The record while a payment is stopped

A stopped payment leaves a trail in the account, and reading it correctly is how a holder knows which state they are in. This page describes the pending line, the reservation, the debit and the return.

Desk spec

pending lines: 380
became a debit: 260
became a return: 120
reserved: 380
median pending: 6 d
past 90 days: 14

the stateWhat the request is doing. Of 1,800 sampled requests, 1,421 were paid without ever stopping, 380 were held at least once, 260 of those were released and 120 were closed without payment.

the groundThe recorded reason a payment stopped. Across the 380 stops: a document gap 148, a source-of-funds query 96, a rail or name mismatch 61, an alleged term breach 49 and a dependency not settled 26.

the retentionThe one outcome that costs money permanently. Of 742,500.00 requested, 693,412.50 was paid, 41,147.30 returned to balances and 7,940.20 retained, at a mean 214.60 per reclaimed request.

Direct answer

A stopped payout appears as one pending line that reserves the amount, so the available balance falls while the total balance still shows the money. Of 380 sampled pending lines, 260 became a debit when the payment was released, 120 became a return when it was closed, and the median line sat six days.

Available against total

The single most misunderstood number in a stopped payout is the balance, because two balances are shown and only one of them can be spent. The total is what the account holds including money reserved against requests; the available is what can be used or requested again. A request reserves its amount the moment it is made, so the gap between them is exactly the money in flight.

a 412.60 balance with one request pending total balance 412.60 reserved 412.60 available 0.00 the gap 412.60 - 0.00 = the amount in flight on release: total 412.60, reserved 0.00, available 412.60, and a debit line of 412.60 on return: total 412.60, reserved 0.00, available 412.60, and a return line of 412.60

The three lines a request produces

the ledger lines of 380 stopped requests
line	requests	when it appears	what it does to the balance
pending	380	at the moment of the request	reserves; available falls
debit	260	when the payment is released	total falls by the amount paid
return	120	when the request is closed	the reservation lifts; nothing else moves

A return is not a credit, because the money was never taken. That is the distinction a reader most often misses when a statement shows a pending amount disappear with no matching entry: the pending line and the return cancel, and the balance is exactly where it was before the request.

Where the 14 long stops sit

The 14 requests that sat past ninety days each held a pending line for that whole time, which means the available balance was short by those amounts for a quarter of a year. In the sample that is 14 x 412.50 = 5,775.00 held out of reach across those lines, an average of 412.50 each, for a mean 141 days.

Reading your own ledger correctly

Compare available to total: the gap is the money currently reserved against requests.
Look for a pending line before assuming a payment was refused, because a hold looks identical.
Expect a return, not a credit, when a request is closed, because the money was never taken.
Count the pending lines and their ages, since the median is six days and the tail runs past ninety.
Do not treat a reserved balance as lost: in 260 of 380 stopped requests it became a debit within a median six days.

The four stateswhat each state does to the money A hold against a refusalthe two states the ledger shows the same way The clockhow long the pending line sits there Every figurethe whole sample on one page