are caught before the money lands, improving the accuracy of your cash flow outlook. Sharing the PDF on a regular cadence also lowers the cost of staying aligned with finance.
Technical note
Whether report generation can be automated (API / scheduled runs) is not stated. Design the workflow on the assumption that someone generates it manually for now, and split automation off as a separate task once it's been verified.

9A one-line summary you can use in proposals

"How the Shopify Payments balance moved over a given period,
Export a single PDF that consolidates opening balance, gross transaction volume, fees, payouts, and closing balancein one new report.
Monthly close and the first pass at a "my balance doesn't match" investigation now finish without stitching together payout statements."