I’m confused about the “income” section of my dashboard. Can someone explain why the “amount pledged at end of month” in my “pledge growth” tab is more than 20% higher than my “earnings before fees” in the “income” tab?
Also, why are my “earnings before tax” in a given month higher than the amount actually deposited to my account from patreon?
I’m having someone make monthly financial reports for me, and I’m not sure which line item to have her look at when reporting Patreon income.
Thank you!
Hi @carsieblanton !
Laura here from Creator Success - we spoke a while ago! Sorry to hear the dashboards are confusing - I took a note of your feedback for our product team, and want you to know that the payouts dashboards are on the priority list for our team - you are definitely not the first person who has brought this up to us!
I actually reached out to our community happiness team for their help with this as well, and they shared a pretty comprehensive explanation and set of examples with me that I think cover it better than I could paraphrase. Please let me know if you have any further questions after reading this!
What is the Pledge Growth page?
The Pledge Growth page is great at counting new pledges – patrons who’ve confirmed a membership with you once. That said, the “Amount Pledged At End of Month” number you see doesn’t differentiate declined patrons from active pledges, and it does not record patrons who have joined and cancelled within the same month.
Why your earnings may seem inflated on your Pledge Growth report
This report doesn’t update in real-time, and it doesn’t display declines, or one-time patrons which can lead to a difference between what’s listed in the “Amount Pledged At End of Month” column and your processed payments for the month.
An important thing to note is that patrons who joined and cancelled in the same month, won’t be included in the “Deleted” column. So the number of deletes may be lower than the actual number of deleted pledges for a month.
Where did those patrons go?
Most of the difference can be accounted for by one-time patrons, or patrons who joined and cancelled their membership before the end of the month.
To see a list of patrons who cancelled before the 1st of the month:
Example: You go through the steps above and see that Bob is listed as a former patron and their last charge date was January 15th. This indicates that they joined, or increased their membership on the 15th, and then cancelled before February 1st when they would be billed again. If this is Bob’s initial payment to you, they will not be accounted for in the “Deleted” column of your Pledge Growth page.
Declining patrons
Going through the above steps, might not account for the entire difference you see. Patrons’ who’s payment with you is currently declining are not removed from the “Amount Pledged At End of Month” which can add to the inflation.
You can remove declined patrons from the total amount listed on the Pledge Growth page by heading to your Declines page and subtracting the amount listed for a month.
Your Patronage page and Earnings dashboard
It can be tricky to predict earnings, which is why we recommend using your Patronage page as your source of truth for active patrons in a given month, and the Earnings page as your source of truth for the amount successfully processed by patrons.
The Earnings page shows you what you have earned in a given month.
I hope that this information has helped, and let me know if there’s anything I can additionally clarify!
Laura + the Community Happiness team 