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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Payment Gateway

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At a glance

The total dollar amount captured but not yet acquirer-funded to the merchant’s bank account. The “in-flight” balance: customer has paid, but the acquirer hasn’t disbursed yet.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Authorize.net data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

“Heartland Hardware Co.” snapshot end of day 02 May 26 (Friday). For Heartland (USD 1.87M monthly volume), USD 251,000 in flight at any time is roughly 4 days of revenue, consistent with T+2 average settlement. A growing pending balance with stable revenue indicates settlement is slowing; investigate.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look: Authorize.Net Dashboard does not show pending balance directly; sum settled-but-not-yet-deposited from Reports → Settled Transactions with status filter, or use the acquirer’s daily settlement report. Why our number may differ:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Pending balance growing while volume stable, why? Settlement is slowing. Causes: (1) acquirer reconciliation issue, (2) increased reserve withholding, (3) chargeback hold cluster. Friday pending always higher, normal? Yes. Captures Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday all fund Monday or Tuesday at the earliest. Friday-end snapshots show 3 to 4 days of pending. Working-capital implications? Plan for 2 to 4 days of revenue always in flight. Heartland Hardware needs USD 250k in working capital just to cover the gap between customer-paid and bank-deposited. Same-day funding, eliminates pending? Most. Same-day-funded card captures clear the same day; only ACH and weekend captures show as pending. Reserve held, separate from this? Yes. Reserve is a long-term hold (90 days typical); this card shows short-term in-flight only.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Pending Payouts is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Authorize.net and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.