Payouts Settings
Sell Services > Settings > Payouts
Direct link: wp-admin/admin.php?page=wpss-settings#payouts
This tab controls how vendors get their money out: when earnings become withdrawable, the minimum they can request, and whether high earners are paid automatically.
It configures the rules. The actual batch work -- approving, exporting, marking paid -- happens on Sell Services > Withdrawals, which this tab links to.
Settings are hash-routed.
#payoutsscrolls to this tab; there is no?tab=parameter.
Withdrawal Settings
| Field | Type | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallet Provider | Select | Internal Wallet | Which wallet holds vendor balances |
| Minimum Withdrawal | Number, 0-1000 | 25 on a fresh install |
The floor for a withdrawal request |
| Clearance Period (Days) | Number, 0-90 | 0 |
How long earnings are held before they can be withdrawn |
Wallet Provider
Where vendor balances live. The built-in Internal Wallet needs nothing else installed. Pro adds TeraWallet, WooWallet and MyCred, and each appears in this list only while its plugin is active.
Pick this once, at setup. Switching provider later does not migrate balances.
Minimum Withdrawal
Vendors must reach this balance before they can request a payout. It exists to stop a stream of $3 transfers, each of which costs you a bank fee and a minute of admin.
$25-$100 suits most marketplaces. Set it too high and vendors feel their money is trapped; too low and your payout run becomes tedious.
Clearance Period (Days)
The single most consequential field on this tab. It is how many days completed earnings are held before a vendor may withdraw them.
Default is 0 -- pay out as soon as an order completes. That is a
deliberate choice, not an oversight. Plenty of marketplaces pay immediately, and
whether to sit on a vendor's money is your business policy, not the plugin's.
Set 7, 14 or 30 if you want a refund buffer:
| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
0 |
No hold. Money is withdrawable as soon as it is earned |
7 |
Weekly hold |
14 |
Fortnightly hold |
30 |
Monthly hold |
What a hold buys you. If a refund arrives inside the window, the money is still unpaid and nothing has to be clawed back.
What happens with no hold. You do not eat the loss -- the ledger records it honestly. A refund on money the vendor has already withdrawn drives that vendor's balance negative, and their future earnings pay it down automatically. The balance is deliberately not clamped at zero. Clearance avoids that conversation; the ledger survives it either way. Both are correct.
Two exceptions worth knowing:
- Tips, milestone phases and paid extensions credit at payment, not at completion, so the clearance clock starts from the payment.
- Stripe Connect bypasses clearance entirely. Connect splits at charge time and pays the vendor's Stripe account directly, so no hold applies to a Connect payment regardless of what you set here.
Automatic Withdrawals
| Field | Type | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enable Auto-Withdrawal | Checkbox | Off | Creates withdrawal requests automatically |
| Auto-Withdrawal Threshold | Number, 100-10000, step 50 | 500 |
Balance above which a vendor is picked up |
| Auto-Withdrawal Schedule | Select | Monthly | Weekly (Mondays) / Bi-weekly (1st and 15th) / Monthly (1st) |
With this on, any vendor whose available balance clears the threshold on the scheduled day has a withdrawal request created for them -- they do not have to ask. Available balance means the ledger balance minus pending withdrawals minus anything still in clearance.
This creates the request; it does not move the money. You still complete each payout on the Withdrawals screen. That separation is on purpose: exporting or queuing a payout must never claim money has been sent when it has not.
Saving this card reschedules the background job immediately.
PayPal Payouts [PRO]
Bulk-pay vendors through PayPal's Payouts API.
| Field | Type | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show PayPal Payout Option to Vendors | Checkbox | Off | Adds PayPal as a payout method vendors can select, so they can save a PayPal email |
| Enable PayPal Payouts | Checkbox | Off | Enables batch sending |
| PayPal Client ID / Client Secret | Text / Password | -- | From the PayPal Developer Dashboard |
| Sandbox Mode | Checkbox | Off | Test without moving real money |
| Minimum Payout Amount | Number | -- | Vendors below this are excluded from a batch |
The card also holds Create Batch Payout (pick vendors, send) and Recent Payout Batches.
Vendors must save a PayPal email on their profile first. Until they do, the vendor table here shows an empty state -- turn on Show PayPal Payout Option to Vendors so they have somewhere to enter it.
This card saves over AJAX with its own Save Payout Settings button.
This is not the PayPal gateway on the Payment Gateways tab. That one takes money from buyers; this one sends money to vendors. They use separate credentials and either can run without the other.
You can pay every vendor with no integration at all
This matters more than any option above: a site with no gateway and no Connect and no PayPal Payouts still has a complete payout flow.
On Sell Services > Withdrawals you can filter the queue, export it to CSV with the bank and PayPal bulk-upload columns your bank expects, pay however you actually pay, and then Mark paid. That single step writes the ledger debit, and marking twice debits once.
Exporting never changes a status. Export and mark-paid are two deliberate acts, because an export that auto-marked would lie the moment a bank transfer bounced.
Stripe Connect and PayPal Payouts are conveniences on top of that. They are never prerequisites.