A Sellvia dashboard can display $1,000 in Total Earnings, a positive profit figure beside processed orders and much less than $100 in Available balance without any of those figures being mathematically inconsistent. The numbers look as if they should match because they all relate to the same customers. In practice, each one answers a different question.

That distinction matters more than it first appears. A sales figure answers, “How much did customers pay?” An order-profit figure answers, “What expected earnings are attached to this order after the processing costs shown for it?” A monthly operating result answers, “Did those earnings cover advertising and recurring expenses?” Available asks, “How much has cleared the platform’s timing and reserve rules?” A bank statement answers the final question: “How much cash has actually settled outside the platform?”

When I first mapped these figures in a reconciliation sheet, the useful breakthrough was to stop searching for one master number. There is no single Sellvia metric that simultaneously measures demand, margin, liquidity and bank cash. The dashboard becomes easier to understand once those four jobs are separated.

The Complete Sellvia Money Ladder

The cleanest model is a ladder rather than a single balance:

Movement along this ladder is not instantaneous. An order can appear in sales before it is processed. A processed order can create expected earnings before those earnings are Available. Available funds can still be below a method-specific payout minimum. A submitted payout can remain outside the bank until it finishes settlement.

Verified in the dashboard

What Every Financial Metric Actually Measures

An important terminology caution

Sellvia’s Help Center uses several closely related phrases: Total Earnings, customer payments, Commission balance, Your profit and earnings. The Orders guide defines “Your profit” as the customer price minus the total processing costs shown for the order. The Balance guide describes Commission balance as actual profit, while also describing how a sale moves through the four balance stages. Those descriptions are useful, but they are not a substitute for the exact transaction lines in a particular account.

Sales, Order Profit and Operating Profit

Sales are a demand measure

Sales are useful for measuring demand, average order value and order volume. They are not a reliable shortcut to profit. A store can create substantial sales while spending even more on advertising, or while a large share of its orders remains unprocessed. Total Earnings can also cover a broader time window than the expenses being compared with it, which is another common source of false conclusions.

“Your profit” is an order measure

The current Orders guide says the dashboard’s Your profit figure is the difference between the amount paid by the customer and the total processing costs. Its example combines product cost, processing fee and service fee. That is more precise than describing the figure as “sales minus one processing percentage.” It also means the processing cost should not automatically be subtracted again when calculating margin from the displayed Your profit number.

Verified order example

The processing payment still matters for cash flow. Manual orders require a card payment before the related earnings complete the balance cycle. Economically, the dashboard may already reflect the order cost in Your profit; operationally, the owner still has to provide liquidity at the time of processing. That is why processing capital belongs in a cash ledger even when it should not be deducted twice from the profit-and-loss calculation.

Operating profit is a period measure

This calculation should use the same date range for both earnings and expenses. It should also distinguish between advertising budget consumed and an Ads Credits transfer. Moving $100 into an advertising balance is a cash-allocation event; the actual advertising expense is the amount consumed by campaigns during the period.

Sellvia.biz already covers contribution margin, CAC and monthly break-even in the separate Sellvia Break-Even Analysis. The narrower point here is timing: even a correctly calculated positive operating result can coexist with a low Available balance or a lower bank balance.

How Pending, Incoming, Available and Risk Reserve Work

Pending begins before processing

When a customer places an order, the associated amount appears in Pending. It stays there until the order is processed. Pending is therefore evidence of an order, not evidence of completed cash availability. Sellvia documents a seven-day deadline: an order left unprocessed is eventually canceled and the customer is refunded.

Orders are normally processed either manually with a bank card or automatically through Order Processing Credits. The platform also documents one special automatic attempt to use Available balance shortly before the seven-day cancellation. That exception should not be confused with the normal rule: Commission balance, including Available, cannot ordinarily pay for order processing directly.

Verified order workflow

Incoming begins after processing

After successful processing, the relevant earnings enter Incoming and remain there for a mandatory 72-hour hold. The official guide specifies calendar days, so weekends count. Incoming should therefore be read as “processed but still held,” not “available in about three more business days.”

The release is split 75/25

After the three-day hold, the documented allocation is:

Available is the Commission balance category eligible for bank withdrawal and the standard balance-conversion options described in the Help Center. The remaining quarter goes to Risk Reserve for 125 days. Sellvia describes the reserve as temporary protection against potential chargebacks, disputes and refunds. It is not presented as a permanent fee; the held amount moves to Available automatically after the reserve period, subject to account adjustments. The reviewed transaction history also shows that certain eligible internal purchases can be recorded with “Balance + Risk Reserves” as the payment method. That internal use does not make Risk Reserve bank-withdrawable.

This produces a predictable gap. If $400 of verified earnings completes the Incoming hold, approximately $300 moves to Available and $100 enters Risk Reserve. A user looking only at the total Commission balance may see the entire $400 in the cycle, while the payout screen can use only the $300 released share.

Available has three documented uses

• Bank payout: subject to the selected method’s minimum, fee, verification and account-status requirements.
• Transfer to Order Processing Credits: a 28% service fee applies. Sellvia’s example says obtaining $100 in Processing Credits costs $128.
• Transfer to Ads Credits: a 5% transfer fee applies.

These choices are not economically identical. A bank payout increases external liquidity. A Processing Credits transfer keeps funds inside the operating system and pays for automation. An Ads Credits transfer allocates money to promotion. The same $100 of Available balance can therefore have a different practical value depending on where it goes.

Verified transaction history

When Available Becomes Bank Cash

Available is the start of payout eligibility, not the end of the cash cycle. Sellvia currently lists four conditions for a bank withdrawal:

1. The Available balance must meet the minimum for the selected method.
2. The Sellvia subscription must be active and paid.
3. The phone number must be verified.
4. Identity verification must be completed.

Bank withdrawals are unavailable during the free trial. During that period, the current guide says only transfers to Ads Credits or Processing Credits are available. For a first bank withdrawal, Sellvia uses Veriff for KYC and charges a one-time $4.99 verification fee. The guide says this is charged from Available balance and may also use Risk Reserve when Available is insufficient.

The separate official Fees page describes ACH as 5% with a $10 minimum fee, while the Balance and Payouts page describes US Bank Transfer as 5% plus $10. Because those formulations are not identical, the fee displayed on the final payout confirmation screen should be treated as authoritative for the individual request.

One Illustrative Sale, Reconciled Without a Fake Payout

Assume a customer pays $59 for a digital offer. The order screen shows total processing costs of $21 and expected Your profit of $38. The owner processes the order manually using a card. For this example, the transaction history then records $38 as the earnings entering the balance cycle.

The important correction is that this single order does not produce an immediate bank payout. Its $28.50 Available share is below the general $100 threshold and far below the documented $200 minimum for a US Bank Transfer. Any example that subtracts an ACH fee from $28.50 and calls the result a bank deposit is operationally impossible.

A separate, valid payout example

Suppose the store has accumulated exactly $250 in Available balance across multiple cleared orders and chooses US Bank Transfer. Using the current Balance and Payouts formulation:

The request clears the documented $200 method minimum. The estimated settlement period is 5–7 business days. The payout still requires an active subscription, phone verification and KYC. The example is mathematically valid, but the live payout screen should still be checked because Sellvia’s Fees article describes the $10 component differently.

A Consistent 30-Day Liquidity Ledger

The next illustration tracks timing instead of pretending that weekly totals automatically explain cash. It assumes:

• Opening external bank cash: $2,500.
• Six order batches with $2,700 total verified dashboard earnings after the order-level costs shown by the platform.
• Manual processing payments totaling $900, tracked as liquidity outflows rather than subtracted a second time from displayed order earnings.
• Advertising consumed: $900.
• Monthly subscription: $39.
• No refunds, chargebacks, balance transfers or performance-tier charges.
• A $1,000 US Bank Transfer requested on day 25 and settled on day 30 with a $60 fee under the 5% + $10 formulation.

The two closing reconciliations

The store’s bank cash ended $899 below its opening balance even though the dashboard earnings for the period were $2,700. Using the documented Your profit basis, an illustrative operating result before payout and verification fees is:

The difference is timing and location. At month-end, another $1,020.01 remained Available, $675 remained in Risk Reserve, and a substantial amount of external cash had been used before the payout settled. This does not prove that every real account will follow the same pattern. It demonstrates how a positive period result can coexist with lower unrestricted bank cash.

Why Sales Can Rise While Available Stays Flat

When the sales chart rises faster than Available, check the following causes before assuming the dashboard is wrong:

• New orders are still Pending because they have not been processed.
• Processed earnings are still within the 72-hour Incoming hold.
• One quarter of released earnings has moved to the 125-day Risk Reserve.
• Available was converted to Processing Credits and reduced by the 28% transfer fee.
• Available was converted to Ads Credits and reduced by the 5% transfer fee.
• A subscription, KYC charge, payout or documented account adjustment reduced Available.
• The payout request has left the balance but has not yet settled in the bank.
• The selected reporting date range excludes expenses or releases included elsewhere.
• A refund, dispute or chargeback adjusted earnings previously visible in the cycle.
• Each store has its own separate balance, so another store’s Available amount cannot be combined.

Most gaps become understandable after the transaction dates are aligned. An unexplained discrepancy should still be documented with order IDs, balance history, payout status and dated screenshots before contacting support.

Working Capital in the Sellvia Operating Cycle

Working capital here is not an abstract accounting ratio. It is the money needed to keep processing orders and paying for traffic while earlier earnings remain Pending, Incoming or reserved.

This is a planning model, not an official Sellvia formula. The buffer should be increased for uneven order volume, advertising renewals, card authorization delays, refunds, weekend operations and the fact that 25% of released earnings remains unavailable for much longer than three days.

Card processing versus Processing Credits

Manual processing uses a bank card and avoids the 28% top-up fee for Processing Credits, but it requires the owner to act on each order. Processing Credits automate the workflow but cost more to fund. The right choice is therefore not simply “which is cheaper?” It depends on order volume, response time, the probability of missed orders and the value of automation.

For a broader explanation of the dashboard tools, see Sellvia Tools Explained. For the underlying subscription and fee structure, see Sellvia Pricing Explained. The complete operating sequence is covered in How Does Sellvia Work?.

Three Problems That Need Different Solutions

1. Sales without operating profit

Orders are arriving, but customer acquisition and recurring expenses exceed verified order earnings. This is an economics problem. Adding more processing capital will not repair negative unit economics. The remedy is to reduce acquisition cost, improve conversion, improve the offer mix or stop scaling the weak campaign.

2. Profit without immediate liquidity

Verified order earnings exceed advertising and subscription costs, but most money remains Incoming or Risk Reserve. This is primarily a timing problem. The response is to maintain an appropriate processing buffer, avoid scaling faster than the cash cycle can support and monitor release dates.

3. Available balance without unrestricted bank cash

The funds have cleared into Available, but they may be below the selected method minimum, waiting for KYC, allocated to credits, deducted by a payout request or still settling. This is a conversion and settlement problem. It requires checking the payout screen rather than recalculating sales.

“I Have Sales but No Available Cash”: A 10-Minute Check

1. Set one exact reporting period in Orders and Reports.
2. Record gross customer sales for that period.
3. Separate orders placed from orders actually processed.
4. Record Your profit and total processing costs from the same orders.
5. Check how much remains Pending.
6. Check how much is Incoming and the processing dates behind it.
7. Record Available and Risk Reserve separately.
8. Check transfers to Processing Credits and Ads Credits.
9. Check subscription, KYC, payout and adjustment transactions.
10. Confirm whether a payout is requested, approved or settled.
11. Compare the payout method minimum with the current Available balance.
12. Document any remaining difference by order ID and transaction date.

When that equation works, the difference between sales and Available is usually timing or allocation rather than missing money. When it does not work, a dated reconciliation gives support a precise problem to investigate.

Frequently Asked Questions