Your Income section is where you'll find everything related to your earnings on Patreon. It houses information about your monthly earnings, refunds, declines, and is your go to place for everything payout related– where you'll go to pay out!
Jump ahead to any section you're curious about:
- Earnings
- Pledge growth
- Patronage (only available on Pro and Premium)
- Refunds
- Declines
- Pay out balance (where you'll set up payout information)
- Payout history
- VAT
Earnings
This section summarizes income associated with your creator page. It is organized by the time that Patreon successfully processed your pledges and refunds, rather than the time when you performed the work or published paid posts.
- Month: The month in which you received money to your creator balance
- Total Refunds: Any refunds issued in that month, which is deducted from your creator balance. Patreon’s fee, processing fees, and VAT (Value-Added Tax) refunds do not come out of the creator balance. Please note this also does not include fraud refunds. Here's an article with more information on fraud refunds, in this article.
- Earnings Before Fees: Pledges that were processed successfully after deducting refunds
- Processing Fees: Processing fees cover the cost of processing payments from your patrons. Please see this article to learn more about fees.
- Patreon Fees: The sum of Patreon’s platform fee applied to the pledges, based on creator plan. Please see our pricing page for detailed information.
- Earnings Before Tax: The net amount that you earned after deducting refunds, Patreon fee, and processing fees
On January 1, 2016, we implemented a new payments infrastructure that allows us to track detailed information about payments, including the time when we successfully process pledges for each creator’s account. For all pledges processed prior to January 1, 2016, we estimated the month in which pledges processed by assigning each pledge to the month after the creator performed the associated work. For creators paid on a monthly basis, pledges processed before January 1, 2016 are mapped to the month immediately following each month of the creator’s page. For creators paid per-post, pledges processed before January 1, 2016 are mapped to the month after the creator published the paid posts. We did this because Patreon processes pledges in the first month following any published work, and it’s correct unless a pledge declines and the patron takes more than a month to resolve the payment settings issue. If you have any questions about the timing associated with processed pledges, please contact us through the form pasted below.
Pledge growth
This section provides a monthly summary of pledges to your page. Detailed pledge data are available for December 2015 onwards.
- Month: A month of the year.
- New Pledges: The value and number of new pledges to your page. A pledge is considered “new” in a month if the patron did not have a pledge to you in the preceding month.
- Increased Pledges: The value and number of pledges that increased in value. The amount shown is the amount by which existing pledges increased. For example, if a patron pledged $10 to you last month and increased the pledge to $15 this month, then this column would show $5 of increased pledges this month.
- Deleted Pledges: The value and number of deleted pledges. This number only accounts for patron cancellations if they've gone through one regular billing cycle with you. If you're a charge up front creators, and the patron cancels their membership with you, it will not be included here.
- Decreased Pledges: The value and number of pledges that decreased in value. The amount shown is the amount by which existing pledges decreased. For example, if a patron pledged $15 to you last month and decreased the pledge to $10 this month, then this column would show $5 of decreased pledges this month.
- Total Change: The amount by which your total pledges and number of patrons changed over the course of the month.
- Amount Pledged at End of Month: The amount pledged to your page at the end of the month, along with the total number of patrons in your community.
Note: This section aggregates each patron’s changes over the course of each month. For example, if a new patron pledged $10 to you on January 2, decreased the pledge to $5 on January 4, increased the pledge to $20 on January 5, and then left the pledge unchanged through the end of January, then it would appear as one new pledge of $20 in January.
Patronage
This section summarizes the patronage that you receive. Please note that this is only available on the Pro and Premium creator plans.
- Month: The month in which the creator performed the work associated with the monthly payment
- Paying Patrons: The number of patrons with successfully-processed pledges for that month
- Pledges Processed: The amount of successfully-processed pledges for that month, less any refunded payments
- New Paying Patrons: The number of new patrons that month
- Pledges Processed From New Patrons: The value of pledges processed from new patrons (i.e., the value from the first month paid for by those patrons)
For a detailed list of patrons who paid for each month or post, please consult either the Patron Manager or the detailed CSV download link available in the Patronage section of your Dashboard.
Refunds
This section summarizes refunds to your patrons. Detailed refund data are available for work published December 1, 2015 or later.
- Refund Date: The date when Patreon successfully processed the refund
- Original Transaction Date: The date when the pledge originally processed
- Patron Name: The patron's first and last name
- Patron Email: The patron's email address
- Creator’s share: The amount deducted from the creator balance and refunded to the patron.
- Other: Patreon’s fee, processing fees, and Value-Added Tax refunded to the patron. Note that this does not come out of the creator balance. The creator does not bear these costs.
- Total refund: The total amount refunded to the patron.
As a general rule, Patreon refers patrons to their creator whenever a patron requests a refund. Patreon only issues refunds directly to patrons under exceptional circumstances. For example, if Patreon accidentally charges a patron’s pledge multiple times, Patreon will directly issue a refund to the patron. Patreon also issues refunds in case of a fraudulent or unauthorized transaction (i.e., if the patron tells their bank that the pledge was an unauthorized transaction). That’s why you might occasionally see refunds that you didn’t initiate yourself.
Please consult our Help Center article here for more information about refunds.
Declines
This section assesses the extent to which your patrons’ pledges process successfully. When a payment declines, it is typically because of insufficient funds in the patron’s account or an error in the patron’s payment information (e.g., credit card number or expiration date). Patreon notifies the patron when payments decline and automatically retries the payment when the payment settings are updated.
- Month: The month in which the associated post(s) were published
- Attempted Pledges: The value of attempted pledges for posts published in that month
- Declined: The value of pledges that did not process successfully
- Successful: The value of pledges that processed successfully
Note: The Declines section of your Creator Dashboard summarizes your patrons' overall decline rate. If you view this dashboard at the beginning of a month, the current month's decline rate typically exceeds the rate from prior months. This is normal. The overall decline rate is usually high in the first few days of the month, and it falls over time as we automatically retry payments and encourage patrons to update their payment methods.
Pay out balance
This is where you can do a few things:
- Select where you'd like your earnings to be paid out to– PayPal, Stripe, or Payoener.
- Pay out your earnings from Patreon to your PayPal, Payoneer, or bank account.
- Where you'll find tax forms, and your gross earnings.
We have a section of our Help Center dedicated to navigating you through payouts, here.
Payout history
This section summarizes your monthly deductions from your creator balance.
- Month: The month in which the transaction processed
- Funds transferred to you: Funds deducted from the creator balance and transferred to the creator’s personal account, such as Direct Deposit or PayPal. Note that the actual amount that you'll receive in your bank account will be slightly smaller than the amount you withdraw from your creator balance because payment processors charge fees for the transfer.
- Funds used for pledges to other creators: Funds deducted from the creator balance in order to pay pledges to other creators
- Total funds deducted from creator balance: The sum of the preceding two columns
VAT
This section summarizes the Value-Added Tax (VAT) that Patreon collects from patrons based in the European Union. Patreon automatically applies each European country's Value-Added Tax rate to each patron’s pledge and remits the funds to the proper tax authorities. Note that Value-Added Taxes do not deduct from the creator’s share of the pledges; instead, Patreon adds the appropriate tax amount to each patron’s pledge. No further action is required from creators; Patreon handles all Value-Added Tax collection and remits the taxes to the appropriate tax authority in each country.
The primary view provides a table that summarizes VAT collected in each country, each year. Years correspond to the year in which Patreon actually collected the VAT from patrons (rather than the year in which the creator performed the work or published paid posts). Detailed monthly data are available with a CSV download.
For more information, please consult our Help Center article about Value-Added Taxes here.