Payouts: getting your store revenue to your mobile money
What you have earned in the Ekati store, transferred to you automatically each week.
Every course and book your school sells through the Ekati store is paid for by the buyer’s own mobile money. That money is held on the platform until it can be handed to you, and Payouts is the screen that shows you exactly when it will be: the balance waiting, the transfer that is on its way, and the receipt for the ones that have landed.
The transfer is automatic. Once the available balance for a payment method reaches the minimum, Ekati sends it to the number your institution registered for that method — every week, without anyone pressing a button. Your work is therefore short and precise: register the right numbers once, and check that the transfers are going through.
School fees are deliberately not part of this. A family paying fees hands the money to you at the counter; store revenue comes from buyers paying the platform, and only that second stream is transferred here.
Set up and follow your payouts in three steps
Register the numbers once, then read the list each week.
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Step 1
Register your receiving numbers
Your institution admin opens Configurations, switches to the Payouts tab, and types the MTN Mobile Money and Orange Money numbers that should receive the money. Click Save.
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Step 2
Read what is ready
On the same card, each method shows how much is ready and whether it has reached the minimum. Nothing is transferred below that line, which keeps the operator fees sensible.
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Step 3
Read the transfers in Finance > Payouts
The list shows Amount, Phone, Method, Status and Requested. Click the history icon on a row to read each status change with its date and who made it.
How the available amount is built
Four figures, and only the last one is yours to spend today.
Received: the store sales that have been paid
Everything a buyer has paid for on the store and that the platform has accepted. This is the gross figure for the method, and it only ever grows with successful sales — not with fees, and not with anything you entered by hand.
Unpaid, locked and available
Unpaid is received money not yet carried to you: the difference between the two is what the weekly run is about to move. Locked is money committed to a transfer that is pending, approved or processing — it has left the available figure because it is already on its way, which is why the available amount can look disappointingly small while a transfer of 300 000 XAF is mid-journey. Available is unpaid minus locked: the only figure that can leave the platform, and the one a transfer is created from once it reaches the minimum shown on the Payout numbers card.
Paid out is kept beside the others so you can prove the money came. When a school asks for “the store takings for last year”, this is the number to read — and it can be matched against the transfers listed in Payouts.
What happens on the weekly run
The transfer is a machine, not a decision. Your job is to keep it supplied and check the result.
The transfer runs by itself
Once a week the platform checks every institution, every method with a registered number, and creates one transfer per method whose available balance has reached the minimum. Nobody chooses the day, and nobody can forget to press anything.
A failed transfer releases the money
If the operator refuses the transfer — a wrong number, a closed account, an inactive wallet — the money is released instead of being lost, and the status history on the row tells you what happened. Correct the number, and the balance is available again on the next run. Registering a new MTN or Orange number takes effect immediately, including for transfers already under way, so change it the moment an old line is closed rather than the morning after a failed transfer.
Read the status history, not just the status. The Status history dialog on each payout row is a dated list of every change, with a note when one was written. It is the fastest way to answer “did you send it?” without leaving the screen.
What feeds this balance
The screen where the money in this balance is earned.
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Sell
Orders and promo codes
Course and book sales are the revenue this balance is built from — every settled order adds to it, per payment method.
Payout questions
Asked by the person who reconciles the shop account.
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Where do I change the number that receives the money?
Under Configurations, in the Payouts tab. There is one destination per method: type the new MTN Mobile Money or Orange Money number and click Save. The new number applies from the next weekly run, and if a transfer is already in flight the history will show you when it settles.
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Why has no transfer been made even though we have sold all month?
Check two things. First, the available balance for that method on the Payout numbers card: transfers are only created once it reaches the minimum, and a small month simply does not trigger one. Second, whether a registered receiving number exists at all for that method — an unregistered method accumulates without ever being sent.
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Does the money from school fees ever get transferred?
No. Fees are collected directly by your staff and recorded as payments in the school’s own books. Payouts carry only what buyers paid the platform for store purchases. Keeping the two streams apart is what makes both of them readable at month end.
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A transfer failed. What happens to the money?
It is released back into your available balance rather than lost, and the status history on the row records what the operator said. Fix the receiving number — usually a closed line or a wallet in someone else’s name — and the balance is picked up on the next weekly run.