Pilot RD onboarding kit · operator-facing

Post-Event Reconciliation

Within 7 days of your event — and again at the end of the 14-day refund window — work through this checklist. The goal is to verify that the money moved correctly, your photographers got paid, and any athlete issues are resolved (or at least logged).

Most pilot RDs find this takes 30-45 minutes. Block the time deliberately rather than squeezing it between other work; small reconciliation errors caught late are much harder to fix than ones caught the same week.

1. Verify sales totals match

Two sources of truth need to agree:

PodiumBase sales surface: admin → event page → /sales view. Shows total orders, gross sales, refunds, and net.
Stripe Dashboard: filter by metadata.event_id or by date range corresponding to your event window.

Open both side-by-side.

Expected:

Order count matches exactly.
Gross dollar total matches exactly.
Refund count + dollar total matches exactly.

If they don't match:

Mismatch by 1-2 orders within an hour of event end: likely a Stripe webhook timing issue that resolves on its own. Wait 24 hours and re-check.
Mismatch persisting beyond 24 hours: email support@podiumbase.io with the order IDs that don't reconcile.
Sales surface shows more than Stripe: stop and escalate immediately. This is rare and worth same-day investigation.

Done when: the two sources match, or the delta is documented and explained.

2. Verify photographer payouts

Each photographer should be paid their share of every order containing one of their photos. Default split for pilot RDs is 80% photographer / 20% platform on Pro tier (the default tier for pilots; covers both $14.99 individual photos and $24.99 event-pack bundles). Community tier (60% / 40%, $3.99 per photo, individual photos only) is available for events that want a lower per-photo price point — discuss with us at kickoff if that's right for your audience. Your tier is set on the event admin pricing page.

Two sources to compare per photographer:

PodiumBase admin: photographer detail page shows their accrued earnings for the event.
Stripe Connect dashboard: each photographer has their own Stripe-side view showing transfers received.

For each photographer:

PodiumBase accrued earnings = sum of Stripe Connect transfers for the event window
Payout schedule on their Stripe Connect dashboard shows the expected bank-arrival date (standard is 2-7 business days from transfer)
No transfers in "pending" state for more than 24 hours (pending past that usually means Stripe needs additional verification from the photographer)

If a photographer flags a discrepancy:

Get them to confirm which orders they think they're missing payment for.
Cross-check those orders in PodiumBase admin → confirm the photo in the order was tagged to them.
If correctly tagged but no transfer: forward to support with order IDs.
If wrong tag: the photo was attributed to the wrong photographer. Operator-side fix; flag to support.

Done when: every photographer's PodiumBase accrued total matches their Stripe-side transferred total.

3. Refund counts + dispute status

Pull the refund + dispute list from the event admin.

Refunds initiated by athletes: these are normal — typical rate is 1-3% of orders. Verify each was issued cleanly and the funds returned to the athlete's card.
Refunds initiated by you or by founder side: verify the reason is logged. Common reasons: duplicate charge, photo misattribution, "no photo found despite paying" (rare, but happens).
Open Stripe disputes (chargebacks): these are the serious ones. Each disputed order shows a Stripe-side dispute deadline (typically 7-21 days from initiation). Either submit evidence (order email, download log, photo) or accept and refund. Do not ignore — unresponded disputes auto-resolve in the athlete's favor and count against your processing reputation.

Done when: every refund is reconciled and every open dispute has either evidence submitted or an explicit decision to accept.

4. Athlete-side feedback summary

We track three signals:

In-product feedback widget — if it shipped by your pilot date, athletes can submit feedback directly from the gallery page. We'll send you the aggregate report a few days after your event.
Refund reasons — if athletes are refunding, why? Patterns in refund reason text are early signals of buyer-flow problems.
Out-of-band survey — for the pilot, we recommend an email to your event finishers ~5 days after the race asking about the photo experience. We'll provide a 4-question template. Reply rates are usually 5-15% for race-day-related surveys.

Collect, skim, and write down anything that surprised you — both negative and positive. Bring these to your debrief.

Done when: you have a written paragraph of "what athletes told us" to bring to the debrief call.

5. Operator-side data export

For your own records and for the debrief, pull these metrics. The exact UI affordance depends on what we've shipped by your pilot date — if it's not in admin yet, ask support and we'll run the queries and send you a CSV.

Event-level summary

Total athletes registered (from your registration platform — not PodiumBase)
Total athletes with at least one photo found (PodiumBase admin)
"Hit rate" = athletes-with-photos / athletes-registered
Total unique photo buyers
"Conversion rate" = unique buyers / athletes-with-photos
Total gross sales, total refunds, total platform fee, total photographer payouts
Photographer count, average $ per photographer

Photographer-level breakdown

Per-photographer: photos uploaded, photos sold (at least one buy), revenue earned
Helps you decide which photographers to invite back

Buyer-flow funnel (if available)

Page views → photo views → cart adds → checkouts initiated → checkouts completed
The drop-off shape is the most important UX signal we have at pilot scale

Done when: you have a single doc or spreadsheet capturing the above, ready to bring to the debrief.

6. Final cleanups

Refund window close: confirm at T+14 days that no refund requests are sitting in queue. If any are open, resolve them.
Photographer payouts final: at T+14 days, run the photographer-payout reconciliation (step 2) one more time. Anything still "pending" past this point needs investigation.
Archive the event: in admin, you can mark the event "complete" once reconciled. This is mostly housekeeping but it cleans up your dashboard.

Debrief call prep

Bring to the call:

The numbers from step 5 (the event-level summary at minimum)
The paragraph from step 4 (what athletes told you)
Your honest assessment. What sucked? What surprised you? What would have made this a 9/10 instead of whatever it actually was?

We'll bring questions from our side. Plan for 30 minutes; we'll go longer if you have more to say.

Next steps after reconciliation:

If you're running another pilot event: go back to the pre-event checklist for that event — you'll skip most setup steps but should re-run the test transaction.
If this was your only planned pilot event: stay in touch. We'll share roadmap updates, and you have first-mover positioning when we move from pilot to GA.