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Every customer payment reaches your bank account as its own disbursement — one transfer to your bank account on file per payment, so each deposit line on your statement is one invoice. This guide shows how to know when a deposit is coming, what’s in it, and how to reconcile it against your books.
Before you start: You need a paid invoice to follow — see Send an Invoice and Get Paid — and a webhook subscription if you want to be notified instead of polling.
1

Check when a payment will pay out

Every payment carries its own payout expectations. Fetch it with GET /payment/{paymentId} and look at two fields:
estimatedDisbursementDate is when Nickel expects to send the money to your bank. disbursement stays null until the payment is actually included in a transfer — then it carries the disbursement’s id and status, which is your key for everything below.
2

Listen for disbursement events

Two webhook events track each transfer:The event payload contains the disbursement’s ID in associated_object_id — fetch the details next.
3

Fetch the disbursement

Get the full picture with GET /disbursement/{disbursementId}. The response shape (illustrative values):
amountInCents is what lands in your account — the deposit line on your bank statement. paymentIds names the payment this transfer settles (it is an array for compatibility; expect one entry), and paidAt fills in once the money has been received.
4

Reconcile against your books

To match a deposit to an invoice, fetch the payment in paymentIds:
Each payment gives you the invoice it settles (paymentLinkId), the invoice amount (amountInCents), and the fees involved (fees, platformFeeInCents) — everything you need to match the bank deposit back to its invoice in your accounting system.

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Things that trip people up

  • disbursement.succeeded doesn’t mean “visible in your account”. It means the receiving bank has the funds; your bank’s posting time adds a delay on top.
  • One deposit, one payment. Deposits are not batched, so a statement with twenty lines is twenty payments; match each through its disbursement’s paymentIds rather than by amount, since the deposit is net of any fees you pay.
  • ACH returns can claw money back after payout. If an ACH payment is returned up to 60 days later (the payment moves to FAILED), and it was already paid out, Nickel debits the return amount back. See How Payments Work.

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Where to go next

Webhook events

Subscribe to disbursement.pending and disbursement.succeeded.

Refund or void a payment

What giving money back does to your payouts.