In most cases, when a payment is refunded to a client, the refund is normally issued before Stripe initiates the transfer ("Payout") of the client's payment to your bank account, which means there is usually enough time to handle refunds efficiently without the refund resulting in a negative Stripe balance.

In circumstances where a refund is issued after the Payout (transfer to your bank account) has already been initiated, or when you have no other funds in your Stripe account, your balance may end up being negative.

This is usually a temporary situation which will resolve itself, assuming that payments will be made into your Stripe account in future for other client sessions. 

Please note - it can take a few days between a Payout being initiated and the Payout reaching your bank account, so while you may not yet have received the Payout in to your bank account, this will be on its way to you, and you will not be left out of pocket.

You can view the date that Payouts are expected to reach your bank account by logging in to your Stripe Dashboard at https://dashboard.stripe.com/

A negative balance means that Stripe has essentially paid you more than you are due as they have covered a refund to a client on your behalf, and you effectively owe Stripe the balance shown. 

In this situation, Stripe will automatically deduct the balance from any funds you receive into your Stripe account in future before sending any future payouts for other client sessions. If you are expecting future sessions to be booked and paid for via Harley Therapy Platform, you can safely leave things alone and simply wait for the balance to clear itself. 

Please note that a negative balance is not a debt to Harley Therapy Platform Ltd. This is a debt between the therapist and Stripe directly, as Stripe has covered the refund of a client's payment on a therapist's behalf.

Stripe will most likely have reached out to you via email to notify you of the negative balance, so we recommend following any instructions they have shared with you on how to resolve the issue.

If you have not received any communications from Stripe, you can also contact the Stripe support team by logging into your Stripe Dashboard and then clicking on "Contact Support" on the right-hand side of this page : https://support.stripe.com/

While we would recommend speaking with Stripe in the first instance and following any instructions they have shared with you directly, we have been advised that to clear a negative balance in Stripe when future payments are not expected you can follow the procedure below :

Send payment from your bank account to the Stripe bank account for the amount of the negative balance:

Sort Code: 200000
​Account number: 73969509
​Account Name: Stripe Payments UK limited
​Bank Name: Barclays Bank PLC
​

Once you have made the payment, send a screenshot or a scanned copy of the payment advice in an email to [email protected] from the email you have registered in your Stripe account.

Ensure you state that you have sent the payment to clear the negative balance on your account and include a screenshot or other scanned copy of the payment you have made.

Stripe will confirm receipt of the funds and update your Stripe account to reflect those funds. They may need up to 24-48 hours to totally confirm receipt.

When the process is complete, you'll see the sent funds displayed as a normal payout in your Stripe dashboard.