Reading your payouts and settlements
Where the money is, when it moves, and how to reconcile it against orders.
A store owner does not need to enjoy accounting to need a clear answer to one question: what am I owed and when does it arrive.
Order to balance
When an order is paid, the amount due to your store accrues to your store account. It does not appear in your bank instantly, and it is not supposed to: payouts run on a schedule, and the balance is what is waiting for the next one.
Your dues page shows the balance and the orders behind it. That itemisation exists so you can check the total rather than accept it.
Reconciling
The reliable method is to reconcile per order rather than per day. Take the payout, open the orders that made it up, and check a sample against your own records. Daily totals hide individual discrepancies; per-order detail does not.
Pay attention to refunds and cancellations. An order refunded after it was counted moves the balance, and that is usually the explanation when a total does not match what you expected.
Settlements
A settlement is the movement of that balance out to you. It carries a reference and a date, and it should be traceable to the set of orders it covers.
Keep those references. If you ever need to raise a discrepancy, a settlement reference and an order reference together let support look at exactly what you are looking at.
Common causes of a total looking wrong
An order refunded after the period you are checking. A cancelled order that was accepted and then could not be fulfilled. A promotion applied at the platform level. A delivery charge you are attributing to the wrong side of the ledger.
None of these are exotic, and all are visible in the per-order detail.
When to raise it
Promptly, and with references. A discrepancy raised the same week, with an order number, is a specific question with a specific answer. The same discrepancy raised two months later as "the totals seem low" is very hard for anyone to investigate usefully.