Understand Finance, Payments, and Payouts

Finance brings together booking payment activity for business planning and follow-up.

Read the Finance dashboard

Open Finance to review:

• Revenue Over Time
• Upcoming Payments
• Revenue Breakdown
• Tax Prep and Tax Set-Aside

The Finance overview with revenue controls, upcoming payment totals, and expected installments.View full size

Choose the relevant metric, date range, category, session type, or tax period before comparing figures. Revenue, refunds, payment fees, and balances come from Vignette’s payment records. Manual business facts appear only after you add them to tax planning.

Review upcoming payments

Upcoming Payments shows amounts expected from active full-session and mini-session payment plans. Canceled bookings and canceled mini-session slots are excluded from upcoming and overdue totals.

Select an upcoming-payment row to open the related booking’s Payment area. For a mini session, Vignette also focuses the exact client slot. Use the row’s separate reminder action when Vignette says that installment is eligible, or select View all payments to open the complete Payments table.

The Payments overview showing the amount collected and the balance still outstanding.View full size

Use filters and search to find a client, booking, status, method, reference, or date range. Select a row for its payment details and history.

The Payments page with Total Collected $1,800, Outstanding $4,175, Processing $0, Refunded $150, filters, and rows showing Refunded, Paid, and Pending payments.View full size

Select a row to open Payment Details. It shows the amount, method, client, booking, plan balance, and each charge in the payment history. Select View receipt to open the client's receipt.

Payment Details for a $450 Venmo payment with the client, booking, plan balance, payment history, View receipt, View booking, View client, and Refresh status.View full size

Canceled obligations remain available in payment history for your records, but they are not treated as pending or outstanding.

Review revenue breakdowns

Revenue Breakdown opens by photography Category, using the category saved with each booking. Later package edits do not reclassify historical payments.

Switch to Session Type to compare Full Session and Mini Session revenue. Only groups with positive net collected revenue appear in the chart. Select View all payments when you need the transaction rows behind the totals.

Revenue Breakdown by Category showing $1,650 total revenue split between Wedding (73%, $1,200) and Portrait (27%, $450).View full size

Settled pay you receive as a Vignette team member is also income in your studio's Finance totals. It is kept separate from the hiring studio's client payment plan.

Review team earnings

Open Team earnings to review settled independent-contractor payments you received through Vignette.

You can search or filter by the hiring studio, booking label, role, event date, or payment date. The summary shows year-to-date and all-time settled totals.

Team earnings with Earned this year, All-time earnings, Payments received, and Last payment tiles, a search field, paid-date filters, and the No team earnings yet message.View full size

The earning amount is the confirmed contractor pay. It does not include the extra processing cost paid by the hiring photographer. Opening a team earning can take you to your privacy-safe calendar assignment, but it never opens the other studio's client or booking workspace.

Learn how a hiring photographer pays a team member.

Understand payouts

Open Payouts to review money moving from Stripe toward your bank account.

The overview distinguishes available, pending, and paid-out balances. Select a payout to see its destination, payout date, expected arrival, status, and timeline.

The Payouts overview with payment-account status and available, pending, and paid-out balances.View full size

A client payment and a bank payout are related but separate events. A successful client charge may still be included in a later payout.

Use tax information responsibly

Tax widgets use cash-basis booking receipts, refunds, available Stripe processing fees, Vignette platform fees, and any manual tax records you add.

Tax Prep summarizes gross receipts, tracked deductible expenses, estimated net profit, recorded estimated-tax payments, and a readiness checklist. It warns you when Stripe fee details are incomplete.

Tax Prep with gross receipts, tracked deductions, estimated net business profit, remaining to set aside, and the Tax Season Checklist at 4 of 6 complete.View full size

Tax Set-Aside explains each line in the estimate and labels the assumptions as either Review required or Rates reviewed. Before you save a tax profile, Vignette starts with a 12% federal assumption and, for supported 2026 studio locations, the state’s published top marginal individual income-tax rate as a conservative starting point. You can review and replace those flat assumptions.

Tax Set-Aside with a Review required note, each line from gross receipts and refunds to federal and state set-asides, and the suggested and remaining set-aside amounts.View full size

Studio location is only a starting point. It cannot determine residency, income sourcing, credits, local taxes, filing brackets, or your complete federal or state obligation. Filing status and business type are stored as context but do not change the current set-aside formula.

Add tax-planning records

Select Review records and set-aside assumptions under Tax Prep to open Tax Planning Details. There you can:

• Save year-specific filing, business, state, federal-rate, and state-rate assumptions
• Record business income collected outside Vignette
• Add deductible business expenses and a business-use percentage
• Record estimated-tax payments
• Review or remove manual records
• Download a CSV planning packet for the selected tax year

Tax Planning Details with set-aside assumptions for filing status, business type, state, and federal and state rates, and the Add tax record form with type, date, amount, category, business use, vendor, and description.View full size

Vignette does not collect taxpayer identification numbers for these reports. The CSV is a planning packet, not an official tax form or filing-ready return.

They may not include every expense, adjustment, refund, payment collected elsewhere, or rule that applies to your business.

Important: Finance and tax views are planning tools, not tax advice or a complete accounting system. Compare them with Stripe, bank, and accounting records and consult a qualified professional.

Investigate differences

When a figure seems wrong:

1. Check the selected date range.
2. Open the underlying payment rows.
3. Review manual payments, refunds, fees, and remaining balances.
4. Confirm the Revenue Breakdown dimension or saved tax assumptions.
5. Review manual tax-ledger records and the related booking plan.
6. Compare Stripe or bank records when applicable.

What Vignette does behind the scenes

Finance reads confirmed payment and refund records instead of adding up package prices. Package prices describe what was offered; payment records show what was actually collected.

Provider updates can arrive after the client leaves the payment page. Vignette records those updates safely before changing totals, which is why a payment may show Processing before it becomes settled.